Reddit mentions: The best american history books

Okay, here is a copy/paste of a comment I made previously:

"The Principles of Communism" by Friedrich Engels was an early draft of the Manifesto that many feel is actually easier to understand. I still recommend reading the manifesto as well if you haven't yet.

Why Socialism? By Albert Einstein and The Soul of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde are two short, simple, and very eloquent introductory essays that everyone should read.


"Marx for Beginners" by Rius is an illustrated book explaining the history and basics of Marx's ideas. I know it sounds absurd that it's basically like a comic book, but it seriously does a great job of concisely stating a lot of the basics. I recommend it to all beginners.

"Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" by Engels. It outlines socialism and distinguishes the scientific socialism of Marx/Engels from the utopian socialism that preceded it.

"Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism" by Bertrand Russell analyzes several different leftist views and their origins. Russell has a simple, reasonable way of explaining things. I don't agree with him on everything, but he does his best to be fair when explaining things and it is a valuable introductory work.

"The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" by Engels. This does what it says on the tin.

One of the best things to get is the Marx-Engels Reader. It contains "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific" and many of the other works by Marx and Engels that I and others mention. (Here it is for free)

Everything I've listed so far, with the exception of "Principles of Scientific Socialism" and "Roads To Freedom" is a pretty short read.

Here's some slightly more advanced reading:

"Wage Labor and Capital" and "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" by Marx

"The Holy Family" by Marx and Engels

State and Revolution by Lenin

Once you're informed enough, it's definitely worth is to read through Marx's Capital with these David Harvey lectures as a guide.

Also, this guy's youtube channel has been a great help to me. I've especially found his series on the Law of Value to be very useful lately but he has tons of great videos. His videos on manufacturing consent, crisis, commodities, and credit are just a few good examples. If you go to his website you can see a list of all his videos on the right hand side. He's certainly not perfect, but he's helped me to learn a lot and helped to point me to other resources as well.


Edit: Found free copies of Marx for Beginners and Marx-Engels reader, added links. Now I link to free copies of every work I mention but one. Free education, comrades!

Edit2: I've rearranged this some and tried to order it better. I removed one book since it's hard to find and out of print but here's the description I had of it:

"Principles of Scientific Socialism" by Philip Sharnoff. I haven't been able to find this book to order online... maybe it's out of print, but I picked it up at a used book store and it's pretty great. It concisely explains all about Marxism, Leninism and modern socialist movements. I like it because he uses more or less plain English and gets straight to the point. It even goes into basic history about the Russian and Chinese Revolution, the USSR and the cold war. It's really fantastic. I'm sure there are other books that do this and if anyone knows of them, let me know. I'd love to find one to recommend that is in print.

No problem! As for some good reading that is pretty non-technical but still really delves into the manned space programs, I would highly recommend "A Man On The Moon", by Andrew Chaikin. It is appreciated as being one of the best breakdowns of the Apollo Program, and is a great read filled with a ton of interesting information.

Also, ANY of the astronaut auto-biographies are fantastic. As for a few examples, Eugene Cernan's "The Last Man On The Moon" is a great and candid read in my opinion, as is Neil Armstrong's "First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong". Chris Hadfield's "An Astronauts Guide To Life On Earth" is also excellent and very candid and open as well, covering a lot of stuff about STS and ISS. "Failure Is Not An Option", written by former NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz, is also a great read that gets into a lot of the NASA mission management from Mercury to Apollo, and likewise with astronaut Deke Slayton's great bio titled "Deke!", since Slayton was NASA's Director of Flight Crew Operations after he was grounded due to a heart issue, making him largely responsible for crew assignments at NASA during Gemini and Apollo.

Another good one is "This New Ocean" by William Burrows. It covers the history of humankind's fascination with spaceflight and rocketry, from the ancient myths of Daedalus and Icarus and the early chinese experiments with fireworks right up to the STS shuttle and ISS, and goes into not just mission specifics, but the historical geo-politics and geo-military wranglings that really defined the first "Space Race" with the Soviets.

Actually, here is a link to a list of a bunch of good books written by or about astronauts and the space programs, and just about every book on this list I would recommend.

Also, if you have not yet seen it, I STRONGLY recommend that you check out the fantastic HBO mini-series "From The Earth To The Moon". Produced and directed by Tom Hanks and Ron Howard with a star-studded cast, this 12-episode critically acclaimed mini-series is extremely accurate historically, and covers the entirety of the Apollo Program, from before the Apollo 1 fire to Apollo 17's final steps on the lunar surface. It is basically like Tom Hanks and Ron Howard's other fantastic mini-series "Band of Brothers", but rather than covering WWII, it focuses on Apollo and the race to the Moon. I cannot recommend that mini-series enough, as it is brilliant produced, directed, and acted, and, above all, historically accurate.

I'm a little late to the party here, but can't resist posting, because as a fan of ship fic in general and slash fic in particular, this argument is one of my pet peeves:

>What I'm getting at is it makes your understanding of the relationships of characters very shallow. For instance, the whole point of Sam and Frodo's relationship in LotR is that it's the purest form of friendship. Sam is able to commit selfless acts and simply doesn't care if he comes off as too attached to his friend, it's beautifully innocent. It loses everything if secretly Sam just wants to have his way with Frodo.

To be honest, I consider this a rather sad and immature point of view. Platonic and romantic love are different, yes, but platonic love is not somehow "purer" or more selfless than romantic love. When you love somebody romantically, sex is one more expression of your love for them. It is not the be-all-and-end-all of everything you do for them! You can want to get into somebody's pants and commit selfless acts for them at the same time.

Additionally, as others have already mentioned, portrayals of openly LGBT relationships were forbidden in films and other broadcast media for decades and were rare in other types of media as well, so for many years, writing slash fic about non-canon relationships was the only way that LGBT fans could have any media representation at all. Even today, with LGBT characters and relationships finally becoming more mainstream in the media, choosing to interpret a same-sex relationship that is canonically platonic as romantic can add interesting layers to fanfics about them. For example, my favorite slash ship is Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes from the Captain America films. Choosing to make them bisexual or gay opens up all sorts of interesting story opportunities dealing with queer life in NYC in the 30s and 40s and in the military in WW2.

There are a couple of 'strands' of Marx's thought which you might investigate. I can't comment too much on shorter introductions to the philosophical side, as I'm more familiar with (and interested in, for the moment) works the economic side. For this, I can recommend the following:

• A Short History of Socialist Economic Thought by Gerd Hardack, Dieter Karras, Ben Fine. It's all in the title :)
  
• David Harvey's excellent A Companion to Marx's Capital. This certainly isn't a short book, but Harvey is a terrific writer, and so the time flies. I would also point to and highly recommend the series of lectures on which this book is based. Of course, the lectures are hardly an exercise in brevity, but they are very good and worthwhile.
  
• Ernest Mandel's An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory is good. Read it online here. Any Mandel is very good. He is an incredible clear author, and he really knows Marxist thought inside out. For instance, I would also recommend Ernest Mandel's introduction to the Penguin edition of Capital (the introduction is a bit shorter than the whole book of Mandels that I've mentioned above) very nicely summarises the context of his economic thought, and gives an overview thereof.
  
• Yannis Varoufakis (the former finance minister of Greece) wrote a fantastic, more general introduction to economics and economic theory called Foundations of Economics: A beginner’s companion. While Varoufakis deals with economics as a whole, and discusses, for instance, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, this serves to very well position Marx within the economic milieu of his time. This is a recurring theme for a reason: to understand Marx, I believe that it's imperative to understand what drove Marx to ruthlessly critique capitalism.
  
• Finally, I'm not trying to be glib or conceited by suggesting The Marx-Engles Reader (2nd ed.), edited by Robert C. Tucker. This is the book that I used to start studying seriously the thought of Marx and Engels, after reading Singer's introduction. I recommend the book because it has (again) a wonderful introduction, the works that are presented are quite short, and each work has a solid introduction. This is a very good volume for seeing the trajectory and evolution of Marx and Engels's economic thought without having to dive into the larger works. The book even has a very heavily reduced version of Capital vol. I. This book also deals with the philosophy of Marx more heavily than the other works I've recommended here, as it contains a number of earlier philosophical works (including the Grundisse, which is practically the philosophical sister to Capital).
  
  I hope these will be useful, even if they aren't necessarily the aspect of Marx that you are most interested in.
  
  Edit: I should state that I am a philosopher of language, and so one doesn't need any especial economics expertise to dive into the texts that I've recommended! I certainly knew very little about the field before I read these texts.

I love science books. These are all on my bookshelf/around my apt. They aren't all chemistry, but they appeal to my science senses:

I got a coffee table book once as a gift. It's Theodore Gray's The Elements. It's beautiful, but like I said, more of a coffee table book. It's got a ton of very cool info about each atom though.

I tried The Immortal Life of Henrieta Lacks, which is all about the people and family behind HeLa cells. That was a big hit, but I didn't care for it.

I liked The Emperor of all Maladies which took a long time to read, but was super cool. It's essentially a biography of cancer. (Actually I think that's it's subtitle)

The Wizard of Quarks and Alice in Quantumland are both super cute allegories relating to partical physics and quantum physics respectively. I liked them both, though they felt low-level, tying them to high-level physics resulted in a fun read.

Unscientific America I bought on a whim and didn't really enjoy since it wasn't science enough.

The Ghost Map was a suuuper fun read about Cholera. I love reading about mass-epidemics and plague.

The Bell that Rings Light, In Search of Schrödinger's Cat, Schrödinger's Kittens, The Fabric of the Cosmos and Beyond the God Particle are all pleasure reading books that are really primers on Quantum.

I also tend to like anything by Mary Roach, which isn't necessarily chemistry or science, but is amusing and feels informative. I started with Stiff but she has a few others that I also enjoyed.

Have fun!

I think part of the problem is really that people are looking at only granular parts of problems today and don't have enough historical context. Its useless to follow every story about everyone and every little thing. There are lots of ups and downs in politics and there's no reason to be so reactionary to every single new and probably manufactured "scandal".... that's what's exhausting. I like to keep updated on a few big issues, I follow the careers of a few people I find inspiring (and follow a few that do things that worry me), and spend the rest of the time reading up on topics in book form... they have the advantage of being written over time, and with more vigorous standards for accuracy. The news, while still important where immediate info is necessary, is essentially click bait now. You don't need to get caught in the rip tides that pull you everywhere constantly, just understand the general trajectory of the important things.

edit: to those curious about some book recommendations: I'm by no means an expert in anything really, and the books you read should really be about the topics you personally are interested in, so don't take my word as gospel (or any author's). I like American history, ancient history, international relations, and though I think they're more boring I force myself to read about the health care system and the American education system because I feel they're important. I'm also looking to read some books on the military industrial complex and cyber security/ big data because I don't really know anything about them other than the stuff I see in passing on the news or here on Reddit. So if anyone knows a good overview of those issues, feel free to let me know.

• For a good start on human history and the beginnings of modern economics/ intl relations (basically why the West has historically dominated), try Guns, Germs, and Steel I believe there's also a documentary if the book is too dense for your taste (it is pretty dense).
  
  
• Perhaps if you're interested in why people get so damn heated talking politics, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation
  
  
• If you wonder why people vote against their own social and economic interest: What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America Full disclosure: I liked this book, but I lean left. I'm not sure if it matters, the point of the book is just to track how the Republican party went from being the party of elites, to the party of blue collar workers.
  
  
• If the Supreme Court interests you at all, I liked Jeffrey Toobin's, The Nine
  
  
• The achievement gap? Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria
  
  
• Health care? There's a lot, but this one is an easy read and it compares the systems of Britain, Japan, Germany, and I believe Cuba (which is very good for their GDP!) and the US's. The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T.R. Reid
  
  This is just some stuff I've listed off the top of my head. Another thing that I find helpful to better understanding intl relations are books about the major genocides of the past few decades, which are hard to get through (because of the brutal content) but... What is the What (Sudan), First they killed my father (Cambodian genocide), Girl at War (more of a autobiography, but still chilling) there's a couple of others I've read that I can't remember now.
  
  Anyway, just go to Good Reads and look at Contemporary Politics. Perhaps Great Courses has a political philosophy course too that you can draw from if you wanna go even farther back into the origins of society's structure and political thought.
  
  Also podcasts! I've just discovered these but there's a lot of audio content (FREE!) that you can listen to on your commute and whatnot. I like Abe Lincoln's Top Hat right now.
  
  Edit edit: wow thanks for the gold!!

Can I give you a list? Imma give you a list with a little from each category. I LOVE books and posts like this!

Non-fiction or Books About Things:

The Lost City of Z: In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle, in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called “The Lost City of Z.” In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett’s quest for “Z” and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century. Cumberbatch will play him in the movie version of this.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers: Hilariously gross and just super interesting. Her writing is like a non-fiction Terry Pratchett. Everything she's written is great, but this one is my favorite.

Devil in the White City: All about HH Holmes and his murder hotel during the Chicago World's Fair. Incredibly well-written and interesting.

The Outlaw Trail: Written in 1920 by the first superintendent of Capitol Reef National Park (aka, the area around Robber's Roost). He went around interviewing the guys who were still alive from the original Wild Bunch, plus some of the other outlaws that were active during that time. Never read anything else with actual interviews from these guys and it's a little slice of life from the end of the Wild West.

Fiction, Fantasy, Sci-Fi:

Here I'm only going to give you the less known stuff. You can find Sanderson (light epic fantasy), Pratchett (humor / satire fantasy), Adams (humor fantasy), etc easily in any bookstore. They are fantastic and should be read, but they are easy to find. I suggest:

The Cloud Roads: Martha Wells is an anthropologist and it shows in her world building in every series. She creates societies instead of landscapes. These are very character-driven and sometimes emotional.

The Lion of Senet: Jennifer Fallon starts a great political thriller series with this book. If you like shows like House of Cards or things where there's a lot of political plotting, sudden twists, and a dash of science v. religion, then you'll love these.

The Book of Joby: Do you want to cry? This book will make you cry. Mix arthurian legend with some God & Devil archetypes and it's just this very powerful story. Even though it deals with religious themes and icons, I wouldn't say it's a religious book. Reads more like mythology.

On Basilisk Station: Awesome military space opera. Really good sci-fi.

Grimspace: Pulpy space opera. Brain bubble gum instead of serious reading. But that's fun sometimes too!

>FTA, means From The Article. Just quoting from the article. You mentioned an assumption.

Ah. Whoops.

>That isn't how any science works. Not even the social sciences which aren't pure or even necessarily just applied sciences, but humanities with scientific principles.

I wasn't making a scientific argument, I was speaking from personal experience. I will admit I have no current data on hand to back up what I believe.

>See, here is where we really need to define what is truly rural and what is urban. There are also costs associated in small towns growing so if you come to a small town, and say you build new, those houses unlike the original ones, will have impact fees built into the cost. What you might not realize is that housing over the last few decades has gotten significantly more expensive, often because of sprawl or lack of efficiency.

True in many cases, though from what I understand of small town carpentry/contracting/etc. companies is that they have gotten more efficient and have less sprawl to deal with. Again, no data, just breakfast conversations.

>Any its not the point of you car breaking down. What if you have an ongoing problem, what if the mechanic is busy? The point being you can be seriously inconvenience, and since you offered it as advice of how to live cheaply why should we assume some has a brand spanking new car. It likely might be a car that needs maintenance.

That won't change between city or country. I got better mileage in my small town and my tank lasted longer because I was in less stop and go city traffic and I was able to walk when I wanted to go many places.

>Well I've know plenty of people in towns of 10,000 people and they often were bored out of their minds, so they would drive to the next closest larger city for things to do.

I can understand the boredom, but that can be creatively circumvented. Find a bar/cafe and become a regular. Movies are readily available in 10,000 person towns. The internet opens things up so much too.

>No, that's the thing, modern treatment plants can take literally crappy water and turn it into something pristine. I know because I have toured the facilities and know people in the field. I also have a property with a well and have been blessed with good water, yet neighbors down the road have had problems. You need to test regularly, there is just more responsibility to have to worry about.

I will concede the water point. It does depend on your well more often than not I suppose.

>But see you're talking about a city of 10,000, so you may not really be living all that rural. Depends on how far out you live.

I lived in the town and outside. I've climbed from very low population areas on up as I aged. Hopefully it ends before I land myself in Milwaukee or worse Chicago.

>Does it really matter that it is Wisconsin? You held up your statement like it was a universal truth. Wisconsin honestly has been lucky but note, its not just the fracking itself, but the materials, like sand and water which can drop the water table.

I was intending to talk about Wisconsin. Other countries have their own issues, as do some other states.

>Well have always had this consideration especially if local agriculture sucks the water table down and people have to re-drill to get it.

That depends largely on the type of farming, if I'm not mistaken.

>But personal anecdotes are not applicable to general situations. So if that is going to be presented as evidence it may be dismissed by everyone as such. Doesn't mean its not true, just that we have no way of knowing, nor should we trust it, for the reasons stated above.

I have a hard time ignoring my life experience in this matter.

>That's still travel. Again we're sort picking apart just some simple examples, there could be more, still beside the point. Gas will be more because anything that isn't in immediate proximity will need to either be shipped, or you will need to travel for it. If you hang out online for entertainment and order from Amazon, then the discount rural life might be just fine, if you have good Internet access. Again, if.

It takes me longer than 10 minutes to get to my nearest Wal-Mart if I ever decide to torture myself by going there, which I use the beltline to reach. That typically drains more gas than running a town over did.

>No, its not. People choose to have a pool. No only chooses the size of their yard, it is part of the parcel they buy. Or were you only talking renting?

It's part of the parcel, a parcel they choose. If you don't want/can't do upkeep on a large lawn, don't get one. That's like getting a property that already has a pool, the analogy I was reaching for.

>So what you have to do is calculate the CoL rural and compare to CoL urban factoring in all aspects and then compare. You might, I'm not saying you won't. I'm saying its not a guarantee that you will unless you do all the math.

I don't know where I'd find that sort of data. That sounds like something for a statistician in population studies or something to look at.

>But, a strong farm community is harder to find. Why? Because the individual farmers that supported each other are growing scarce being replaced with industrial farming.

Yes, which I don't support.

>Okay, now you are just being silly. If you check Wisconsin history, farmers used to be progressive because they were in battle with the train owners who liked to gouge them for their shipment costs. Its recent manufactured fokelore that Urban=liberal and rural=conservative.

Liberal in one area doesn't mean liberal in all, though that is very interesting.

