(Part 4) Top products from r/AskAnAmerican

I really suggest everyone read this book on the subject.

We are capable of doing such a thing, and I think we'd be happy doing so. It's just a matter of getting people accustomed to the idea and accepting it as a social good and not a societal attack against everyone.

Yea, it's one of my favorites. I just compiled a list for my friend of my favorites. Let me see if I can find that to copy/paste to you...

https://www.amazon.com/Lucky-Dog-Chile-Pineapple-Sauce/dp/B01M4KF1BA?th=1

https://www.amazon.com/Queen-Majesty-Gift-Set-Winning/dp/B071NK1GZK

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SZ98761

https://www.amazon.com/Sauce-Bae-Skinny-Habanero-Hot/dp/B07G7CGST5

https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Aardvark-Habanero-Sauce-Net/dp/B00AIR3Q38

If you liked that then you should read this one. It is about how American privateers played a huge role in the Revolution and kept pissing everyone off and how the French were just sort of like "pirates? what pirates?" All the while harboring American raiding ships in the Caribbean.

It starts out a bit slow but if you stick with it then you will probably find it fascinating.

Just an observation: most Americans learned American history in school, so we're all pretty familiar with the broad strokes before we graduate from high school. So I don't know how good any of the recommendations will be, since asking Americans for a good introduction to history book would be like asking a native French speaker on a good introduction to French book.

Worse, once you get past the broad strokes, many historians "interpret" history through one lens or another in order to make a point or advocate for political interpretation. But hell, even the most basic introductory material we get in school is also biased towards selling a mythology rather than simply teaching events.

That said, there are some well recommended books which provide a basic introduction. American History: A Very Short Introduction comes up in my searches, though I can't directly recommend it having not read it.

Edit to add: Once you get past the broad strokes there are numerous books which dive into each period in greater depth. For me, I'm fascinated by the Civil War, and I particularly like Shelby Foote's "The Civil War: A Narrative" which was used extensively as a source for Ken Burnes' amazing The Civil War miniseries on PBS.

For more information, I recommend you read

[Force and Fanaticism: Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and Beyond]
(https://www.amazon.com/Force-Fanaticism-Wahhabism-Arabia-Beyond/dp/1849044643)
Describes the history of Wahhabism and its effects. Author spent time in Saudi Arabia.

[The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State] (https://www.amazon.com/ISIS-Apocalypse-History-Strategy-Doomsday/dp/1250112648/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496875330&sr=1-1&keywords=The+ISIS+Apocalypse)

Self explanatory.

[Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection] (https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Unjust-Behind-U-S-Saudi-Connection/dp/1944869026/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496875675&sr=1-1&keywords=kingdom+of+the+unjust+behind+the+u.s.-saudi+connection)

Easy to read description of Saudi crimes.

[The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11] (https://www.amazon.com/Looming-Tower-Al-Qaeda-Road-11/dp/1400030846/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496875754&sr=1-1&keywords=Looming+Tower)

Excellent narrative history of Al Qaeda. Highly recommended.

[My Year Inside Radical Islam: A Memoir] (https://www.amazon.com/My-Year-Inside-Radical-Islam/dp/1585426113/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496875857&sr=1-1&keywords=My+Year+inside+Radical+Islam)

Not a wide-sweeping narrative but a personal story of someone who worked for a Saudi-funded charity and slowly adapted their beliefs.

[On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines -- and Future]
(https://www.amazon.com/Saudi-Arabia-People-Religion-Lines/dp/0307473287/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496875930&sr=1-1&keywords=On+Saudi+Arabia)

Written by a reporter who spent years in Saudi Arabia, gives a description of Saudi society.

[The Siege of Mecca: The 1979 Uprising at Islam's Holiest Shrine] (https://www.amazon.com/Siege-Mecca-Uprising-Islams-Holiest/dp/0307277739/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496876042&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Siege+of+Mecca)

A great history of an almost unknown terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia. Goes into the relationship between the Saudi royal family and Wahhabi religious establishment.

[Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror]
(https://www.amazon.com/Knowing-Enemy-Jihadist-Ideology-Terror/dp/0300122578/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496876149&sr=1-1&keywords=Knowing+the+Enemy)
Really good explanation of Salafi-Jihadism.


Edit: Added links and made it look nicer. If you want more, just ask. If anyone has any other recommendations, I would like to know. :)

> your internal affairs

I mean, whether or not it was an internal political affair was going to be determined by the outcome of the war.

Also, you should definitely read this book if you're interested in Confederate commerce raiding.

And while we're on the topic, you might be interested to hear that Confederates using English-made Whitworth rifles are considered one of the more important forerunners of the modern sniper.

Edit: Oh, and you should listen to "The Cumberland's Crew." It's also a folk song that came out of the naval aspect of the American Civil War. There were plenty of re-wordings of Irish songs that happened too, but I think that one is original.

Both of my parents are from Cuba and, prior to that, all of my ancestors came from Spain. I live by Mary Urrutia Randelman's Memories of a Cuba Kitchen and make a fair amount of Spanish food as well -- summer basically means tortilla española and tinto de verano. We've been multiple times to visit the parts of Spain that our ancestors came from (Galicia, the Basque country, and Asturias (by way of the Canary Islands)). We celebrate Noche Buena instead of Christmas day. We listen to a lot of Cuban & Spanish music. My sister and I are English-dominant now but both speak Spanish with our parents/extended family. Probably a bunch of other, smaller things.

Check out Days of Rage, which is a pretty recent book about the many left-wing bombings of the 1970s.

The Goat in the Rug
A story about weaving a Navajo rug narrated by the goat the rug is made out of. It's adorable.

Chapter 14: “The Drive-in Culture of Contemporary America,” if you really want to know.

Read this book

[Pssshhhhh] (https://www.amazon.com/Third-Coast-Chicago-Built-American/dp/0143125095)

Early 1980s urban legend: http://www.snopes.com/crime/gangs/lightsout.asp

It was actually referenced in this print book about urban legends, back in the dark ages before Snopes.

As for the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony, see:

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick.

If You Give A Moose A Muffin

Thanks for this, a lot of people forget what a disaster the 1970s were. I'm a historian and one of my favorite books on the topic is Decade of Nightmares.

It may have been wacky to see someone act like that, but it's a prevailing attitude in the United States. I was doing some research on New Deal politics and found the book Why Americans Hate Welfare and it turns out that among other things such as media manipulation, there has been a calculated strategy to turn American's attitudes against the poor, in order to make it easier to defund social safety nets.

Some of the POW camps in Germany were liberated by the Red Army, which sent many of the US POWs on rail cars to work in the Gulag.

This was a subtopic in an excellent book by Tim Tzouliadis about Americans who went to the USSR and never came back. The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia

Most of the commonly cited problems caused by "immigration" in our country are, in actuality, caused by the drug trade.

Reduce the country's reliance on drug importation, you reduce the influence of the cartels and the gangs.

As sociologists have pointed out, gangs exist, not to form some sort of mythical "hispanic/black menace", but because the gang system mirrors the McDonald's franchise model for supply and distribution (with the cartels standing at the top of the c-suite).

If Mexico is failing to "send their best", it's because of drugs. Take care of the drug problem, and you take care of most of the problems with "bad immigration" (i.e., drug mules and drug runners).