>You might actually want to read this one book, What's The Matter with Kansas which shows how of some of what you are referring to came to be.

I may do that.

>So you heard something once recently and that makes it a fact? You realize that is what is wrong with the current media and public, we don't challenge these ridiculous notions out of hand. Plenty of politicians on either side of the aisle support farm subsidies if it affect them or their people.

Several times recently, actually. It makes sense, otherwise why would urban elected officials want to give money to rural districts and how would you get conservative representatives to support food stamps?

>The OP topic was "The silent problem - rural poverty is rampant." Unless you have some information to say why the post is completely wrong that doesn't involve your singular personal experience coupled with a few people you know, then we'll have to go with the post having merit and needing further discussion and investigation.

I will agree it needs further consideration and investigation.

>Actually I own a rural property that has been in the family for a couple generations. Its not farmed but it is in a rural setting. And all the problems that I cited, you know the personal anecdotes, those are all things that we contend with when were are there. Do you know why we don't live there full time? Because the city, a reasonable sized city offered many, many more choices especially employment. And grass fed burgers should I desire them.

Okay. That is good to know, then. I was worried that you might have never left the city.

>To be honest, I think it is more people who like the idea of having wealth that no one can see.

Well, the people they know can see it. Family, friends, spouses. Those are the people they'd want to show off to, not random passers-by. Plus, living in a house like that is very comfortable.

>I'd go back and read the article itself and see if there wasn't a larger point you missed, no offense. It was never to argue against a rural way of life nor disrespect those who live in a rural setting. Quite the contrary. In fact, since it says it is the title and you said it yourself. You lived in a rural setting and even you don't it to be a problem.

I'll do that, post-game. I've already started drinking and I've got people coming over shortly.

I am not totally sure what you are asking for actually exists in book form...which is odd, now that I think about it.

If it were me, I would think about magazines instead. And if you really want to push him, think about the following options:

1. Science News, which is very similar to the front-matter of the leading scientific journal Science. This includes news from the past month, and some in-depth articles. It is much better written -- and written at a much higher level -- than Scientific American or Discover. For a very intelligent (and science-interested) high school student, this should pose little difficulty.
   
2. The actual journal Science. This is weekly, which is nice. In addition to the news sections, this also includes editorials and actual science papers. While many of the actual papers will be beyond your son, he can still see what passes for presentation of data in the sciences, and that is cool.
   
3. The actual journal Nature. This is also weekly, and is the british version of the journal Science. In my opinion, the news section is better written than Science, which is important as this is where your kid's reading will be mostly done. IN addition, Nature always has sections on careers and education, so that your son will be exposed to the more human elements of science. Finally, the end of nature always has a 1-page sci-fi story, and that is fun as well.
   
4. If you must, you could try Scientific American or Discover, but if you really want to give your kid a cool gift, that is a challenge, go for one of the top three here. I would highly recommend Nature.
   
   If you insist on books...
   
   I see you already mentioned A Brief History of the Universe, which is an excellent book. However, I am not sure if you are going to get something that is more "in depth." Much of the "in depth" stuff is going to be pretty pop, without the rigorous foundation that are usually found in textbooks.
   
   If I had to recommend some books, here is what I would say:
   
   
5. The selfish gene is one of the best "rigorous" pop-science books out there. Dawkins doesn't really go into the math, but other than that he doesn't shy away from the implications of the work.
   
6. Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Dennett is a great book. While not strictly science, per se, it does outline good philosophical foundations for evolution. It is a dense read, but good.
   
7. On the more mathematical side, you might try Godel, Escher, Bach, which is a book that explores the ramifications of recrusiveness and is an excellent (if dense) read.
   
8. You could also consider books on the history of science -- which elucidate the importance of politics and people in the sciences. I would recommend any of the following: The Double Helix, A man on the moon, The making of the atomic bomb, Prometheans in the lab, The alchemy of air, or A most damnable invention. There are many others, but these came to mind first.
   
   Hope that helps! OH AND GO WITH THE SUBSCRIPTION TO NATURE
   
   edit: added the linksssss

> It may not be the profs. Student organizations are pretty popular here and many of them are very much ideological. I've seen at my uni that people joined a student org for their good marketing, network and famous parties then started to hold those views more and more themselves.

That's not the university or student organizations as much as it is people. People like to feel ideologically actualized. That's not a symptom of youth or studenthood nearly as much as it is symptomatic of humanity. I don't know how much experience you have outside of school (and I don't mean that to insult you, I just don't know you!), but my experience in the "real world" before going back to grad school is that if anything these kinds of ideological organizations are even more prevalent (insofar as them existing across spectra of activity and ideology). I lived in Washington, DC for a while before this and the amount of political clubs was just insane, but they're even in areas like rural Alaska and Florida.

> Personally I don't think that a communist society is viable in anything larger than a kibbutz (which I'd call a community, not society) because it goes against human nature and has significant technical difficulties regarding efficient and sufficient production.

I emphatically agree with this. I generally find communism an interesting framework to operate under, but it's almost impossible for me to see it applicable on any way on a grand scale. I have a rather pessimistic view of humanity - not that I believe humans are inherently evil or wrong, but that doing the right thing is often difficult and that peoples' definitions of what is "right" are different and applied differently. This getting a bit into a diatribe, but I'd say my personal identification is closer to classical anarchism/libertarianism (NOT what modern American libertarianism is, which has almost nothing to do with the ideology) for the reasons you describe.

> ...classes based on economics are not the only way to stratify a society. In the USA it was also races, in Eastern Europe it was ethnicities, language and religion. Even if all workers had the same rights, a Russian was still "culturally superior" to a Lithuanian. People have other loyalties than to their class, and this is something that I think Marx was wrong about.

This is actually something Marx writes about with Engels and something he'd agree with you on. Marx did not state that economics was the only way to interpret history, but that it was one of the main forces of the "modern" era. He makes a point that stratification through race, religion, and ethnicity are all just as salient, but that economics was the one that oppressors could wield most strongly. The idea that Marx exclusively focused on economic stratification is something that's come from misinterpretation of his writings, and I've noticed that's mostly in literature coming since the 1980s - which probably coincides with the rise of neoliberalism in the West.

> Do you mean that the workers in some countries became accomplices of the capitalists, and a strong party with a strong leader is needed to keep the movement "pure"? Surely in the top 10 conspiracy theories.

Sort of. This is one of the big differences between Marxism and Leninism. Marx emphatically believed that workers fighting against the capitalists must occur organically, and that any attempt to manufacture revolution would end up being a fake revolution that would end up being more dangerous and destructive in the long run (ironic, isn't it?). This was a strong reaction against the "great man" theory of the Enlightenment, which postulated that history is moved by the actions of "great men" and personae. Marx, on the other hand, believed that history was moved by class struggles - with "class" primarily operating under the economic definition but also including issues of race, nationality, and sex. That's one of several reasons why you'll see Leninism described as "not real communism", because it violates one of Marx's central tenants that revolution must come from the people and be sustained by the people, as any revolution stemming from a figure would end up becoming by and for the figure.

Seriously it's fascinating stuff, even if you or I don't subscribe to the political/ideological aspect of it. It's legitimately interesting reading, and you can get a cheap copy of collected works here if you don't feel like reading through several hundred pages of Das Capital (and I wouldn't recommend you do so).

> I'm an economist but I don't think that everything can be explained by economics.

I was a healthcare economist before starting grad school, and I think geographical inequalities (but not inequities) do better at influencing economic behavior. Most people look at economics as being the driver of human political and social behavior in the last couple of decades, but I think it's more like a descendant of a common variable (geography) than anything else.

> I'm a huge advocate of welfare economics and sustainable finance. The first one is concerned with using human welfare instead of GPD as a measure of economic success. The second uses environmental impact in the calculation of financial feasibility of projects.

Do you have any books or authors you'd recommend? I'm taking a course on sustainability that mostly focuses on health behavior, but I'd like to learn a bit more on the sustainability of welfare and environment.

By the way, I'm enjoying this talk with you. I like having to think critically about things I've read or experienced, and I'm definitely getting that this morning! I sincerely apologize for my initial frustration.

You're not going to get a serious answer from the reddit echo chamber. So far you seem to have gotten:

"Her vagina"
"Nothing"
"the mainstream media is in the tank for Clinton"
"There are no Clinton supporters on the internet."

So here's what I consider the best arguments in her favor, mostly they're culled from my democratic pol/strategist friends, most of whom are serious Clinton supporters by virtue of where I live:

1. Whoever gets elected is going to have to deal with a republican congress at least until 2020, if not further. So incremental change is a given. Exactly how much of Bernie's agenda is going to get adopted by a republican congress? How is he going to get it taken up? So what's going to get passed? How is sanders going to deal with a congress that says "lol no" and sends him a budget increasing military funding and cutting welfare? At the end of the day this boils down to the "experience" argument, but there's a twist. Sanders definitely also has a history of legislative accomplishments, but more than a few presidents, Obama included, have shown us that legislative experience doesn't translate to effective leadership from the White House. I'll be frank, it's pretty damn obvious that the Clintons inspired Frank and Clair Underwood from the house of cards. That is, however you care to look at it, a reality. Personal relationships and a willingness to twist arms is what gets legislation through. Inability to work congress has been Obama's greatest failing as president I think. (I'm not saying congress doesn't share the blame, but politics is the art of the possible, more could possibly been done had the situation been better managed).
   
   
2. Clinton had a point when she said she's been the focus of partisan attacks for 10+ years. There's a SHITLOAD of dirt out there, but for the most part it's already been dug up. Think about the shit that Republicans dug up on John Kerry with the swiftboat nonsense, or on OBama with reviewing every single thing Jeremiah wright said, how exactly did it become a controversy that Obama's pastor said "god damn America?". You already largely know what Republicans are going to bring up with Clinton. Where's Bernie Sanders dirt? His personal life is largely unknown, and he's skated by on a northeastern tolerance for social indiscretions and refusing to discuss it. I guarantee you it's not because dirt doesn't exist, and not because it hasn't been dug up, but because it's being held in reserve for the general. Republicans forever tied to tar Obama with the idea that he was Saul Alinksy's protege, some kind of 60's radical reborn. Sanders actually is that 60's radical, and actually calls himself a socialist to boot. There's quite a bit out there of him associating with genuine revolutionary socialists and communists. There's going to be an army of people looking for every photo of everyone Sanders ever associated with and everything bad they said about America. His personal life wont' be off limits either. Did you know Sanders has an adult son that was born out of wedlock? Sure, millenials won't give a damn, but it will be the basis for tens of millions of negative advertising.
   
   
3. Electability. It's popular here to point to head to head polls suggesting Sanders is better able to beat Trump. But those same polls also showed Clinton beating everyone but Kasich. In a hypothetical match up against Trump, Sanders comes out +13 and Clinton comes out +6. But the presidential campaign map matters a lot as well. Sanders did particularly poor among Latinos and African Americans, and does exceedingly well amongst poor white people in largely white (and largely red) states. Sanders tied Oklahoma, and won Wisconsin, West Virginia, New Hampshire and Vermont. Clinton, Among others has won California, New York, Illinois and Florida. Even taking election shenanigans into account, the former aren't going to matter so much in the general election and the latter will.
   
   
   They are what they are, but the real question is what are you going to do about them? because when you step outside of the echo chamber, it's pretty obvious that Clinton's going to end up the Nominee. Sanders is fighting the good fight and will carry a liberal platform to the convention, which I think is a very good thing for the party in geneal and the Sanders/Warren wing of the party in particular, but his chance of ending up the nominee at this point is virtually nil unless something radical changes like Clinton actually succumbing to a major scandal or getting criminal charges filed. Then question is then, are you going to succumb to the drawback of a two party system and vote for the lesser of two evils or do something that might result in Trump becoming president? It's easy to say now, how do you think Nader supporters felt in 2001 when Bush took office?
   
   I would add to this, your question makes the exact same mistake democrats have made for years as it relates to Republican voters. going back to Thomas Frank's Book what's the matter with Kansas and why Obama's comments about clinging to guns and religion caused such a fury on the right even though they're pretty true.
   
   At its heart, the way people choose political candidate is not 100% logical. People are not robots. The reason political disagreements exists is because people have different priorities. Priorities are not driven solely by logical connections. People choose a candidate based on how they feel about them. Obama won an election (both primary and general) by creating a feeling that he would be different. Trump's winning the republican primary by creating a feeling among disenchanted voters that he's going to come in and make it right, no matter what his background or prior policy preferences were.
   
   Clinton has done a decent job creating an emotional connection with certain demographics.Women over 40, African Americans, Hispanics. She fails at it markedly among millennials and to some extent among men.
   
   Not speaking truth to power, but rather telling the truth to the mob, or at least answering a question deliberately asked about what the defenses of clinton are.

Great questions. I don't think there's an easy or foolproof answer to them.

>should lay people who have zero expertise in a field trust such general academic consensuses as being broadly correct?

Broadly correct? I would think that's a solid way to look at things. I'm in agreement with you.

>Are there good reasons for non-experts to be skeptical about the scientific consensus on vaccines, climate change or evolution?

"Good" reasons? Eh........I'll give a few scattered thoughts here:

• Some people are just going to be contrarians. I don't have any sources to link at the moment, but I think we've all encountered this at some point.
  
• Other people, often those who feel they have been marginalized by society (ex. white people who watched their friends go to college but couldn't go themselves—I'm referring to my own mother in this case), have a deep longing for "secret knowledge" and the sense of power it brings. Michael Barkun's A Culture of Conspiracy gives one of the breakdowns of this phenomenon while Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American History (1966) shows that none of this is new. For people who usually possess traits we associate with intelligence (they are intensely curious and often willing to reading extensively) but who feel like they have been unfairly excluded from the centers of intellectual life, the idea that that everyone but them has it wrong is a bit intoxicating. Especially when a small groups of other marginalized people begin listening to them. I am not justifying this phenomenon—it probably shares some of the same social DNA as the incel movement—but I am trying to humanize it.
  
• In addition to these two groups (contrarians and the intellectually marginalized), we might also add those people who have been turned off by the fervency and (please, don't throw anything at me) fundamentalist fanaticism of some popular science devotees. While 99% of modern people simply go about their days with a fairly healthy view of science and knowledge, we are all aware of the loud fringe who wants to paint anyone who disagrees with them as a "science denier" and launch social media crusades against them. Again, I'm trying to use a scalpel here and not a broad brush—it's the militant defenders of Scientism who have (like their religious counterparts) managed to turn some people off.
  
• Then there are what I like to "gut thinkers." These often genuinely good and kind-hearted people often make decisions (like whether to vaccinated their kids or not) based on emotion rather than strict reason. For them, there is nothing in the world more important than their child and the idea of their child being harmed by something they chose to do terrifies them. While they might not ever realize it, they operate in a similar fashion to those people in the "Trolley Problem" who refuse to pull the lever and save some lives because then someone would be dying as a direct result of their action. These people often hear conflicting stories (vaccines are safe vs vaccines cause illnesses) and it troubles their gut to the point where, rather than sitting down to rationalize a solution, they avoid the issue or default to whatever option requires the least amount of direct action.
  
• Lastly we might add those people who would otherwise accept scientific findings but who have one or two core beliefs or predispositions that can complicate things. For example, while we commonly label American fundamentalists as "anti-science," anyone working in that field knows from the work of the eminent George Marsden that they are rather ardently pro-Baconian science—meaning that they absolutely love empirical, directly observable science based on inductive reasoning. What they reject is deductive science and its long-range projections both forwards and backwards in time. I can say from experience that understanding this and acknowledging it in discussions with these people does wonders for the conversation and really disarms a lot of suspicion.
  
• I don't know that there is a perfect solution here, but one possible approach would be to start affirming "folk culture" within modern society. I'm literally just tossing this one out here and I expected it to be a bit controversial, but maybe it will stimulate some discussion. In essence, we (as modern, scientific Westerners) usually don't find it problematic to acknowledge, accommodate, and affirm indigenous forms of knowledge. In fact, we often condemn those who try to "Westernize" others for being colonial or destroying culture. For those who belong to tribes or ethnic enclaves, practicing non-scientific forms of knowledge is seen as a good thing by most of the intellectual elites in the West. But for those born into Western society, there is little socially-acceptable opportunity to seek out and develop alternative forms of knowledge. Perhaps creating a safe social arena for such a "folk culture" to re-emerge could give these above groups a healthy and socially legitimate avenue for exploring and fulfilling some of their deep unmet needs without the subversiveness that presently undermines a lot of the good work that science is doing.

Depends on how old you are.

• Middle school: I really enjoyed this, this, and this, but I don't think I can read those books now (29) without cringing a little bit. Especially, Getting Things Done because I already know how to make to do list, but I still flip through all 3 books occastionally.
  
  
• High school: I really enjoyed this, this, and this, but if you're a well adjusted human and responsible adult, then I don't think you'll find a lot of helpful advice from these 6 books so far because it'll be pretty basic information.
  
  
• College: I really enjoyed this, this, and started doing Malcolm Gladwell books. The checklist book helped me get more organized and So Good They Can't Ignore You was helpful starting my career path.
  
• Graduate School: I really enjoyed this, this, and this. I already stopped with most "self help" books and reading more about how to manage my money or books that looked interesting like Stiff.
  
  
• Currently: I'm working on this, this, and this. Now I'm reading mostly for fun, but all three of these books are way out of my league and I have no idea what their talking about, but they're areas of my interest. History and AI.

>Don't you often celebrate your love for people who have a little good and a lot of bad in them?

Well, no, not really. If they have only a little good but a lot of bad then there's not much to celebrate. I hate to risk Godwinating myself, but they say even Hitler loved dogs and children. The question is how much good and how much bad has the US caused, and at what scales? That is probably not possible to reasonably measure now. Maybe 100 years from now, if any of the transhumans remember what the US was, then we can take a dispassionate look at the historical situation and see how it all worked out.

>it's possible to love it for the good while still hating the bad

Fair enough, but there is no mention in the song of the bad, only the good. I need to have God Bless the USA coming in one ear, and People of the Sun or something coming in the other. :-D

As far as my ambivalent feelings go, that's just the way I feel. I've traveled a fair amount in Europe as well as the US, and it is always a relief to get home. But on the other hand even when I lived in New Jersey, it was never "home" to me, even though it was in America. And I felt a lot more alienated when I was in the deep south than when I was in Germany, say.

A lot of my ambivalence stems from reading books like The Politics of Heroin and A People's History of the United States, and general background reading I've done on stuff like the firebombing of Tokyo and the Banana Wars, etc. Ah I said I wasn't going to go tit-for-tat here, sorry, I'll leave it at that. Anyway, loving America in a realistic way seems to me like what it must be like to have a close family member who beat you as a child or something (maybe not quite that extreme, but you get the picture). It's a complicated kind of love, with a lot of caveats, and to express only the love and not expressing the other part makes me feel a little weird.

Thanks for sticking around and having a civil conversation about this though, it's an interesting subject to talk about.

Congrats on getting hired!!! I'd recommend a mix of PD/teaching books and content. When you get bored of one switch to the other. Both are equally important (unless you feel stronger in one area than the other).

For PD, I'd recommend: Teach Like a Pirate, Blended, The Wild Card, and the classic Essential 55. Another one on grading is Fair Isn't Always Equal - this one really changed how I thought about grading in my classes.

As far as content, you have a couple ways to go - review an overview of history like Lies My Teacher Told Me, the classic People's History, or Teaching What Really Happened, or you can go with a really good book on a specific event or time period to make that unit really pop in the classroom. The Ron Chernow books on Hamilton, Washington, or Grant would be great (but long). I loved Undaunted Courage about Lewis & Clark and turned that into a really great lesson.

Have a great summer and best of luck next year!!

> taking the 2000 year figure, that's getting awfully close to the KJV (1611AD).

So taking "the 2000 year figure" to go from alleged composition to the first manuscript is comparable to the distance from the composition of the gospels to a popular English translation of a Latin translation of the original Greek how?

>You'll need a source for that, every contemporary historian agrees the earliest scroll dates to at least 30 years, and most claim it's more like 60.

Well I was thinking of 7Q5, which was in an area abandoned in 68 and dated by papyrologists to the first half of the first century, but it's a small fragment and not without controversy. There's a more recent (c. 2012) find that has been dated by one paleographer to the second half of the first century, but apparently hasn't been sufficiently examined by others... I've neither seen it discredited or publicized as confirmed.

Since those are both "iffy" sources, I don't mind sticking to 30 instead of 10-20 ... considering paper lasts several hundred years properly cared for, I don't think 30 years is long enough to require a whole lot of copying distance from the originals. I mean ... I have books on my shelf written on cheap wood pulp that are closer to a century than a half-century old (and that haven't been considered holy) and if I wanted to copy them I could; I'm not sure why it's expected that a copy 50-100 years from the originals would have had time to pick up a lot of errors... that doesn't make sense to me.

But why does it matter to you? If you are acknowledging that it's reasonable to care whether it's 10-20 vs. 30-60, then aren't you implicitly saying that it's not intellectually dishonest to consider provenance dates as a reason to believe one document over another?

>To pretend that 2000 years of closely preserved mnemonics will somehow specifically crumble Krishna's resurrection account is not only silly, but entirely unfounded.

If you want to disagree that oral tradition (even with "closely preserved mnemonics") is just as reliable as having a written copy of something and copying it letter for letter, then it's your prerogative to have that opinion... even if we think each other "silly" I don't think that leaves either of us in a position to accuse the other of intellectual dishonesty... just poor reasons for (honestly) believing or disbelieving things, right?

And I haven't seen a response to the idea that oral tradition shouldn't be considered as trustworthy as written copies, but regardless of that, in the 2500 years before the mnemonics began, from there to when the events supposedly happened, is also a big enough gap. Most info I've seen place him at around 3000 BC, if it took from then to 500 for the account of his life to be recorded, that's 2500 years of time for exaggeration to slip in... again, multiple orders of magnitude different from the gospel accounts.

>And again, this is just 1 of the 13 gods I've mentioned resurrecting themselves.

So are you saying that you recognize at least for this one that there are legitimate, non-intellectually-dishonest reasons to trust the New Testament over the Vedas, and you want to move on to the other 12 now? This is why from the get-go I was more interested in discussing the fact that different texts are different levels of trustworthiness for a number of different reasons. Could be the details, could be the provenance, could be the intended audience or the interest of those promoting it.

I can give you a dozen books about people going to the moon, from Jules Verne's 1865 From the Earth to the Moon to the fantastic North Korean story of Kim Jong Il's heroic conquest of the moon as told by the North Korean propaganda ministry, to the Bernstain Bears on the Moon, to Michael Chaikin's A Man on the Moon: Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts. Are Kim's and Chaikin's going to be equally credible because they both describe physical possibilities? Is Chaikin's story unbelievable just because Verne's, Kim's, and Bernstain's are incredible for various reasons? Should we discount Chaikin because of this book that says it was a hoax? Or should we believe it just because it's possible?

Edit: fixed a link

It's actually more heart breaking when you know that basically the entire midwest once once considered the home of radical left politics in the US. As Thomas Frank notes in What's The Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America:

>I do not want to minimize the change that this represents. Certain parts of the Midwest were once so reliably leftist that the historian Walter Prescott Webb, in his classic 1931 history of the region, pointed to its persistent radicalism as one of the “Mysteries of the Great Plains.” Today the mystery is only heightened; it seems inconceivable that the Midwest was ever thought of as a “radical” place, as anything but the land of the bland, the easy snoozing flyover. Readers in the thirties, on the other hand, would have known instantly what Webb was talking about, since so many of the great political upheavals of their part of the twentieth century were launched from the territory west of the Ohio River. The region as they knew it was what gave the country Socialists like Eugene Debs, fiery progressives like Robert La Follette, and practical unionists like Walter Reuther; it spawned the anarchist IWW and the coldly calculating UAW; and it was periodically convulsed in gargantuan and often bloody industrial disputes. They might even have known that there were once Socialist newspapers in Kansas and Socialist voters in Oklahoma and Socialist mayors in Milwaukee, and that there were radical farmers across the region forever enlisting in militant agrarian organizations with names like the Farmers’ Alliance, or the Farmer-Labor Party, or the Non-Partisan League, or the Farm Holiday Association. And they would surely have been aware that Social Security, the basic element of the liberal welfare state, was largely a product of the midwestern mind.

>Almost all of these associations have evaporated today. That the region’s character has been altered so thoroughly—that so much of the Midwest now regards the welfare state as an alien imposition; that we have trouble even believing there was a time when progressives were described with adjectives like fiery, rather than snooty or bossy or wimpy—has to stand as one of the great reversals of American history.

Aww thanks. I definitely encounter people who have more formal training and I'm just blown away by their vocabulary and some of the concepts they present. I like to try to simplify difficult concepts into things that are more easily digested.

Philosophers are not known for being accessible in their writing. There's a ton of people out there like me who try to make philosophy more accessible.

I've listened to podcasts that delve into singular ideas. I find these particularly enlightening. I listened to Ayn Rand audiobooks (lol). I've bought used college textbooks for next to nothing, because once teachers stop using that edition nobody wants them. I've read 3 different people who analyzed Nietzsche's work because he's so unapproachable in writing style. I really love Nietzsche because he would mirror my own thoughts and sometimes take me to the next level and sometimes I feel I'd be at the next level of his thoughts.

I wish I remembered all the good podcast/audio stuff to recommend for ya. For more accessible books, Bernard Reginster's "The Affirmation of Life" was a really good analysis of Nietzsche. It's good because he would essentially take one concept Nietzsche presented and just really hammer it out in a more logical form before moving onto the next. Moral philosophy is most fascinating to me. I highly recommend Michael Sandel's Justice for a really great overview of positions with great examples and things to think about.

>Yeah but there's also the rest of the paragraph, anarchists agree that monopolies on force will exist, we just want to democratically control them.

That is not true. If anarchists believed in a democratically controlled monopoly of force, they would be "Democrats", not "anarchists". Hell, in much of the world today we do have a monopoly of force which is technically "democratically controlled" by the generally accepted definition of "democracy", so by this conception of what anarchists think we might as well say we already have anarchy which is obviously a ludicrous conclusion. Anarchists do often use the language of "direct democracy" (erroneously, in my view) because this concept is often associated to people having control over their own lives and getting together to discuss stuff that is important to them, but any way anarchists do still oppose any sort of "democracy" ("direct" or otherwise) as a system of government insofar as it is a system of government and are more likely to write general critiques of democracy^[1] than to try and make the monopoly on force "democratic".

Social order does not require a monopoly on force, the establishment of fixed rules or the existence of particular parties with the political authority to enforce them. We know this because we actually know of societies that have existed with out any political authority or social hierarchy (Graeber^[2] for example cites the Bororo, the Baining, the Onondaga, the Wintu, the Ema, the Tallensi, the Vezo...) and the Yale professor of anthropology James C. Scott even wrote a book^[3] about stateless peoples from the region of Zomia who have - for millenia - consciously resisted integration into State based civilization because they actually prefer anarchy (largely because life in the neighbouring State societies was characterized by "slavery, conscription, taxes, corvée labor, epidemics, and warfare").

The real question for most anarchists today is how can these same basic social forces that are at play in those anarchic societies scale and adapt to an post-industrial, large scale society. The general idea is to make those social forces take the form of inter-locking networks of self-managed associations (with no monopoly on force or central bureaucracy), oriented around the social ownership of the means of production and a organized gift or mutualistic economy. There have been all sorts of experiments with particular anarchist principles and practices (experiments in worker's self-management, experiments in gift economies such as Linux, real communities like Freetown Christiania, etc) and even mass revolutions which saw these experiments applied in a larger context (Paris Commune, Shinmin, Catalonia, etc), and while so far no lasting anarchist mass society has come into being (mostly due to the quick repression that follows and the lack of international support to defend itself from it) this does not mean anarchy cannot work.

Our fellow anarchist /u/humanispherian has for a long time openly criticized^[4] (and i agree with him) the curious phenomenon of anarchists who are "much more comfortable with the language of governmentalism and authority than they are with the concept of anarchy" and this curious phenomenon is certainly very prevalent on the Reddit anarchist milieu, but i don't think i have ever seen anyone go as far as state that "anarchists agree that monopolies on force will exist, we just want to democratically control them."

In the last 500 years, conflicts in Europe have been slowly decreasing, until the last 50 years or so when it rapidly became much smaller than in any of the previous centuries. This has corresponded with a slow but sure improvement in living conditions. Some countries in Europe haven't seen a war in over 200 years (Sweden hasn't participated in a war directly in 250 years). These are the most developed nations on Earth.

If you've read Jared Diamon's Collapse, you'll know that many civilizations have vanished from the Earth due to over-consuming what their environments could provide. Japan is an example of a country that managed, centuries ago, to avoid self-destruction though managing the few resources it had. I have, therefore, seen evidence that peace and environment awareness seem to be the hallmark of progress in the very long term, not war as it is erroneously believed, and that failure to remain peaceful or manage the environment well can cause the "collapse" of a civilization, no matter how advanced.

So, yes, it's logical that civilizations that manage to develop for many millenia without killing itself and its environment must have learned how to achieve progress peacefully and taking good care of its environment.

Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto

The opening essay of this short read is a condemnation of traditional schooling techniques---and it's also the speech he delivered when he (again) won the NY Teacher of the Year award. Gatto gets at the heart of why public schools consistently produce pencil pushers, not leaders. Every teacher should read this book.

How to Survive in Your Native Land by James Herndon

If Dumbing Us Down is the manifesto in favor of a more liberal pedagogy, Herdon's book is a memoir of someone trying to put that pedagogy in action. It's also a simple, beautiful easy to read book, the kind that is so good it reminds us just how good a book can be. I've read the teaching memoir that made Jonahton Kozol famous, this one is better.

The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori

In the early 1900s, Maria Montessori taught literacy to children that society had otherwise assumed were unreachable. She did this by using the scientific method to study each child's learning style. Some of what she introduced has been widely incorporated (like child-sized furniture) and some of it seems great but unworkable in overcrowded schools. The bottom line is that the Montessori method was one of the first pedagogical techniques that was backed by real results: both in test scores and in growing kids that thrive on learning and participation.

"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity by Beverly Daniel Tatum

While not precisely a book on how to teach, this book is incredibly helpful to any teacher working with a diverse student population, or one where the race they are teaching differs from their own. It explains the process that white, black, and children of other races go through in identifying themselves as part of a particular race. In the US, race is possibly the most taboo subject, so it is rare to find a book this honest and straightforward on a subject most educators try not to talk about at all. I highly recommend this book.

If there is any chance you will be teaching history, definitely read:

Lies My Teacher Told Me and A People's History of the United States (the latter book is a classic and, personally, changed my life).

Also recommend: The Multi-player Classroom by Lee Sheldon and Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov

Finally, anyone who plans to teach math should read this essay, "Lockhart's Lament" [PDF at the bottom of the page].

PS, I was tempted to use Amazon affiliate links, but my conscious wouldn't let me.

Some people take classes to punch a career ticket, but there are plenty of people that take classes just to learn.

I currently am taking a justice course taught at Harvard on moral philosophy. There is even an associated book you can read if you would like that pretty much covers the same material in the same order as the class, but I'm watching the lectures because I learn better that way. Moral philosophy has no chance of increasing my completely unrelated career and honestly I wouldn't even want to take my career in that direction if given the option, because I am just learning as a hobby for fun. I am also going through a game theory course at yale.

Right now I just casually watch lectures in my free time, but there are a few subjects I would like to tackle that will probably involve actually doing homework like differential equations, topology, and algorithms. Just reading a book doesn't cut it because you actually have to participate in subjects like that to fully understand them. And again, I plan on doing those just for fun because I believe learning is a life long experience.

>Should your wages go up three time because of nothing you did? Why?

I'll let Richard Wolff, a Phd economics professor elaborate why, and maybe... just maybe... you'll see the big underlying picture he's trying to convery. So pucker up that sphincter hole my friend:

From 1820 to 1970 the following sentence is true: The average level of wages ─ real wages what you actually got for an hours worth of work rose every decade for 150 years. There's' probably no capitalist country that can boast a record like that. It's absolutely stunning and unusual. even in the great depression, real wages went up because even though peoples money wages went down prices fell even more, so you ended up being able to buy more even though you had more dollars in your pocket, because prices fell.

What did this mean? It meant that Americans began to believe, and you know that how deeply that is in our political language, that we lived in a really blessed place. God, if you believe in that, must really like us, something magical about America: You came here, you worked hard, and amazingly, you got more. You could imagine to live in your own home. You could even dream at one point of sending your children to college. To have a car all your own. To wear nice clothes. It was amazing every family thought that it would live better than the generation before in the next generation better still. Parents got into the habit of offering their children to provide them with the education and the support that would make them have a better life.

And the irony here the United States and the marvel was that it was true... millions of people, the ancestors the most of us in this room if we're Americans came to the United states hoping to cash in on this operation, willing to work hard expecting that their life here would reward them with a higher standard of living then they would have gotten if they'd stayed where they came from, and mostly they were right. And it becomes part of the American culture in the American imagination. This is the place where if you work hard you get more pay. Yea... the work may not be pleasant. The work may be difficult, but the reward is at the mall. You'll earn more money and you'll buy more stuff.

Try to imagine with me what it would mean to a population that for a hundred and fifty years internalizes that image, that hope, that expectation if it were suddenly to stop being true. And I ask you to imagine that because that's what happened.

In the 1970's the rising real wage the United States came to an and, it has never resumed. The real wage of the American worker today, the average amount of goods and services you can buy with an hour of your labor is no greater today than it was in the 1978. You may be working harder. You may be working longer You may be working more efficiently because you work with a computer and all these other things. And indeed you are: You are delivering more goods and service per hour of your work to your employer. He's very happy about, but he doesn't pay you one iota more. This is an astonishing change, a sea change, a dramatic alteration in one's circumstance. It's all the more power in our country because it's unspoken. Because in the 1970's or 80's and 90's or to this day, nobody talks about this. Nobody confronts this. No one asks, "why did this happen?" "What do we do about it?" Instead as good Americans, we pretend that it isn't there. We imagine that if it's going on it's just about me and my job and my circumstance rather than a social process. And we imagine that it's not a social problem just my particular problem then I can solve it.

How did the American working class solve the problem. Two things they did, starting in the 1970's and right up until the crisis, and those two things are part of why this crisis happens which is why I'm gonna tell you about them now. The first thing Americans did is conclude,

>"Okay, I'm not getting anymore wages per hour, I know what, I'll do more hours."

Smart move.

>"And not only me the adult male in the house... but my wife. She's gonna go out, she may have been at home, she may have been a housewife... no more of that. She has to go out because we have to sustain the the family standard of living rising. And the old people have to come out of retirement and take at least a part-time job. And the teenager ought to do something on Saturday's at least, don't you think?

Here's a statistic to think about: the average number of hours worked per year by an American right now average, is 20% more than the average number of hours worked by a Swedish, French, German, or Italian worker. Think about it. For every 6 hours you work, they only work 5 or something like that. Some of you go to Europe and you enjoy lovely dinners with wine in an alfresco setting in an Italian town, and you say to yourself, "These people know how to live." And you imagine it's a matter of their culture they just love grapes. It isn't got much to do with culture:

What they have is... TIME.

They don't work like we do. They have time for long dinners. We are the country that invented fast food, and now you know why. It's a necessity, we don't have time to sit down. We need jobs to run by one of those takeout windows and yell something out at a disconsolate teenager who yells something back and hands you something you shouldn't put in your body in any case. And so Americans went to work most importantly the women. In 1970, 40% of American women worked outside the home for money. Today, double 80%. An absolutely fundamental change: those women had to do that. They merely thought of it as women's liberation and it certainly had those dimensions. They wanted to help the family, the point in fact is if the family was going to continue to consume to give its children what it had promised to live the American dream., since husband wasn't gonna get anymore wages ever again. She had to go out. But when the wife goes out all kinds of things change: Women in America, household women held together the emotional life of our society. They did the emotional work. They provided the solace. When that woman has to go out and do 8 hours of work and get dressed and do the travel and back home, she can't do it anymore. She may face that fact, but she can't.

Starting in the 1970's, the United States became the country with the highest rate of divorce, the relationships couldn't survive. We have 6% of the population in the world and consume over half the psychotropic drugs, the anti-depressants, what's going on? Are we crazy people? I don't think so. I think we are under extraordinary pressure. We work the longest hours on the face of the earth. We do more hours per average worker than the Japanese. That's saying something. And our families are stressed, deeply stressed, as anyone who has studied the situation knows. Our behavior has changed under the pressure of this extra work, and one way to describe it to you is to mention a book some of you may know. A Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam, wrote a famous book with a funny title, Bowling Alone, he studies Americans participation in anything other than making their life hang together.

• Bowling leagues used to absorb millions of Americans. No more.

• Trade unions used to be centers of collective life. No more.

• Community organizations used to get lots of people. PTA's did too. No more.

Americans turned inwards in the last 30 years, and it's not some mysterious cultural phenomenon. It has to do with you're working too hard, you're stressed out of your mind. Your relationships are falling apart. Your intimate life is a disaster. But you don't want to see it in terms of wages and the job, and that's what I'm gonna stress.

So the American people ever resourceful did something else which further traumatized them. To keep the consumption going to deliver the American dream to their children, they went on a borrowing binge the likes of which no working class in the history of the world ever undertook before. Starting in the 1970's the Americans savings rate collapsed. We stopped saving money, but much worse than that, we BORROWED money. We invented a new way to give everybody debts. It's called the credit card. Before the 1970's they didn't have that. only the rich people had an American Express card. After that we developed the American Express card for the masses, it's called Master and Visa, and you all have them, you have lots of them. You collect them. You max one out, you get another one. And you keep hoping that this Russian Roulette will not get you. And so in 2007 we came to the end of the line for the working class. They couldn't work anymore hours, they were exhaust, they were stressed beyond words. and now they were overwhelmed by having violated what their parents have told them, "Save money little boy." "Hold something back little girl for a difficult time. For a rainy day. For a special expense. For an illness." Not only did we not save anything, but we're in a hock up to our ears.

I second the reading idea! Ask your history or science teachers for suggestions of accessible books. I'm going to list some that I found interesting or want to read, and add more as I think of them.

A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson. Title explains it all. It is very beginner friendly, and has some very entertaining stories. Bryson is very heavy on the history and it's rather long but you should definitely make every effort to finish it.

Lies my teacher told me

The greatest stories never told (This is a whole series, there are books on Presidents, science, and war as well).

There's a series by Edward Rutherfurd that tells history stories that are loosely based on fact. There are books on London and ancient England, Ireland, Russia, and one on New York

I read this book a while ago and loved it- Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk It's about a monk who was imprisoned for 30 years by the Chinese.

The Grapes of Wrath.

Les Misérables. I linked to the unabridged one on purpose. It's SO WORTH IT. One of my favorite books of all time, and there's a lot of French history in it. It's also the first book that made me bawl at the end.

You'll also want the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, The Federalist Papers.

I'm not sure what you have covered in history, but you'll definitely want to find stuff on all the major wars, slavery, the Bubonic Plague, the French Revolution, & ancient Greek and Roman history.

As for science, find these two if you have any interest in how the brain works (and they're pretty approachable).
Phantoms in the brain
The man who mistook his wife for a hat

Alex and Me The story of a scientist and the incredibly intelligent parrot she studied.

For a background in evolution, you could go with The ancestor's tale

A biography of Marie Curie

The Wild Trees by Richard Preston is a quick and easy read, and very heavy on the adventure. You'll also want to read his other book The Hot Zone about Ebola. Absolutely fascinating, I couldn't put this one down.

The Devil's Teeth About sharks and the scientists who study them. What's not to like?

> You were the one citing the 4 of 5 statistic. I assumed you had the data.

FTA, means From The Article. Just quoting from the article. You mentioned an assumption.

> I know several others in similar situations. I don't have data, but that's because I have life experience.

That isn't how any science works. Not even the social sciences which aren't pure or even necessarily just applied sciences, but humanities with scientific principles.

> I lived in a small town for over 20 years.

See, here is where we really need to define what is truly rural and what is urban. There are also costs associated in small towns growing so if you come to a small town, and say you build new, those houses unlike the original ones, will have impact fees built into the cost. What you might not realize is that housing over the last few decades has gotten significantly more expensive, often because of sprawl or lack of efficiency.

Any its not the point of you car breaking down. What if you have an ongoing problem, what if the mechanic is busy? The point being you can be seriously inconvenience, and since you offered it as advice of how to live cheaply why should we assume some has a brand spanking new car. It likely might be a car that needs maintenance.

> I lived in a town of 10,000 people. You don't need to leave, especially with internet access.

Well I've know plenty of people in towns of 10,000 people and they often were bored out of their minds, so they would drive to the next closest larger city for things to do.

> Yeah, but the initial water quality is what we were getting at I thought.

No, that's the thing, modern treatment plants can take literally crappy water and turn it into something pristine. I know because I have toured the facilities and know people in the field. I also have a property with a well and have been blessed with good water, yet neighbors down the road have had problems. You need to test regularly, there is just more responsibility to have to worry about.

But see you're talking about a city of 10,000, so you may not really be living all that rural. Depends on how far out you live.

> Fracking issues? Really? Please cite one of these occurrences in Wisconsin.

Does it really matter that it is Wisconsin? You held up your statement like it was a universal truth. Wisconsin honestly has been lucky but note, its not just the fracking itself, but the materials, like sand and water which can drop the water table.

Well have always had this consideration especially if local agriculture sucks the water table down and people have to re-drill to get it.

> I lived in a rural setting for 20 years. I know the situation. I don't have to "trust you" on what I lived.

There is only one fact in that sentence, and even that's sort of debatable. It sounds like you lived in a small town in a rural area that had some of the amenities that larger cities might have especially due to recent advances in technology. Trust is not an issue. Numbers, data, research is what we should seek, and we don't trust those, we verify those. Trust involves faith.

But personal anecdotes are not applicable to general situations. So if that is going to be presented as evidence it may be dismissed by everyone as such. Doesn't mean its not true, just that we have no way of knowing, nor should we trust it, for the reasons stated above.

> Many rural areas are near small towns. A rural county usually has 'the town' that serves that purpose and is only 10-15 minutes away.

That's still travel. Again we're sort picking apart just some simple examples, there could be more, still beside the point. Gas will be more because anything that isn't in immediate proximity will need to either be shipped, or you will need to travel for it. If you hang out online for entertainment and order from Amazon, then the discount rural life might be just fine, if you have good Internet access. Again, if.

> A riding mower? If you're going to have a yard that big, you should probably afford it before you buy it. That's like saying that someone's swimming pool costs are too high.

No, its not. People choose to have a pool. No only chooses the size of their yard, it is part of the parcel they buy. Or were you only talking renting?

> I was saying that people who live in rural areas make less money, many times minimum.

Well then that complicates things further. You make less money in a rural setting, and you supposedly pay less, according to you because you don't have the overhead of the city. But on the flip side the reason people are paid more in the city is because of supply and demand which is why the housing may be more, you may have some more taxes, but all services are far more economical to provide per person or per capita because of economies of scale.

So what you have to do is calculate the CoL rural and compare to CoL urban factoring in all aspects and then compare. You might, I'm not saying you won't. I'm saying its not a guarantee that you will unless you do all the math.

> It might be anecdotal, but it doesn't make it untrue. A strong farming community can support itself.

Never said it did. The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it has a very small sample size so we have no way of knowing the truth until it is no longer anecdotal. I'm saying that you have to look far more into the situation with all the data, and that still doesn't refute the OP which appears to be based on research or non-anecdotal evidence.

But, a strong farm community is harder to find. Why? Because the individual farmers that supported each other are growing scarce being replaced with industrial farming.

> Because cities tend to have liberals who want to spend that money rather than return it to the people who earned it and it's impractical to have a public bus in a town of 500.

Okay, now you are just being silly. If you check Wisconsin history, farmers used to be progressive because they were in battle with the train owners who liked to gouge them for their shipment costs. Its recent manufactured fokelore that Urban=liberal and rural=conservative.

You might actually want to read this one book, What's The Matter with Kansas which shows how of some of what you are referring to came to be.

> It also doesn't mean those problems don't exist in urban areas too.

It seems to be grasping at straws. All areas may have problems. Like I said over concentration has problem, under concentration also has problems. The OP was talking about a problem of rural poverty that any sociologist could tell you is a problem, but you, if I understand correctly, seem to be denying its existence by personal experiences.

> I disagree. I seem to recall hearing constantly during the farm bill debate about why the food stamps were included, and that was the reason I mentioned.

So you heard something once recently and that makes it a fact? You realize that is what is wrong with the current media and public, we don't challenge these ridiculous notions out of hand. Plenty of politicians on either side of the aisle support farm subsidies if it affect them or their people.

The OP topic was "The silent problem - rural poverty is rampant." Unless you have some information to say why the post is completely wrong that doesn't involve your singular personal experience coupled with a few people you know, then we'll have to go with the post having merit and needing further discussion and investigation.

> Have you lived in a rural setting? For how long if so? I get the feeling I'm trying to explain what a burger tastes like to a man with no taste buds.

Actually I know what a good grass fed burger tastes like, but we don't find them as often. Do you know why?

Actually I own a rural property that has been in the family for a couple generations. Its not farmed but it is in a rural setting. And all the problems that I cited, you know the personal anecdotes, those are all things that we contend with when were are there. Do you know why we don't live there full time? Because the city, a reasonable sized city offered many, many more choices especially employment. And grass fed burgers should I desire them.

> I disagree. Plus, if you think rural areas need the help, isn't this a good thing for them?

No. Not at all. Because the money isn't going to local areas that are desperate for tax money to maintain services like schools, another thing that doesn't scale well in the rural setting, no they stay just far enough out. It's a very deliberate tax dodge and its not simply retiring boomers, as many of them may not be well off. These are people who did not make money off the land as farmers but did so elsewhere and now flee from the city with their earnings and create paradise in the middle of nowhere.

> Not really. You can build/buy a 2006 2 million dollar house for $300,000. I know of a sale like that that just happened near my hometown.

This actually is getting to be beside the point, it was a simple observation that raises questions.

To be honest, I think it is more people who like the idea of having wealth that no one can see.

> That's a reasonable retirement mortgage if you invested wisely and are putting the sale of another house toward the purchase.

And if you didn't lose your pension, 401k, job, have a major healthcare problem or any number of circumstances. But that was just an observation. And now we're debating over budget mansions?

I'd go back and read the article itself and see if there wasn't a larger point you missed, no offense. It was never to argue against a rural way of life nor disrespect those who live in a rural setting. Quite the contrary. In fact, since it says it is the title and you said it yourself. You lived in a rural setting and even you don't it to be a problem.

So that means The Silent Poverty rampent in rural areas actually is a mystery especially if neighbors like you are unaware.

So, with Pirates, I would start with a good introductory book like:

Under the Black Flag. It's a good general overview book that allows you to separate some of the myths from the reality of pirates. It's a good easy read and very factual. A great beach holiday book.

After that, I would suggest moving up a step to:

The Republic of Pirates, which is a fantastic book that reads like an adventure novel about the late "Golden Age" of pirates, including Blackbeard. This book is fun, full of facts, and reads like a modern reporter for Slate, Salon, or Rolling Stone would tell it (because it is written by a reporter).

Then finally, to get into the nuts a bolts, the why and how of Pirates I recommend anything by Benerson Little. He conducted an AMA earlier this year and blew it out of the water.

For his books The Searovers Practice is bar none one of the finest books I've read. Buccaneers Realm is great when talking about the very specific group of pirates known as Buccaneers.

Classical liberalism isn't the only ism concerned with evidence and reasoning, but since it's apparently one of the reference points you happen to be familiar with you're just assuming that must be what I mean. Instead, I'm talking about the kind of modern liberalism described books such as Fear Itself by Ira Katznelson. You seem to be talking about the caricature of modern liberalism typically advanced by the likes of Jonah Goldberg which tends to be laughed out of the room by serious historians.

Modern liberalism is what we got with Roosevelt's reimagining of the role and purpose of government in managing civil society as he dealt with the after effects of the Great Depression and a World War, and the post Roosevelt task of establishing the post-world War II order. In Roosevelt's time liberal democracies were in competition with ascendant autocratic and authoritarian regimes around the world, and there was very much a sentiment among public intellectuals that democracy might not be able to compete with these other forms of governance. This liberalism uses institutions to effectively deal with large-scale demographic and economic trends, effectively support integrate technology into the modern world, and carefully manage international norms.

All of which requires careful, nuanced engagement with empirical realities and academic research, and requires fostering an environment respectful of the rule of law. And you can see expressions of this liberalism in the post-world War II order we helped establish in democracies in Western Europe, often cited as ideals by liberals that we should move toward. In short, it's a bit more nuanced than regulation loving terrorist sympathizers.

Meanwhile, during the same time conservative Democrats in the South were happy to make common cause with Roosevelt because New Deal programs meant the transfer of resources from wealthy Northeastern states to the South, which is fine with them so long as it could be executed in a way that didn't interfere with the prevailing racial order, which is why states rights was such a point of emphasis. Any federal administration of programs brought with it the possibility of sharing economic opportunities not just with poor white people but also poor black people. Once it became clear that the Democratic party was aligning itself with the civil rights movement, conservatives rebelled and embraced the Republican Party and gradually rolled back the New Deal and crushed the labor movement, allowing a constantly evolving structure of business and industry groups to become the animating forces of politics, especially on the Republican side.

The various forces of racial identity politics and business interests consolidated over a gradual process that spanned decades and culminated in the election of Reagan and the emergence of anti-intellectualism. The business-friendly nature of the party has made conservatives disdainful of research showing the hazards of smoking, and later dismissive of empirical research about the dangers of climate change or the truth of evolution.

And conservative leaders whipped up the passions of their base by stirring up animosity toward immigrants, foreigners, poor people who aren't white (eg welfare queens), and playing up fears for political advantage during the Cold War and War on Terror. The obsession with security, fear of some sort of apocalypse or world war or terrorist attack always on the verge of happening has indicated a desire for strong leaders, a strong sense of tribal patriotism, and a worship of strength and especially military leaders. Or authoritarian tough guy leaders in general such as Trump.

In a superficial sense it's true that anyone of any ideology could hypothetically be sympathetic toward authoritarianism. But it also ignores the facts on the ground about the dominant political passions that animate the two ideologies in the United States at the moment, which clearly indicate a strong desire for authoritarianism on the side of conservatives which simply isn't matched even remotely on the liberal side.

Further reading:

• Fear Itself
  
• Anything by John Dean on Authoritarianism
  
• The Republican Brain
  
• Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
  
  

Look, I don't even know where to begin. That was a lot of assumptions. I'm sorry you have this view of the left. I don't believe at all that leftists dislike rural people, nor dislike them simply because they are rural. The hatred that many on the left is not directed at rural people, but conservative ideology.

The left does see conservative ideology as a major barrier to making the world better, for both economic reasons and reasons of social justice. But the left doesn't see the rural, white working class as the cause of this ideology. The ideology is perpetuated by the wealthy and powerful. But for me personally, I don't blame anyone personally for believing in this ideology. I don't think conservatives or even the wealthy are bad, evil people, I simply think they are wrong.

Liberals are more likely to pity rural folk, if anything (which granted is condescending), because we feel that they've been duped by the wealthy into supporting politics that simply make the wealthy wealthier, allowing them to exploit the working class further and destroy the environment for their own profit.

I know I can't convince you of anything here or even force you to see another perspective on your politics.

But I would like you start making an attempt to learn more about liberals, and get to know some personally. Liberals are people, and I feel like you've forgotten that. You've really managed to demonize them, because you sincerely believe that they have demonized you and the people you care about, but I don't believe that's largely true. You can cherry pick examples of anything. I'd really appreciate it if you would make an effort to talk to more liberals. Maybe asks some questions on /r/askaliberal, or expand your media diet. Especially try to talk to some in person.

This is a classic book which claims that conservatives, in the 90s, came to see politics as no longer a matter of rich vs. poor, but a matter of NASCAR vs Starbucks, as a cultural matter rather than an economic matter, which works out really well for the rich. https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

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Well, what you're discussing here I make a living out of studying (theoretical political science). Just about all technology so far has been good technology, and anything in the not-too-distant future is going to be good technology, and anything in the way-distant future will probably be good technology.

The problem is not with technology, but the dissonance-gap created between the technology we develop, and our behavioral implementation of these technologies into society. Medicine was a good technology, and we've basically implemented it well (some states don't get common medicines, but overall we've been good with Medicine). Radio was a good technology and we've developed it well. Flight is a good technology and we've developed it well. The internet and miniaturized media devices? well, that's a complex one. Obviously it's a defining good of our age, and we could go on all day discussing how good it is for our society in various aspects. But, it's also bad in many -- again, not bad in itself, but in how we as a society have chosen to implement the technology of mobile media and the internet.


This will probably be my dissertation, so suffice it to say these technologies have driven us towards a more democratic political atmosphere (that's little-d democratic as in non-representative, not the party). Referendums, Senate election reform, 24hr. news cycles, daily polls, all serve to pressure elected officials as the democratic citizens pressure them for more instant results. The result is, effectively, an antagonist environment of partisanship, bickering, no-compromise, and misinformation. The evolution of immediacy-technologies (this includes flight, I suppose) has changed the pace of our world beyond what is responsible for most of us. To put it simply, what we have developed in terms of social-accessibility this past century is slightly beyond what we as a people are capable of working with maturely. Infotainment butchers credible news channels, misinformation and bias runs amok, fringe party movements dominate national election, the few qu'ran burning crazies grab headlines. This trend is not a result of human evolution, but a lack of. Our technology has improved and we haven't.

This goes beyond civics though, ironically we can socially flounder because of social media technologies. Just look at all the forever-alones on reddit/the internet, or when you go out with your friends for a drink and they all tap away on their smart phones texting other people instead of enjoying the real moment with eachother. Robert Putnam basically made this his focus of study which can be summed up politically here and more socially analyzed in his book Bowling Alone.

Fortunately, we've grown accordingly with technology where it really matters - international conflict and the nuclear bomb. We haven't had any nuclear winters because we were able to adapt to the new international atmosphere of Mutually Assured Destruction - we were smart enough to put aside our antagonistic nature towards our perceived enemies, and cooled our heads well enough to prevent a nuclear war for 60 years (and still into today!). There have been no major world-wars since we've developed mass-mobilization capabilities, and no crazy biological warfare (of course there are incidents like Hussein and his Kurds, or WW1 gas weapons, but those are regional events or in the case of WW1 an example of us toying with a new technology before truly understanding it)



So, thus far there's no real evidence that we've hit a breaking point where we've gone too far in terms of technological development. But we're getting pretty close. Historically there have been moments of technological development, and moments of social development. During the renaissance we began developing philosophy, human rights, and justice while simultaneously making huge strides in technology (industrial revolution anyone)? Maybe one sparked the other, maybe one allowed for the other, either way we and our technology grew together. I only hope that if we wish to continue our exponential push to singularity, we're able to kick our behavior/cognitive development along with it.

Personally, I think the American Empire is declining. Sir John Glubb had a wonderful write up of this, and I have copied his conclusion below. The full PDF can be found here and it is only 27 pages long.

Glubb looked at eleven empires over the course of history. I copied a relevant summary from the end. The pdf is online here.

> As numerous points of interest have arisen in the course of this essay, I close with a brief summary, to refresh the reader’s mind.

> (a) We do not learn from history because our studies are brief and prejudiced.

> (b) In a surprising manner, 250 years emerges as the average length of national greatness.

> (c) This average has not varied for 3,000 years. Does it represent ten generations?

> (d) The stages of the rise and fall of great
nations seem to be:

> The Age of Pioneers (outburst)

> The Age of Conquests

> The Age of Commerce

> The Age of Affluence

> The Age of Intellect

> The Age of Decadence.

> (e) Decadence is marked by:

> Defensiveness

> Pessimism

> Materialism

> Frivolity

> An influx of foreigners

> The Welfare State

> A weakening of religion.

> (f) Decadence is due to:

> Too long a period of wealth and power

> Selfishness

> Love of money

> The loss of a sense of duty.

> (g) The life histories of great states are amazingly similar, and are due to internal factors.

> (h) Their falls are diverse, because they are largely the result of external causes.

> (i) History should be taught as the history of the human race, though of course with emphasis on the history of the student’s own country.

The real question is how technology will either speed up, slow down. or prevent the same thing from happening to America.

I also recommend the following books:

The Collapse of Complex Societies, By Joseph Tainter

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Succeed or Fail, By Jared Diamond

Overshoot: The Ecological Basis for Revolutionary Change

Finally, when it comes to survival information, I highly recommend www.survivalblog.com. To me, they are the best of the best.

I also would like to plug Radio Free Redoubt (podcast) as well as AmRRON (American Redoubt Radio Operator's Network).

>can you please clarify your ideological position

Sure.

I'm a paleoconservative deep ecologist. This means I adhere to the oldest values of American conservatism and pair them with an interest in environmentalism through a more wholesome design of society.

I moderate /r/new_right because the new right ideas are closest to paleoconservatism in some ways. I tried to write a description of new_right that encompassed all of the ideas that the movement has tossed around.

Beyond that, I think politics is a matter of strategies and not collectivist moral decisions, am fond of libertarian-style free market strategies, and take interest in many things, hence the wide diversity of stuff that I post.

I've learned that on Reddit it's important to ask for people to clarify definitions before ever addressing any question using those terms. If you want me to answer any specific questions, we need a clear definition first agreed on by all parties.

I recommend the following books for anyone interesting in post-1970s conservatism beyond the neoconservative sphere:

• Paul Woodruff, Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue
  
• Pat Buchanan, Suicide of a Superpower
  
• Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies
  
• Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind from Burke to Eliot
  
• Jared Diamond, Collapse
  
• Mark Steyn, America Alone
  
• Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
  
• Bruce Charlton, Thought Prison: The Fundamentalist Nature of Political Correctness
  
  Other than that, I'm pretty much a mainstream Republican. Not all links I post constitute endorsement, such as this fascinating article.

Sure.

If evolution is of interest to you (and if you have interest in the intersection between theology and science), Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth Miller explores both sides of the debate and debunks many common misconceptions about evolution. I first read it in a college biology topics course.

If you like the topic of 'creationist attempts to dispute or disrupt the teaching of evolution in the classroom', Summer of the Gods, about the Scopes Monkey Trial, is a great book (although not explicitly about science).

You may find The Selfish Gene by Dawkins worth a read.

Books by Mary Roach can be fun; I've read Stiff and enjoyed it, and Packing for Mars was pretty good as well.

I have heard good things about The Emperor of All Maladies, though I haven't read it myself.

Our Stolen Future, about contamination of the environment by artificially produced estrogen and estrogen analogs, is dated but interesting.

The Discovery of Insulin by Bliss is a great story about how science happens and how scientific discovery occurs, and it lays out what may be the most important discovery in medical science during the 20th century.

Were those types of books what you were looking for?

I like Big History Project. I modify the work for my younger kids. It's free and covers from when the Earth was formed (not by God) to the present. It's free. There's also Crash Course. It has History and Science (and tons of other) videos that are very short and to the point. There's also CK-12 that has free textbooks, worksheets you can modify, and a ton of other stuff as well. The History of US is great too. My kids hated Story of the World. There is also A People's History of the United States. There's also some great podccasts like American History Tellers, and Forever Ago.

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I always tried to give my kids a big overview of history, and then we followed what they were interested in. At one point we did aAdd a Century Timeline and wrote out the most important dates in Roller Coaster and theme park history. Then they looked up what was going on historically and figured out if it effected what was going on in theme park history. It made it a lot more meaningful to them, I hope. We also visited as many historical places as we could.

I'm in the middle of an amazing book that goes into great details about the current narrative and academic belief of Pre-Columbus Americas. It counters most common notions and really has some interesting points to back it up. The main one being that North and South America were not pristine wilderness lived in harmoniously with its people; it was actually very much so engineered by the hand of man to accommodate extremely large civilization centers. Some far greater than any European city at it's time.

It's really cool to hear how they piece together some of the political dramas of the Mayan culture based on their findings. From what I remember in the earlier chapters, part of the reason the Maya didn't need iron/bronze weapons was because their method of conquering was through assimilation and trade. They would provide surrounding city-states vast trade networks to gain wealth and knowledge, then redistribute populations around their giant network. Once a city became dependent on the income, the Maya would instate their own leadership into said town and slowly it would become Mayan.

If you're interested. Check it out 1491 by Charles Mann

Oh hay! I was actually just reading something that was mentioning this intersection of politics and language. I was reading "The Art of Not Being Governed" in a section describing the process of how people or groups would deliberately avoid or remove themselves from the power of the state by a process he calls "dissimilation" (as opposed to assimilation). "State Space" for Scott isn't just that area under political state control, which could be rather small. It would project itself beyond the boundaries under direct control through cultural influence: religious ideas that would emphasize a divine king, social structures that emphasized hierarchical organization, and critically common languages that would allow people to easily communicate, trade, negotiate, or command if enslaved. So various peoples, both expats from the state and outsider peoples who resisted domination, would not just "run to the hills" to put physical distance between themselves and the state but also emphasize, embrace, or in some cases wholly construct separate cultural identities to "dissimilate" themselves from the culture of the state peoples. This would go as far as for a non-state people whose language would be linguistically similar to a state people language to claim ignorance, as though they're not speaking the same language, similar to how African and Indian slaves in the Americas would resist their colonial masters by claiming not to understand instruction.

So in opposite to the Nation-State idea of a shared cultural identity creating a political system, this is a political system creating a shared cultural identity.

Also random related question: I know in America-land, when people want to emphasize the differences between each other (for political or other reasons) we will quite often first emphasize the "weird" way the other talks. Like how resistance to the Bush administration loved to make fun of Texan accent, or rural populists will exaggerate an almost posh-like accent for city-folk. Is that also true for other languages/places?

Did your AP history class use one of these textbooks? Textbook publishing is extremely political and too costly to risk upsetting parents, politicians or special interest groups. The safe pattern presented in past books is copied, and any controversy is removed to satisfy the majority and avoid turning students off.

I'd recommend reading this book if you want to learn more.

• The American Adventure (1975)
  
  
• American Adventures (1987)
  
  
• American History (1982)
  
  
• The American Pageant (1991)
  
  
• The American Tradition (1984)
  
  
• The American Way (1979)
  
  
• The Challenge of Freedom (1990)
  
  
• Discovering American History (1974)
  
  
• Land of Promise (1983)
  
  
• Life and Liberty (1984)
  
  
• Triumph of the American Nation (1986)
  
  
• The United States: A History of the Republic (1991)
  
  
• The American Pageant (2006)
  
  
• The American Journey (2000)
  
  
• The Americans (2007)
  
  
• America: Pathways to the Present (2005)
  
  
• A History of the United States (2005)
  
  
• Holt American Nation (2003)

https://www.amazon.com/Even-Worse-Than-Looks-Constitutional/dp/0465031331

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Right-Went-Wrong-Conservatism/dp/1476763801

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X

These are 3 examples of significant literary works on American politics written in recent times. And although I only own one, I'm probably going to buy "It's even worse than it looks" I'm pretty sure they attest the asymmetrical polarization of American politics today, that allows extremists to thrive, whereas they couldn't have in previous decades.

The problem with Fox News, is for a major news organization, even they have a mixed record on reporting actual "facts". Edit: To be fair, CNN and MSNBC also sometimes misinform their viewers as well, but not nearly as bad as Fox does.



https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fox-news/

A study was done that found that people who don't watch news at all, were better informed on factually correct information, than people who religiously watched Fox News. One of our biggest media outlets in the nation, is routinely misinforming it's viewers on matters of national significance.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2016/07/21/a-rigorous-scientific-look-into-the-fox-news-effect/#443b3c5b12ab

Most the Right Wing media sources, play on stereotypes and emotionally driven headlines rather than factually reporting the news.

This is why now, in a country that has always honored Freedom of Speech, is now taking issue with "Fake News" making it's way into peoples facebook streams. Because a lot of media sites are now regularly failing to report factually correct information, and it's causing the electorate to vote for candidates who are consistently factually incorrect in what they say. And a major country like the United States, who leaders consistently believe in and base policy off of factually incorrect information, I don't see how that can possibly be good for my country, or the world for that matter.

It is no mere coincidence that for a Conservative party, globally speaking, only in America is the Republicans the only major Conservative party in a Western Democracy, that outright denies the realities of Climate Change.

This.

>The largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically.

Google Has Become a Major Threat to Democracy in America - Michael Krieger - Aug 30, 2017

About 10 years ago, Tim Wu, the Columbia Law professor who coined the term network neutrality, made this prescient comment: “To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist, you have to have faith in the way people traditionally felt about the king.”

Wu was right. And now, Google has established a pattern of lobbying and threatening to acquire power.

It has reached a dangerous point common to many monarchs: The moment where it no longer wants to allow dissent.

When Google was founded in 1998, it famously committed itself to the motto: “Don’t be evil.”

It appears that Google may have lost sight of what being evil means, in the way that most monarchs do:

Once you reach a pinnacle of power, you start to believe that any threats to your authority are themselves villainous and that you are entitled to shut down dissent.

As Lord Acton famously said, “Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.”

Those with too much power cannot help but be evil.

Google, the company dedicated to free expression, has chosen to silence opposition, apparently without any sense of irony.

In recent years, Google has become greedy about owning not just search capacities, video and maps, but also the shape of public discourse.

As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, Google has recruited and cultivated law professors who support its views.

And as the New York Times recently reported, it has become invested in building curriculum for our public schools, and has created political strategy to get schools to adopt its products.

It is time to call out Google for what it is: a monopolist in search, video, maps and browser, and a thin-skinned tyrant when it comes to ideas.

Google is forming into a government of itself, and it seems incapable of even seeing its own overreach.

We, as citizens, must respond in two ways.

First, support the brave researchers and journalists who stand up to overreaching power; and second, support traditional anti-monopoly laws that will allow us to have great, innovative companies — but not allow them to govern us.

From Zephyr Teachout’s powerful article: Google Is Coming After Critics in Academia and Journalism. It’s Time to Stop Them. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/30/zephyr-teachout-google-is-coming-after-critics-in-academia-and-journalism-its-time-to-stop-them]

The mask has finally come off Google’s face, and what lurks underneath looks pretty evil.

2017 has represented a coming out party of sorts for Google and the control-freaks who run it.

The company’s response to the James Damore controversy made it crystal clear that executives at Google are far more interested in shoving their particular worldview down the throats of the public, versus encouraging vibrant and lively debate.

This is not a good look for the dominant search engine.

The creeping evilness of Google has been obvious for quite some time, but this troubling reality has only recently started getting the attention it deserves.

The worst authoritarian impulses exhibited at the company appear to emanate from Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt, whose actions consistently seem to come from a very dark and unconscious place.

Today’s piece focuses on the breaking news that an important initiative known as Open Markets, housed within the think tank New America Foundation, has been booted from the think tank after major donor Google complained about its anti-monopoly stance.

Open Markets was led by a man named Barry Lynn, who all of you should become familiar with.

The Huffington Post profiled him last year. Here’s some of what we learned [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/barry-lynn-washington-corporations_us_57c8a6a7e4b0e60d31de6433?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004]:

There’s a solid economic rationale behind Washington’s new big thing. Monopolies and oligopolies are distorting the markets for everything from pet food to cable service. http://fortune.com/2015/05/19/cable-industry-becomes-a-monopoly/]

There’s a reason why cable companies have such persistently lousy customer-service ratings. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/17/AR2007101702359.html]

They know you have few (if any) alternatives.

Today, two-thirds of the 900 industries tracked by The Economist feature heavier concentration at the top than they did in 1997. [http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21695392-big-firms-united-states-have-never-had-it-so-good-time-more-competition-problem]

The global economy is in the middle of a merger wave big enough to make 2015 the biggest year in history for corporate consolidation. [http://www.wsj.com/articles/2015-becomes-the-biggest-m-a-year-ever-1449187101]

Most political junkies have never heard of the man chiefly responsible for the current Beltway antitrust revival: Barry C. Lynn.

A former business journalist, Lynn has spent more than a decade carving out his own fiefdom at a calm, centrist Washington think tank called the New America Foundation.

In the process, he has changed the way D.C. elites think about corporate power.

“Barry is the hub,” says Zephyr Teachout, a fiery progressive who recently clinched the Democratic nomination for a competitive House seat in New York. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/zephyr-teachout-democratic-primary_us_57728b8ee4b0f168323aee9d]

“He is at the center of a growing new ― I hesitate to call it a movement ― but a group of people who recognize that we have a problem with monopolies not only in our economy, but in our democracy.”

Many Southerners who relocate to the nation’s capital try to temper their accents for the elite crowd that dominates the District’s social scene.

Lynn, a South Florida native, never shed his drawl.

He pronounces “sonofabitch” as a single word, which he uses to describe both corrupt politicians and big corporations.

He is a blunt man in a town that rewards caginess and flexibility.

But like King, Lynn’s critique of monopolies does not reflect a disdain for business itself.

Lynn left Global Business for The New America Foundation in 2001 and began work on his first book, End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation, which argues that globalization and merger mania had injected a new fragility into international politics. [https://www.amazon.com/End-Line-Coming-Global-Corporation/dp/0767915879?tag=thehuffingtop-20]

Disruptive events ― earthquakes, coups, famines, or at worst, war ― could now wreak havoc on U.S. products that had once been safely manufactured domestically.

Production of anything from light bulbs to computers all could shut down without warning.

It was a frightening vision with implications for economic policy and national security alike.

It was also ideologically inconvenient for the techno-utopian zeitgeist of its day. Lynn’s book landed on shelves about the same time as Thomas Friedman’s better-known tome, The World Is Flat, which declared globalization a triumph of innovation and hard work for anyone willing to do the hard work of innovating. [https://www.amazon.com/World-Flat-History-Twenty-first-Century/dp/0374292884?tag=thehuffingtop-20]

Today, Lynn’s predictions of market disruption and political unrest appear to have been ahead of their time.

Early globalization champions, including Martin Wolf and Lawrence Summers, are rethinking their judgments of a decade ago. [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e46e8c00-6b72-11e6-ae5b-a7cc5dd5a28c.html#axzz4J2hMuhyq]

But Lynn turned several influential heads when his book was published. Thomas Frank, bestselling author of What’s The Matter With Kansas?, became a Lynn enthusiast. [https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_1]

So did food writer Michael Pollan.

“He was writing about an issue that nobody was paying attention to, and he was doing it with a very strong sense of history,” Pollan says.

“Barry understood antitrust going back to the trust-busters a century ago, and how our understanding of the issue shrank during the Reagan administration … The food movement is not very sophisticated on those issues.”

Lynn’s history nerd-dom is eccentric in a town that hyperventilates over every hour of the cable news cycle.

Ask about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, and Lynn will oblige you a polite sentence or two.

Ask him about former Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis or William Howard Taft, and you’ll need to reschedule your dinner plans.

“He once asked me to read about Roman law for a piece on common carriage,” says Lina Khan, referencing a plank of net neutrality policy not typically associated with the Code of Justinian.

After he published his second book in 2010, Lynn began bringing on his own staff within New America. Khan was one of his first hires.

Teachout, a Fordham University Law School professor, was another.

Teachout eventually ran for office and published a book of her own on the history of corruption in America. [https://www.amazon.com/Corruption-America-Benjamin-Franklin%E2%80%99s-Citizens/dp/0674659988/ref=sr_1_1?amp=&ie=UTF8&keywords=Zephyr+Teachout&qid=1472758645&sr=8-1&tag=thehuffingtop-20]

Another of Lynn’s associates, Christopher Leonard, published a book on meat industry monopolies around the same time.

These works shared a common theme: Monopolistic businesses create social problems beyond consumer price-gouging, from buying off politicians to degrading the quality of our food...

More: https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2017/08/30/google-has-become-a-major-threat-to-democracy-in-america/

I took APUSH to and there's actually a number of pitfalls to it. Remember that APUSH is focused towards the AP test, so while everyone else will be starting from the Civil War/WWI to the present, you'll be racing through American History from Columbus to Bush Jr all about a month before you have to take the test. The teachers that take AP responsibilities are good, but the knowledge is still incomplete. If you want to get more knowledge (going through my history BA right now) check out a couple of these resources:

A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn: https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0060838655

In the interest of impartiality, I'll mention the more right leaning version of the People's History, A Patriot's History of the United States: https://www.amazon.com/Patriots-History-United-States-Columbuss/dp/1595230327 Note that a large amount of it was written not by the centrist historian Michael Allen, but the more politically motivated Larry Schweikart. Regardless, both of these books are used by APUSH classes throughout the country. I'd just pick one.

Also (this is going to sound really stupid) but a series of documentaries entitled A Walk Through the 20th Century with Bill Moyers where LBJs press secretary Bill Moyers talks about history from a perspective that helps us understand what (in general) people were thinking at the time. Here's one episode on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7eg5TBwJ-Y

Finally, if you want to have some entertaining yet deep history, check out Dan Carlin. He has plenty of extremely informative (if slightly editorialized for entertainment purposes) podcasts. His Blueprint for Armageddon series is one of the most intriguing narratives of World War One I've ever seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFMT_BVBBsA

This is something that takes a lot of practice, and many schools don't or can't teach it. Fear not, it's easier than it sounds.

First, some background:

http://www.amazon.com/Global-History-Modern-Historiography/dp/0582096065

This will introduce you to most of the historical method used today. It's quite boring, but if you're going to study history, you'll need to get used to reading some pretty dry material.

For a styleguide, use Diana Hacker's:
http://www.amazon.com/Pocket-Style-Manual-Diana-Hacker/dp/0312542542/

It will teach you everything you need to know about citations.

As far as getting better at source analysis, that's something that comes with time in class and practice with primary and secondary source documents. If you're just going into college, it's something you're going to learn naturally.

However, I do have some tips.
-The main goal of a piece of historiography is to bring you to a thesis and then clearly support that argument. All REAL historiography asks a historical question of some sort. I.E. not when and where, but a more contextual why and how.

-Real historiography is produced 99.9% of the time by a university press, NOT A PRIVATE FIRM. If a celebrity wrote it, it's probably not history.

-Most, if not all real historiography is going to spell out the thesis for you almost immediately.

-A lot of historiography is quite formulaic in terms of its layout and how it's put together on paper:

A. Introduction -- thesis statement and main argument followed by a brief review of past historiography on the subject.

B Section 1 of the argument with an a,b, and c point to make in support.

C just like B

D just like B again, but reinforces A a little more

E Conclusion, ties all sections together and fully reinforces A.

Not all works are like this, but almost every piece you will write in college is or should be.

Some history books that do real history (by proper historians) and are easy to find arguments in, just off the top of my head:

http://www.amazon.com/Wages-Whiteness-American-Working-Haymarket/dp/1844671453

http://www.amazon.com/Economists-Guns-Authoritarian-Development-U-S--Indonesian/dp/0804771820/

http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Battalions-Crisis-American-Nationality/dp/0805081380

For the primer on social histories, read Howard Zinn:
http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Present/dp/0060838655/

What you're going to come across MORE often than books is a series of articles that make different (sometimes conflicting) points about a historical issue: (I can't really link the ones I have because of copyright [they won't load without a password], but check out google scholar until you have access to a university library)

Virtually any subject can be researched, you just have to look in the right place and keep an open mind about your thesis. Just because you've found a source that blows away your thesis doesn't mean it's invalid. If you find a wealth of that kind of stuff, you might want to rethink your position, though.


This isn't comprehensive, but I hope it helps. Get into a methods class AS FAST AS POSSIBLE and your degree program will go much, much smoother for you.

Animal and pet bodies are generally disposed of via a process that essentially liquifies the flesh in lye. I know that there was some amount of push several years ago to expand the service to human remains.

There's a company in Europe that was trying to push the idea of "planting" a person's body by using minimal preservation chemistry and no coffin, and putting a sapling above the body.

I'm not Tibetan, but even I can appreciate the symbology of their Sky Burials, wherein a body is sliced and left exposed to the elements, and is swiftly reclaimed by vultures.

However, there is one outstanding option for OP: Donating his body to science! Organ donors are lauded, as they well should be, but there's a pressing need for bodies for research purposes, particularly bodies of younger folk or children. The research gained through body donation can save hundreds, if not thousands, of lives, for decades after it's donated. Bodies have been used to research car crash impact effects--dummies are fine, but there really is no substitute for strapping a body into a car and launching it into a wall to see how it breaks (or doesn't!)

I'd strongly encourage anyone interested in alternative body disposal methods to read Stiff, by Mary Roach. It is far and away my favorite non-fiction book--hilarious, respectful, inquisitive, and educational!

The thing is, I think representatives have always been influenced by special interests ever since before the inception of the United States. However, the way in which special interests have influenced representatives has certainly changed through time.

When the Constitution was signed, "we the people" was not meant to include blacks, Indians, women, or indentured servants. The main reason why George Washington was elected as the first president was because he was by far the wealthiest American at the time. And all of those who signed the Constitution has their vested interests.

That's just one example. Right now I'm reading A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. And he makes it clear that oligarchic powers have always had a heavy influence on policy.

I guess I'm wondering when we were closest to having a representative democracy in the United States. I'm honestly not sure.

OMG I get to say it in this thread, and another thread taught me:
https://www.amazon.com/Day-World-Came-Town-Newfoundland/dp/0060559713

This is a WONDERFUL BOOK about the citizens of the town where the airport was... and how they took care of everyone. Someone lent teenage lovers a car to get away from the mess, others brought blankets, entertainment, etc. It's a heartwarming, WONDERFUL tale of love and kindness. I guess we could use that right about now.

Instead of talking yourself out of becoming educated, imagine what would happen to society if everyone did so. Everyone, people like you included, has the potential to transform society through education, dialogue, and activism. Judging from some of your comments, I'm gonna go ahead and recommend that you start with Karl Marx. If you're worried about exploitation, interested in socialism, etc., go to the source. Either the Communist Manifesto or Capital, depending on how heavy you're willing to get. If you want something that covers a wide selection of Marx and Engels, I highly recommend this reader. This includes the Manifesto, book 1 of Capital, and some other important essays. Maybe you'll like it. Maybe you'll hate it. But it's a great place to start if you want first hand exposure to the foundation of critical theory. Keep in mind that everyone you talk to, even philosophy majors, even philosophy professors, are going to have a bias in one way or another. You have to pursue the truth yourself and don't let anyone scare you out of getting educated and engaged with improving society. Your silence supports the status quo, so if you're comfortable with things being the way they are, by all means stay at home.

It sounds like you have an Intro Geology book.

For a nice overview of historical geology, I was enraptured by "The Earth: An Intimate History" by Richard Fortey. It starts slow but delves into the major developments and ideas of geology as the author visits many significant locales around the world.

Stephen Jay Gould was a very prolific science-writer across paleontology and evolution.

John McPhee has several excellent books related to geology. I would recommend "Rising from the Plains" and "The Control of Nature."

Mark Welland's book "SAND" is excellent, covering topics of sedimentology and geomorphology.

If you are interested in how society manages geologic issues, I would recommend Geo-Logic, The Control of Nature mentioned before, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, and Cadillac Desert.

These are some of the texts I used in university:

• Nesse's Introduction to Mineralogy
  
• Winter's Principles of Metamorphic and Igneous Petrology
  
• Twiss and Moore's Structural Geology
  
• Bogg's Sedimentology and Stratigraphy
  
• Burbank and Anderson's Tectonic Geomorphology
  
• Davis's Statistics and Data Analysis in Geology
  
• Burbank and Anderson's Tectonic Geomorphology
  
• Fetter's Applied Hydrogeology
  
• White's Geochemistry (pdf online)
  
• Shearer's Seismology
  
• Copeland's Communicating Rocks
  

I'm drawn to the spirit of libertarians, feel like their hearts are in the right place (sans the neoreactionary bigoted elements that often infiltrate). Paleo is becoming very popular with that crowd, most resistance being from people that either haven't heard about it or people who tend towards naive scientism/technophilia and are hostile to anything outside of the mainstream when it comes to science. I've integrated paleo into my own beliefs (radical decentralist with sympathies that could be called libertarian, anarchist, pro-market, anti-capitalist, and primitivist). A few points:

I want my people to be healthy, strong, fertile, happy, and beautiful. Paleo does that. Paleo is power.

Some anthropological literature examines the reciprocal ecological relationship between states and grains. Grains are state fuel for a variety of reasons, states encourage their cultivation quite literally at gunpoint in one example. Growing root crops like cassava and sweet potatoes on the other hand, is a genuine insurrectionist act. "Escape crops", the author called them.

We see the government's subsidies of HFCS, bogus dietary recommendations, SWAT raids on farm to table dinner gatherings and food co-ops, and all the other ways government policy taints our food as some unique modern aberration, but it's what governments have always done. Control food to control people. Paleo will be appearing on a leaked flyer from some police agency or think tank listing signs of extremism any day now.

Diet is culture. Being different for the sake of being different helps minority groups maintain their cultural/ethnic/religious identity. You see it in slurs against them, e.g. cat-eaters, "beaners". You've seen it with the way your friends and family react to your diet. After eating paleo for a few years, there are fundamental differences in your metabolism, the way you smell, the very chemical composition of your flesh. It makes you the other, and that's desirable when you'd like to set yourself apart culturally.

Allowing my imagination to go further... I see a holistic force of decay, control, and permanent death as the driving impulse behind most of our technology since the beginning of the industrial revolution at least. It's glyphosate in your Fruit Loops, fluoride in your water, the endocrine-disrupting plastic incense inside its Wal-Mart temples. Maybe it's just a useful metaphor that ties a number of things I don't like together. Maybe I really believe it is a force that affects our world materially. Most importantly here, Paleo is a rite of purification that removes the taint from our minds and bodies.

So I would second Integrald's list as great, and I think everyone should read all of the books in the Core section. If you're interested in political economy, I'd specifically point out these from it as nice general-interest introductions:

• Guns Germs and Steel
  
• Why Nations Fail
  
• The Mystery of Capital
  
  If you're interested in alternative models, there are two particular works that I'd recommend reading. The first is probably obvious - get yourself the big old Marx reader. Marxist thought is less important than it used to be, but still worth getting acquainted with.
  
  The second might be less familiar but I think is also very important - Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation. It is basically a sociologically-oriented history of the rise of capitalism. Polanyi's argument is that the "free market" is no less a utopian vision than the communist one, and that in many times and places people seek protection from the market rather than a desire to participate in it. This is one of the very few books I've read as an adult that actually changed my perspective in a meaningful way, and if you're interested in the "big questions" of politics and economics I can't recommend it highly enough.

I think you misunderstand me, or at least you're using a different definition of "hero" than I am.

My point is that a hero is someone who does the right thing at the right time, despite his fears or weaknesses. Someone who runs into a burning building to save a child is not necessarily a wonderful human being in every way possible; he might be an embezzler who cheat on his wife. For the moment in which he committed the heroic act, however, he is a hero. The moment of heroism (and its effects) is admirable, even though the other behavior is not.

There's a marvelous book called Lies My Teacher Told Me, which is about the way American History is taught in high school. In it, the author goes to great lengths to describe how we're taught a whitewashed history in which the people we're expected to admire (such as presidents and the founding fathers) were all wholly admirable. Yet, as the author points out, it's not the human weaknesses of these people that is notable but that they rose above them. Flawed human beings managed to work together to create a Declaration of Independence that is somehow a reflection of the best of our ideals, and gives us something to work towards.

I see scientology the way I do the vision of the founding fathers. We start with the premise that the ideals are attainable, and we work towards attaining them -- even if we do not reach any kind of perfection.

I don't think that LRH was any kind of saint. I think he could be an asshat, and worse. I think he could have done far better with scientology if he let it continue to be okay for others to contribute to it, both technically and in leadership ways, and if he had acknowledged the contributions others did make. But he did devote most of his life to finding ways to get us all out of the mess -- including himself, even if he did not succeed.

Other posters have touched on the heart of it, but here is a little elaboration if you want to know more:

The only recorded instance of pirates burying treasure anywhere is when Captain William Kidd buried a portion of his ship's cargo on Long Island before meeting with Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont and Governor of New York. It bears mentioning that he didn't bury this treasure specifically to dig it up later, but because he was facing charges of murder and piracy and his goods were likely to be seized.

He buried the treasure to use as a bargaining chip with Bellomont, hoping it would give him leverage and help him avoid going to trial (Bellomont was one of his benefactors and had even financed a previous voyage). This tactic failed completely, and Kidd's treasure was simply dug up. There are rumors that portions of it remain buried, but this is almost certainly nonsense.

I'd also like to point out that Kidd, in terms of what we usually refer to as 'pirates', hardly qualifies at all. He was well known and respected among the colonial nobility, went to sea with the funds and blessings of many high-ranking people, and happened to end up on the wrong end of a political scandal and with his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak. His trial was rushed, and he may have even had a legitimate letter of marque, making him a privateer, not a pirate.

Robert Louis Stevenson used Kidd (or rather, the fictionalized Kidd-as-pirate that had persisted to the late 19th century) as a prototype for Long John Silver, and embellished the part about burying his treasure. Treasure Island is really the root of so many of the pirate icons we know and love (peg legs, parrots, buried treasure, etc.).

If you're interested in learning more, I recommend you take a look at Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates, The Pirate Hunter, and Under the Black Flag.

Edit: It's actually Gardiner's Island, as one of the above posters mentioned, which is near Long Island, but is separate.

Not totally accurate, but if you’re looking for popular science/entertainment that’s somewhat anthropology related.... Kathy Reichs is a board certified forensic anthropologist and has written a lot of books. They (she) are what the TV show Bones was based on.

Stiff by Mary Roach is a good one

For nonfiction, and if you’re interested in things highly relevant politically now, these are some incredible works on immigration.

Becoming Legal
They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields

I’m pretty sure this author is a sociologist, but still a great book. imagined communities

• Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan is a great overview of the science of statistics, without being too much like a lecture. After reading it, you'll have a better understanding of what statistics are just silly (like in ads or clickbait news) and what are actually important (like in scientific studies).
  
  
• You on a Diet by Roizen and Oz is touted as a diet book, and it kind of is. I recommend it because it's a great resource for basic understanding the science behind the gastrointestinal system, and how it links to the brain.
  
  
• All of Mary Roach's books are excellent overviews of science currently being done, I've read Stiff (the science of human bodies, post-mortem), Spook ("science tackles the afterlife"), Packing for Mars (the science of humans in space), and Bonk (sex), and they are all very easy to understand, but scientifically appropriate. I'm sure "Gulp" is good too, although I haven't read that one yet.
  
  
• "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" by Mike Brown is a great, accessible overview of exactly why Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet, told by the man who started the controversy.
  
  
• "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking is a little denser, material-wise, but still easy to understand (as far as theoretical physics goes, at least!). Hawking explains the history of physics and the universe, as well as the future of the discipline. While there is a bit more jargon than some pop-science books, I think an entry-level scientist can still read and understand this book.
  

The principle of Fürherprinzip is mostly organic. Humans naturally look towards strong leaders. And while the Third Reich was not completely organic, it was a substantial improvement over the liberal Judeo-Capitalist Weimar Republic. Adolf Hitler's long-term plans for Germany would have fully brought about the National Socialist ideal.

\>Have you had many bad experiences with people outside of your cultural background?

Yes, I went to a high school full of Negroes and mestizos, but that's purely anecdotal evidence, no? I'm intellectually honest, so I'll give you something more substantial. It's a study by Dr. Robert Putnam, entitled Bowling Alone. In it, he initially set out to prove the axiom that "diversity is our greatest strength", but quickly discovered quite the opposite. While studying the great cities of America, he found that ethnic diversity is strongly correlated with loss of social cohesion, diminishment of social capital, and a decrease in overall community engagement, not just between ethnic groups, but within them.

This is the book. I can't find a free PDF anywhere, but I have no doubt that you'll be able to find a torrent of it somewhere.

This last point addressed your other queries, too. The reason society must be organized along racial and ethnic lines, without getting into the spiritual side of things, is that human nature ensures that that's the only kind of organization that WILL work.

I would recommend reading Michael Sandel’s book Justice and at the same time getting the Justice reader (book of selected readings in political philosophy) put together by Sandel, and watching Sandel’s online lecture series entitled Justice.

Justice book:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0374532508/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0374532508

Justice reader:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195335120/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0195335120

Justice online lecture series:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL30C13C91CFFEFEA6

Yea I haven't really ever seen any documentary about the Mexica or other mesoamerican groups that wasn't built around the older conquest myths like Cortez was mistaken for a god or the spaniards single handily beat them, but that doesn't mean that those old ideas aren't changing. There's a few pbs ones I've seen about the Aztecs and new discoveries of the teotihucan culture. Watching a documentary is easy but if you can reading is your best bet. Conquest by Hugh Thomas is an extremely detailed and well researched account of the rise and fall of the Aztecs, buried Mirror by Carlos Fuentes is an examination of the rise of a unified Spanish nation state and the parrels with the cultures of the new world and shows that the two groups had more in common than one would think. 1491 by Charles C. Mann has some stuff on the Aztecs, but looks at different new world cultures and shows that overall they were more sophisticated than generally thought of


https://www.amazon.com/Conquest-Cortes-Montezuma-Fall-Mexico/dp/0671511041


https://www.amazon.com/Buried-Mirror-Reflections-Spain-World/dp/0395924995


https://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/1400032059

> Can you disagree?

Of course, because your position is false, not to mention ridiculous. The claim that the US has "yet to develop much of its own culture" is simple ignorance. I can only assume that you're merely doing what this sub criticizes Americans for doing, talking about something of which you have no direct experience or education.

> My point is that American refusal to just describe themselves as American, without all these ridiculous qualifiers, is part of why America continues to lack a distinct culture.

Your point is invalid in both premise and conclusion. You're taking anecdotes about silly behavior from a circlejerk sub, ignorantly extrapolating that to encompass an entire population of 320 million people consisting of probably hundreds of diverse cultures, to reach a conclusion that's every bit as silly as the silliest things Americans are made fun of for in this sub. Hence my original comment, this is just shityuropoorsay - you're the precise equivalent of what you're mocking.

There are many different cultures in the US, varying significantly by region. The book American Nations identifies 11 regional cultures in North America, and those are just broad regional divisions - there's significant variation within each of those. An example of an area where there's a great deal of local cultural variation is Louisiana, but there are many other similar regions throughout the US. The local culture in particular areas is often a variation of a larger regional culture, for example the Culture of Georgia is a variation of Southern US culture.

The US attitudes about ancestry and ethnicity have perfectly reasonable roots in the fact that many people in the US are in families that immigrated quite recently, often in living memory. For those families, their X-American identity is a real feeling that has to do with where they or their parents or grandparents came from, and the culture they brought with them and passed on, to some extent, to their children. It's not some sort of attempt to make themselves feel special, it's who they are.

Yes, you then also get people who try to turn their distant ancestry which is no longer actually remembered in the above sense into some sort of claim on the culture and identity of countries they've never visited. That's quite rightly made fun of here, because it's silly. But drawing broad conclusions from such behavior, while simultaneously lacking any real knowledge of what you're drawing conclusions about, leads to nonsense.

If you study cultures in the US, you'll find that the history of migration in a given area has a strong influence on the culture - the Louisiana example above is a good one. But the fact that these cultures are strongly influenced from the culture of earlier immigrants doesn't mean there's no unique local culture. Quite the opposite. When people live in a place for centuries, they develop a culture - that's just how human societies work. Your ignorance of those cultures doesn't mean they don't exist.

Yes, there were no direct aid programs targeting the working people on america who were devastated, hence the Bernie rhetoric; "Socialism for the rich, Rugged Individualism for the working class" Martin Luther King said the same in his time.

Devos is secretary of education, and yes she had an investment basket full of education profiteers that was caught during the confirmation process, including a collection agency that specialized in student loans.

She said ok you caught me, I'll divest, but would you trust her?

>“My family is the biggest contributor of soft money to the Republican National Committee,” she wrote in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. “I have decided to stop taking offense,” she wrote, “at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues. We expect a return on our investment."

You sound like you have your eyes open. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn is a great read for the progressive-minded. Most libraries carry this book.

In the Heart of the Sea tells the true story that inspired Moby Dick, and is a great read.

If you like non-fiction, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage and The Perfect Storm are also very good.

Salon founder David Talbot chronicles the cultural history of San Francisco and from the late 1960s to the early 1980s when figures such as Harvey Milk, Janis Joplin, Jim Jones, and Bill Walsh helped usher from backwater city to thriving metropolis.

http://www.amazon.com/Season-Witch-Enchantment-Terror-Deliverance-ebook/dp/B005C6FDFY/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Cool, Gray City of Love brings together an exuberant combination of personal insight, deeply researched history, in-depth reporting, and lyrical prose to create an unparalleled portrait of San Francisco. Each of its 49 chapters explores a specific site or intersection in the city, from the mighty Golden Gate Bridge to the raunchy Tenderloin to the soaring sea cliffs at Land's End.

http://www.amazon.com/Cool-Gray-City-Love-Francisco-ebook/dp/B00D78R550/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1451757678&sr=1-1&keywords=cool+grey+city+of+love

Not a book, but this American Experiance episode is fantastic.

In 1957, decades before Steve Jobs dreamed up Apple or Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook, a group of eight brilliant young men defected from the Shockley Semiconductor Company in order to start their own transistor business. Their leader was 29-year-old Robert Noyce, a physicist with a brilliant mind and the affability of a born salesman who would co-invent the microchip -- an essential component of nearly all modern electronics today, including computers, motor vehicles, cell phones and household appliances.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/

Also, not related to San Francisco directly, but focusing on California and the west, if you want to understand why California is the way it is today, this is on the list of essential reading material.

http://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244

Your picture of Pre-European Native American Life is not as bad as that Pocahontas DVD, but it is still way off. For a good look at what it was actually like in the New World pre-European, see the book 1491 by Charles Mann. This has been generally well recommended on /r/AskHistorians and /r/askscience.

For example, they made extensive use of fire to convert dense forests to less dense forests, open woodlands, or grasslands which lead to huge population increases in the kind of herbivores they liked to hunt, and made it much easier to hunt them. They did not just passively live at the mercy of Nature.

How? With what money? With what resources? With what education? You're talking about an entire population that was intentionally deprived of familial connections, cultural connections, the ability to organize, the ability to build wealth, the ability to exercise any autonomy, literacy, and education.

Africa is not exactly a small place, and most ex-slaves didn't even know where their ancestors had been kidnapped from.

Also keep in mind how much different things looked at the end of the Civil War than much later. Ex-slaves were promised equality with whites, full rights as citizens of the US, and given the promise of reparations for slavery. Congress passed a law in 1865 that guaranteed full citizenship regardless of race and the 14th amendment was circulated starting in 1866 and became part of the constitution in 1868. For a decade following the end of the Civil War Reconstruction proceeded at a fast pace. Laws were changed, progress was made, historical iniquities were being redressed. The vast majority of ex-slaves in this situation who were offered the possibility of staying wherever they were and using the labor skills they already had to attempt to make a living in America (either through sharecropping or on their own) seemed enormously enticing.

At a minimum the situation looked to be superior to their previous situation of enslavement. They were ostensibly free. They could keep their families together, they could build their lives up (in terms of wealth, community, education, skills, ambition, etc.), and they had the prospect of attaining true equality of stature and accomplishment with whites in perhaps a generation or so.

It was not until two or three decades later when Reconstruction had been destroyed and dismantled, when slavery had been replaced with a racial caste system that was becoming enshrined in custom and law (Jim Crow et al), and when it became abundantly clear that the end of slavery did not mean the end of white supremacy in America that black Americans began to comprehend that the society they lived in was going to limit the extent of their advancements to a very narrowly defined box not much expanded from where it had been before. And then there really was a huge debate on what to do. Black communities felt the oppression, understood the long-term implications and generally understood that the status quo was untenable.

Eventually they did take action and move, out of the South and into the North and the West in one of the most significant demographic shifts in the 20th century called The Great Migration. By then they had more money, more resources, more education, much greater literacy, and greater ability to move around (due to the advent of automobiles and the advancement of railroads). But even so, and even moving within the US alone, it was an enormously challenging endeavor that not all African-Americans undertook.

If you want to get some additional perspective on what things were like I'd suggest reading "The Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson.

"The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below." - Hyperion, Dan Simmons

"Joe Gould is a blithe and emaciated little man who has been a notable in the cafeterias, diners, barrooms, and dumps of Greenwhich Village for a quarter of a century" - Up In The Old Hotel - Joseph Mitchell

"He told them he loved them" - Columbine - Dave Cullen

"Kazbek Misikov stared at the bomb hanging above his family. It was a simple device, a plastic bucket packed with explosive paste, nails, and small metal balls. It weighed perhaps eight pounds. The existence of this bomb had become a central focus of his life." - The School - C.J. Chivers

"It was summer; it was winter." The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy - MICHAEL PATERNITI

"The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken. I have never before had occasion to make the comparison, for never before today have I seen a head in a roasting pan" Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers - Mary Roach

Classism definitely exists, but like everything else doesn't exist in a bubble. Class, race, gender, sex, age...these things all intersect and interact in ways that make social realities for people. Academics (which I am not) have different opinions about the extent to which one is more important than another. I would say yes, historically it has been far more difficult for a person of color to move up in American society and yes, that is still the case today. But I'm just a guy on reddit who likes to read. If you're interested in this stuff here's where I started: The Color of Law, New Jim Crow, Ta-Nehisi Coates, the autobiography of Malcolm X, The Warmth of Other Suns

Regarding competition, a lot of it is rooted in the types of people who settled the United States and the reasons why they came. Some of the people who came were religious or political dissenters trying to escape persecution, yes; but many, many of them were speculators here on behalf of some venture or company to see what they could discover/exploit the hell out of (and for how long) to get filthy rich and please the financial backers in the venture back home (some of whom were royal). That behavior was simply carried forward, both by Southern plantation owners and Northern industrialists: if you spend as little as possible running your venture, you'll have much greater profits in the end. And there is always somebody who will think they can do it more cheaply than you.

Here's an interesting book that might provide more insight: American Nations (Amazon)
An interesting article posted elsewhere on Reddit: NY Times article on American capitalism

Regarding college, there are many factors that have sort of dovetailed over the last 70 or so years to create the current situation. There's a big obsession ("madness") with attending college because the vast majority of employers now seemingly require college degrees for basic, halfway decent positions, and nobody wants to be left behind. This has led to a lot of bloat and the (unfortunate) de-valuing of the average degree. And this leads into why people are angry ("mad") about attaining/having college degrees: over that same period, college tuition has steadily gone up as costs have gone up. At the same time, wages have stagnated and subsidies (like for the public universities) have been slashed. Employers still want that degree, though, so many people take out loans to cover the difference in cost. And when they get to the end and get that job, they find out that they're going to be sorting garbage or filing widgets. And they still have to pay the loans back. You'll basically never get to use the university knowledge that you paid so much for, that the employer themselves required. So, yeah. Anger.

Of course, this doesn't explain why the US doesn't have a more robust (or publicized) vocational training system. Were I in office, I'd work to organize some kind of educational summit between industry and academia where they could hash all this out. What sort of knowledge does a university degree confer? Is it really necessary for most jobs? If you want your employees to have some kind of post-secondary training, what would be an acceptable alternative to university? Stuff like that. Then I'd work with the Department of Education to make it happen.

This isn't heavily science-y and a bit journalized, but I really enjoyed Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadaver's by Mary Roach. I also like Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne. There's a lot of overlap with what he teaches at his UChicago Eco & Evo course. Bad Science by Ben Goldacre is also wonderful, but will likely make you angry. Yet another interesting read is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

SO MANY!

["Lies my Teacher Told Me"] (http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0743296281) by James Loewen. This is about how the world really works, basically. It's all about history and politics and economics and how world powers interact with each other and their own population. It's incredibly eye-opening and will make you understand why everything is the way it is today! It's also ridiculously fun to read :D

["The Quantum and the Lotus by"] (http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Lotus-Journey-Frontiers-Buddhism/dp/1400080797/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1383171898&sr=1-1&keywords=the+quantum+and+the+lotus) by Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan. This is a super fascinating read! It's actually a transcribed conversation between a Buddhist who became a quantum physicist and a physicist who left science and became a Buddhist! It's this AMAZING look into complicated science and it's explained in such simple terms anyone can understand it. But beyond that, it's this really fascinating glimpse into a world where science and spirituality can co-exist. It's like science explaining spirituality, or spirituality giving a wholesome quality to science. It's just so unique and amazing!

["The Power of Myth"] (http://www.amazon.com/Power-Myth-Joseph-Campbell/dp/0385418868/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1383172215&sr=1-3&keywords=joseph+campbell) by Joseph Campbell. If you can, read EVERYTHING by this guy that you can get your hands on! This book is especially poignant because it's addressing all of the aspects of our modern day society, from religion to gangs to marriage, even education. It is incredibly powerful and eye-opening and explains so much about the way we work as humans and the way the individual interacts with society. Plus, you'll learn a shit ton about mythology that you never knew before! And you'll be looking at mythology from a ridiculously profound perspective that I've never seen anyone else address before.

I can give you more if you tell me what you're interested in learning more about :)

EDIT: Typos.

The first theories on this appeared in the states after Bush II got elected:

What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

https://www.amazon.com/dp/080507774X/

But it’s basically identity politics. The world has gotten to complex for many to understand so they’ve retreated back to a single strategy

If they are like me they will care about what I care about and handle things the way I would handle them if I was in charge

So BJs and trumps primary strategy is looking and sounding like the people whose votes they want. Trump even watches Fox News (Murdoch) as research to better know what that is.

This is a great question that I have thought about a million times. I have actually spent a lot of time trying to find a book on it, but I have not come across one that is specifically about Sociology or Psychology.

I first started to think about this when I was getting my masters degree (in Sociology). Often times I was super excited to share the things I would learn with my family and friends, and how the things I was (and still am) learning are often in contradiction to the things I was told/learned growing up. For context, I'm a white girl who grew up in an upper-middle class politically conservative suburb in a large city with successful parents, and I was always given everything I wanted/needed. I considered myself a Christian and I told people that I was a republican (although I knew nothing about politics and was just identifying with my parents).

Then I started studying Soci and my entire perspective on the world changed. It opened my eyes and forced me to look beyond my tunnel vision of society. It was really hard at times to come to terms with things that I thought I already understood, especially social issues that I had never thought about before or issues that had always been presented to me in a one-sided, biased manner.

A good example of this is the trope of the Welfare Queen. I was told that poor people, esp. poor black people, were moochers and only wanted handouts because they were lazy and didn't want to get a job. Of course, I learned that the Welfare Queen (and welfare "fraud") is a myth that was promulgated by Ronald Regan in order to stigmatize people in poverty so that he could convince Americans that rolling back the social safety net was justified because it was only being used by poor black (read: undeserving) citizens. The truth is that most people on welfare do have jobs (i.e. the 'working poor'). Also, the welfare reforms of 1996 created a 5-year maximum lifetime cap on benefits so that welfare "cheaters" (which did not exist anywhere near the level that we're often told) were literally unable to collect benefits for life (also, contrary to popular opinion, women do not have more babies to get more benefits. In fact, if a woman has a child while receiving benefits, she and her family will be removed from the rolls). Welfare is probably one of the least understood/mischaracterized social issue in American society.

Science in general is often met with the sting of anti-intellectualism, which is part of the answer to your question. However, I think social science in particular gets it worse than the 'natural' sciences like Biology and Chemistry. I used to say that it was because people were generally more suspect of social sciences, but I think it's more than that. People like to dismiss facts about social issues that they don't agree with or have a different view on because it's much easier to disagree that we live in a post-racial society (we don't) than it is to disagree on the functions of bodily organs. People also tend to conflate their individual life experiences with overall reality (i.e. "well, i've never experienced [blank] so it must not be true or its exaggerated" or "well, I know someone who is [blank] but [blank] doesn't happen to them"). You get what I am saying here? Most people don't question or critically think about social norms or commonsense 'truths' because these 'truths' are so embedded in our milieu that its hard to imagine otherwise. So instead of thinking critically, people dismiss sociological knowledge as either "elitist" or "not real science" so that they can remain undisturbed in their own little worlds.

Once I saw a question on r/askreddit that asked what the slogan of your college major or job would be. I would say, "Sociology: reminding people of uncomfortable truths since 1838" or "Sociology: everything you were taught about society was a big lie" lol.

I'm sorry I can't find any literature for you, but I can recommend these instead:

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters.

I find that science history and biography gives a good understanding of scientific methods, and when written for the lay-person, doesn't get so bogged down in technical jargon.

Here are a few of my favorites:

• A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
  
• Chaos: Making a New Science - James Gleick
  (Also check out his biographies of Isaac Newton and Richard Feynman)
  
• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - Mary Roach
  
  And here are a few on my to read list:
  
  
• Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society - Bill Bryson
  
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari
  
• The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine - Lindsey Fitzharris
  
• Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus - Bill Wasik & Monica Murphy
  
• The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring - Richard Preston
  
• The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science - Richard Holmes
  
• The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution - David Wootton
  
  I hope that helps.

I can't offer you squat on job hunting, but I used to be a water lawyer here in California and if you want to read an insanely interesting book, that will always up your interest with anyone in any part of the water business in the US (or probably Canada, too), read Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert, which all about the history of the aquafication of the West. Looks like you are Europe-based from your job applications, but it is a fascinating story well worth your time.

https://www.amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/0140178244

These should be the top recommendations hands down, both of these books were designed with your specific goal in mind:

A People's History of America - This focuses on history of the US from the perspective of the everyman rather than the 'big man' side of history where every politician is a gentle statesman. It shows just how barbaric and ghoulish those in charge often are.

Lies My Teacher Told Me. - Similar to the last one, this one shows how modern history loves to pretend all sorts of shit did not happen or ignore anything that's even slightly discomforting, like the idea that Henry Ford literally inspired Hitler, both in a model industry and anti-semitism.

These are both relatively easy reads with lots of praise.

Adam Curtis docs are always good, I recommend starting with one called "Black Power" which answers the question "What happens to African countries when they try to play ball with the west?"

That ELI5 is, of course by nature, too simplistic. The Germans didn't "install the Tutsi into power". Instead, Rwanda as it exists today is one of the few countries where the current borders pretty closely approximate with the borders of a complex hierarchical kingdom that existed before the country became a colony.

Colonial powers prefer using existing governing structures as it saves them the time and effort to set up an entire administrative system of their own, and in the case of Rwanda, this was easier than usual. They simply solidified the existing system, so in their eyes, at this point they weren't inducing volatility at all, but strengthening a stable system.

After WWI, the Belgians took over the administrative functions and they not only continued to rely on these governing structures, but, guided by the racist and eugenics movements of the time, came up with a racial explanation for the Tutsi rule: their superiority was demonstrated by their lighter skin, aquiline nose, tall stature, etc. as opposed to the broad-nosed, darker and shorter Hutus. According to this new racial mythology, Hutu were Bantus while the Tutsi were part-Caucasian.

So they didn't intend to induce volatility, but they certainly weren't well-intentioned when they decided how to rule. As to direct economic gain, Rwanda has few resources and covers a small and landlocked territory, but it was well-suited for cash crop production of mainly coffee and some tea.

This is another important cause of the volatility of the country in itself. The post-colonial one-party dictatorship under Hutu rule relied almost entirely on a mix of foreign aid and profits from the coffee trade, and purposely kept the country rural and the population uneducated in order to maximize the exploitability of its only profitable natural resource.

When coffee prices plummeted in the late 1980ies, this caused serious problems for the regime as both the international and domestic communities as well as the exiled Tutsi community in Uganda mounted a serious opposition to the dictatorship. They were eventually forced to agree to political reforms, but hard-liners who were unwilling to relinquish their power seized control after the assassination (probably by the RPF - Tutsi rebels from Uganda) of the President, were able to use the years of anti-Tutsi propaganda, trained submission through dictatorship, and fears about the rebels from Uganda to organize the genocide.


There still is a lot more to it, and it is also interesting, but worrying to see many parallels between the current post-genocide Tutsi government and the pre-genocide Hutu government. I mostly based the above on academic sources, but more accessible reading I could recommend about the country and the region would include Dancing in the Glory of Monsters and anything by Prunier and Mamdani. Jared Diamond's Collapse has a chapter on Rwanda which focuses on the economic dimension; it's a bit controversial, but based on some very interesting research.

"Smart" people learn to deal with boredom. Being educated takes rigor and a drive to appreciate things for more than just the plot.

This means you will be frequently bored sifting through some painfully tedious prose, but the payoff is that your brain will get some practice at synthesizing information and not just regurgitating surface-level stuff than any rube can pull out of a novel or a popsci book.

That said, I can't recommend the r/askhistorians booklist enough. This list was assembled by people who are experts in their fields and the books are mostly scholarly in nature, so they can be pretty dense, but they are highly informative and well-researched. You can be assured that these are people who follow the sources so the information is

I also recommend reading Moby Dick and following along with NYU's recorded lecture. It's slow and difficult to follow along with at times but it's a seminal work of American literature. Many would argue that it's America's first modern novel.

Plus it's just a manly fucking book. And after you finish reading it, you can follow up with In the Heart of the Sea for historical context. This is one of the few pop history books that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Philbrick is an excellent writer and his sources are accurate.

Final recommendation would be The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (Ginsburg translation).

Both Master and Margarita and Moby Dick are novels with philosophical themes, but I would say that Master and Margarita is more readable on its own, and Moby Dick is better if you follow the lecture that I linked.

I am not a scientist, I am a historian, however... if you would like to know some academic titles that go to the route of the problem I can suggest Coming Out Under Fire and Gay New York. Neither book is directly about the now debunked decision that homosexuality was a mental disorder but both make multiple references to it and Coming Out Under Fire is a book that deals with some of the immediate backlash of that not-so-scientific, scientific claim.

the short version of the history here though is that in 1952 it was put into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders from the APA. This was a political move and a result of 60 years of cultural shift. What had happened since 1890 is really the birth of a gay identity. Until this time, people had discussed homosexuality in obscure medical contexts or works like Krafft-Ebing's work Psychopathia Sexualis with Especial Reference to the Antipathic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-Forensic Study (1886) which concluded that it was a degeneration and talked about it more like a fetish. Later in his life after more work on the subject he retracted that hypothesis. A bit later Havelock Ellis and John Symonds came along. Their work concluded that Homosexuality was definitely not a disease but instead variation of sexuality. Then in 1948 the first Kinsey Report came out in which he definitively stated "Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual." The findings of his research was that sexuality is a range, its not black and white. This was all well before the APA's ruling.

Shortly after the ruling the work of Evelyn Hooker, The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual came out which determined that homosexuals could be perfectly well adjusted humans. The next Kinsey Report came out in 1953 and with that he once again concluded that sexuality was not black and white. According to him 37% of males and 13% of females had some sort of homosexual experience to orgasm in their lifetime. So to say somebody was exclusively heterosexual would be difficult.

Further supporting evidence of the political or social nature of the initial decision can be see in the APA's decision to remove it from their list of mental disorders. Stonewall has happened in 1969 and the entire gay liberation and gay rights movement has become very visible in media and in the public eye. Probably because of this, when the decision was made to remove it as an officially classified disorder it was also accompanied with a statement from the APA that supported the civil rights of homosexuals.

It depends on what you want to get out of it. If you want a clear, intro-level overview of the subject, check out Shafer-Landau's Fundamental's of Ethics. It's a fantastic place to start, and it is the book I recommend if you really want to understand the subject and plan to read outside the context of a class.

If you want primary texts, I suggest that you get the book's companion, The Ethical Life.

If you want a textbook that is a little shorter and more engaging, check out Rachels' The Elements of Moral Philosophy.

If you want an introduction that's informative and fun to read but less informative than the Rachels or the Shafer-Landau, check out Sandel's Justice. You can also watch his Justice lectures online. This book, as opposed to the other two, is written for a popular audience.

I was confused at first when I read your post. You seemed to be saying that Juice_lix was using a rhetorical deflection (which is true -- it's called the But What About Gambit). But instead, you're saying that the people he's talking to have diverted the subject.

But that is not even the case. The original point was about rich countries versus poor countries. Which rich country do you think of first? For most people in the world, it's the United States.

So when someone points out the things the United States has done, your friend pulls out the Gambit and you accuse his opponents of changing the subject.

Repeatedly reminding people of the crimes of a person or group of people is not a rhetorical device, nor should it be considered overused. The fact is, someone is saying something that you don't like. Because meanwhile, Matt Taibbi is doing the same thing to Wall Street, and he's practically a folk hero because of it.

You can't just declare something as a rhetorical device because you don't want to hear it, disagree with it, or are uncomfortable with its implications. Truth is not a matter of personal choice. It has to be countered with facts, not accusations.

Besides, there's no such thing as an objective history book. Your friend is setting up an impossible standard so he can easily dismiss all comers. But if you want some stories on the subject, you'll find plenty of that to go around.

I'm glad you liked it. Here is his Youtube channel. Here is a recent speech given by Wolff about a month ago with a colleague of his.

After a long speech like that, it's nice to see people take action. Here is a nice documentary of workers taking action by occupying factories in Argentina, and taking them over. Subtitles available in the video.

Here is the website for the Rosa-Luxemburg foundation in NYC, the foundation of Die Linke in Germany.

Here is a website with documentaries that cover a variety of political issues.

Here is a book that I strongly recommend you read. You can read it for free here.

If you have any other questions or comments, I'll be happy to respond.

I'm just speaking for myself here, but if you want to get a factbook, I'd go Uncle John's Bathroom Reader over a book of random facts. With a book of random facts, there's little incentive to do anything but glance at it occasionally. The Bathroom Reader contains longer anecdotes in addition to traditional factoid tidbits, so it's good if you've got a minute or a half-hour.

Also, if you want to get interesting science-type books, one that I haven't read but have heard good things about is Stiff. Hope that helps!

I'll give some historical context.

After WWII all our factories were still at full capacity and switched back to making personal cars, and all these returning vets on the GI bill want to college or back to good factory jobs and started buying homes and settling down.


Now the popular notion at the time was that city life was dying. Why get at best a row house or apartment in New york or philadelphia when you can build or buy a crafstmen house for the same price out in the suburbs. Also as civil rights was coming about it was convenient to cede the inner city to African Americans and poor and use things like loan restrictions to zone and price them out of the nice crime free suburbs.


So given the popular notion that the city and urban life was dying. Most city planning resources when into road construction so everyone could live out in the surburbs and take the new highways to their jobs. Entire cities were built up around this concept. In order to pay for this essentially halted Urban public works like subways and light rail. Why would you want to go on a stuffy subway with negroes when you can commute in your cadillac with radio and select-a-matic transmission?


So the results are profound and easy to verify. Any city that become major and modern after world war II has terrible public transportation: Examples include LA, Houston, Denver, Portland. Any city that was major before WWII tends to have still strong public transportation like Chicago, New york, Boston, D.C.


We basically decided as a nation that surburban life was awesome and gave up on public transportation. We even went steps further in places like LA where they actively bought out trolley lines just to close them down and pave over the tracks. Also the very way we designed our suburbs actively discourage pedestrainism and many live in places that "have no where to walk to". I'm ashamed to say that even my hometown Ann Arbor fell into that spiral and built many planned developments that have no feasible options of walking or biking to get to any retail area.


TLDR: city planners after WWII decided everyone (who was white) should live in suburbs and stopped funding public transportation.

Edit: for those who don't believe me this was covered by sociologists in the way things never were http://www.amazon.com/The-Way-Things-Never-Were/dp/0595348084

and lies my teacher told me http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0743296281/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457056096&sr=1-1&keywords=lies+my+teacher+told+me both fascinating reads

> After the war, the Great Migration caused thousands to leave their homes for a better life in the North and in Canada.

One of the best books I've read on the Great Migration is The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. A wonderful read, it's about three individuals who do just as you say, move to find a better life away from the oppression of Jim Crow.

edit: accidentally some words

I haven't read What We Owe to Each Other, but from what I'm familiar with it's an attempt by Scanlon to explain and justify his particular brand of moral contractualism, and not an introductory book on ethics and moral philosophy. I believe Chidi is a contractualist and deontologist so it makes sense why he would like that book (as a philosophy professor), but that's just one area of moral philosophy.

One of the problems with philosophy is that the works are intended for students and educated audiences and not laymen, so most of the books for example that I read when I first started college (and books that you'll find listed in "good for beginners" lists) like Nicomachean Ethics and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals I would never, ever recommend to a general audience. They're full of confusing philosophy terminology and long, multi-stage logical arguments.

Instead I highly recommend what I suspect you're really looking for in Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do? by Michael Sandel. While clearly aimed at an American audience, it's a very good and more importantly very readable general introduction to ethics and the varying schools of thought in the field. It's a really short read for a philosophy text and is peppered with real-life examples and dilemmas.

Another book that I actually read recently and quite enjoyed is A Concise Introduction to Ethics by Russ Shafer-Landau. Unfortunately, this one is intended for a student audience and is more of a textbook (complete with end of chapter quizzes), but it goes really broad and over not just all the big schools of ethics but also the fundamentals of moral reasoning, and metaethics and natural law (two things that don't always show up in ethics books which are usually about normative ethics).

I did actually, back when I didn't pay attention to how the real world worked, and just thought that the general, vague concept of "more freedom" sounded good. Maybe I didn't go full tilt into internet Libertarian where the closest thing to a structural critique comes down to "taxation is theft!!" and "Dale gets it!" and all real analysis is predicated on thought experiments, hypothetical fantasy worlds, and have no real foundation in the reality in which we live. Like honestly, if you do any actual examination of how society is structured, and you STILL think that government and taxation, as a concept, are the most oppressive forces in the world keeping you from success rather than the moneyed interests that manipulate and fuel legislative policy, then your vicious meme takedowns are going to contribute nothing to discussion or understanding beyond giving yourself a temporary right-wing dopamine rush of 0wn1ng the l1bz.

If you'd like a chance to broaden your understanding of some of the structural concepts I am referring to, rather than just a general title of "liberal" or whatever, here are just a couple pretty basic reading options to get you started.

​

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn (1980)

The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem (1968)

The Shock Doctrine: Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein (2006)

​

​

In my eyes "The day the world came to town" is the most HFY book that exists, mainly because it's true. There's no humans being better than everyone and generally being loudmouthed warmongers, but you still read with a smile on your face and think "I'm glad I'm human"

The book describtion:
"For the better part of a week, nearly every man, woman, and child in Gander and the surrounding smaller towns stopped what they were doing so they could help. They placed their lives on hold for a group of strangers and asked for nothing in return. They affirmed the basic goodness of man at a time when it was easy to doubt such humanity still existed."

amazon link

It's weird you're asking for academic sources for someone's armchair analysis and opinion that politics are best handled moderately. It's not really a thesis. If you mean you'd like academic sources about how certain sides get popular votes because of backlash from the other party, and how party alignment can lead to incredible bias, well that's kind of common sense. But here are some interesting academic articles and books about the subject.


https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/party_over_policy.pdf


https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X


http://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS234/articles/bartels.pdf


http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/williamson/files/tea_party_pop.pdf


https://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS125/articles/pomper.htm

It's not World War Z, or an action type book. This book is called Stiff. It's a very interesting and informative book about cadavers. I went into this book with much skepticism, but was intrigued by her personal recollection and delivery. The book made me go from laughing out loud to cringing by the subject at hand. I highly recommend this book, and it's available on kindle.

The off-chance you read it, (Let me know how you like it!)

My wishlist - http://www.amazon.com/registry/wishlist/2S2J4Y7OHPGTH/ref=cm_pdp_wish_all_itms (Only one item below $15.)

Africa: A Biography of the Continent by John Reader

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

Both cover some of the same concepts as GG&S, but in a much more rigorous fashion. Both are better reads with a less self-congratulatory tone and much more interesting information. GG&S is a kids book compared to these works, which is fine because GG&S is a great introduction to these sorts of concepts. Now you can get down to reading the good stuff.

Any book by Mary Roach- her books are hilarious, random, and informative. I like Jon Krakauer's, Sarah Vowell's, and Bill Bryson's books as well.

Some of my favorites that I can think of offhand (as another poster mentioned, I loved Devil in the White City)

No Picnic on Mount Kenya

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Collapse

The Closing of the Western Mind

What is the What

A Long Way Gone

Alliance of Enemies

The Lucifer Effect

The World Without Us

What the Dog Saw

The God Delusion (you'd probably enjoy Richard Dawkins' other books as well if you like science)

One Down, One Dead

Lust for Life

Lost in Shangri-La

Endurance

True Story

Havana Nocturne

I'm a big fan of the economist Richard Wolff and his podcast, Economic Update.

Some organizations to consider joining or supporting are
Democratic Socialists of America and Socialist Alternative.

I also encourage everyone to read Bernie's book, if you haven't already.

I would also highly recommend everyone read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

Finally, I encourage everyone to watch the Noam Chomsky documentary, Requiem for The American Dream, on Netflix.

Wings by Tom D. Crouch is good. He was the curator of the National Air & Space Museum (Smithsonian), and it's basically a history of all development of flight and flying machines.

If you liked The Right Stuff, I'd also recommend Man on the Moon. It's more specific to what follows the Mercury astronauts obviously (Gemini and Apollo), but it is quite good.

The Right Stuff movie is pretty good, too, if you haven't seen it. It's on Netflix Instant View (or at least was as recently as a few months ago).

Thanks for the recommendation! It's on Kindle Unlimited, so I just snagged it for "FREE".

I'd recommend anything by Mary Roach. She delves into the "WHY's?" and curious little bits of background information while having a lot of fun.

Mary Roach

• Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
  
• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
  
• Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

The Annenberg Foundation has an excellent online course in world history. It's challenging, but it'll give you a pretty thorough grounding in the major themes.

For American history, Lies My Teacher Told Me is one of the more entertaining reads.

But for Quiz Bowl, you're probably better off playing the History Channel's Quiz game. There are a few thousand questions.

What about Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong ? It's a bit above his age group (high school level I'd say) but if he's the type of kid who wants to read books about American history then he's probably above his reading level. This will also allow him to be obnoxiously pedantic and quite possibly correct his teachers in school, which I feel like a good amount of 13 year old boys would enjoy. I also think it's perfect for his age, considering he's probably starting to question authority, and this book pushes back against some of the whitewashing and blind optimism that you see in some American history textbooks.

Becoming politically literate is not like learning how to fix a car. There is no "unbiased" how-to manual. The reason for this is that political discussions consist of claims about: a) what the facts are, b) which facts matter and how they matter, c) whose claims about the facts are trustworthy, and d) what justice consists of. Most of these disputes are ideological, and so you will not find an ideologically netural ("unbiased") account of politics.

I would suggest immersing yourself in different political media and then see which points of view tend to best account for the facts and to best correspond to your sense of justice. Spend some time watching Fox news (hard-right), skimming through the NY Times (center-right), and and then listen to FAIR's Counterspin (hard-left).

Here are some books I would recommend. (These are all written from a hard-left to center-left perspective, but their authors are all serious scholars/intellectuals, and you will learn a lot from them.)

-Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States

-Vijay Prashad's The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World

-Joseph Stiglitz's The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them

-Doug Henwood's After the New Economy

All history you learn in high school is that kind of bullshit. Unfortunately, a lot of history books will give you the propaganda dissipated at the time as fact, much as I imagine nationalistic history books written in 200 years will quote from CNN and Fox to describe Bush's great war against the terrorists who hate our freedom. People don't like questioning nationalistic mythologies. Especially when they explain that we're all great heroes of idealistic freedom.

Given that you're on /r/Anarchism, you'd probably enjoy A People's History of the United States. Or really anything by Howard Zinn. The Populist Movement by Lawrence Goodwyn is good for talking about the post-Civil War era economic bullshit. Any biographies or autobiographies of the founders (even those written from a nationalistic point of view) will be unable to hide their business dealings and positions of power before, during, and after the revolution.

Any decent US history class you take should have a good list of readings. Better than I can remember off the top of my head.

If you have a Kindle The Autobiography of Ben Franklin is free and goes into great detail about his wealth, his positions in the Pennsylvania colonial government before the revolution, and his terms as President of Pennsylvania after the revolution (before the Constitution was adopted abolishing such positions). It does, of course, completely gloss over the fact that he knocked up a prostitute at 19, or that he was constantly having affairs. But often history is about recognizing what people aren't saying.

>I really dislike this need for a perfect, Platonic ideal of a hero.

http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0684818868

This book handles the concept really well. I think the argument Loewen is making is that we actually, in some way, diminish the accomplishments of great people by presenting them as completely entirely flawless, rather than human.

It's interesting how exposure influences perception of language. I found that word as a young child because I read books for teenagers, I think it was in a British novel from a few decades ago. Maybe CS Lewis, Narnia and such. It would've been from that generation and it had to be fiction.

On the one hand you've got someone that thinks it sounds derogatory and the other hand I think that sounds a bit silly. But it's down to experience and familiarity. Relative stuff. It doesn't make them dumb, it merely displays their thought process.

Yesterday I found someone that thought something was being falsely wordy and just throwing a thesaurus at a paragraph. It was actually a very specific and efficient description of a programming library and the environment/data it was designed for. It made sense to me apart from some terms relating to neural networks, it didn't even use many complex words, but he just thought it was someone being disingenuous.

That perception issue is a large driving force behind anti-intellectualism. Perceiving intelligent or complicated things as negative, bad, or of ill intent/purpose. Through the right light even this comment could find issue with someone due to the verbosity in the midst of the thread. But it's just late and I blab when I'm tired!

If you find perception at all interesting in this context I highly recommend the classic 'Anti-intellectualism in American Life' (wikipedia, Amazon) for an observation of political and social thought up to the 1950s. A really novel bit of nonfiction. Today the idea is still alive and well, but you may know of it now from mainstream media as a "Cult of Ignorance".

I'd like to also CYA because /u/CAPS_IS_LOCKED is definitely not related to that. It was just tangentially related to the initial view of something. I don't want people thinking I think this is actually about them!

I'm assuming you're American.

The Basics of American Politics together with Politics in Action and some regular political news reading would be a firm introduction to politics.

If you want to dig deep, then buy some books on economics and history. One thing I haven't seen in the answers yet is philosophy. It may not sound important, but it very much is. I would recommend Justice by Michael Sandel. It is a great introduction to different moral theories and ties them together with politics quite well. I left the book finally understanding why conservatives and liberals think the way they do.

Those 3 books should also introduce you to more resources that will take you down as far as you'd like to go.

> "all Bernie supporters are young college idiots who know nothing and just want free shit"

Just for the record, not that it will convince your father of anything, I'm 52 (probably older than he is), have read a lot and support Bernie. Though, Bernie is far more centrist than I am. I'm fiscally left of and more socially liberal than any of Ghandi, Nelson Mandela, or the Dalai Lama.

So, not all of us radical left-wingers (and yes I know I'm radical) are young or ignorant of what's going on in the world.

And, I'm retired rather young, not taking government money, not asking for government money, not even asking for lower taxes. I don't mind paying higher taxes than those who earn less than me. I just hate that the uber-wealthy making tons more than me pay less (in percentage) than I do.

I don't know why your father wants his own tax dollars to subsidize the Koch brothers. But, if anyone is ignorant, it is those who are not super-wealthy and support lower taxes for the wealthy. Why on earth would someone vote so strongly against their own self-interest??!!?

Please ask your father nicely to commit to spending just 20 minutes listening to an actual self-proclaimed plutocrat, a genuine billionaire, explaining why he supports liberal policies.

Beware Plutocrats, the Pitchforks are Coming

Then, if he's actually willing to read, point him at a couple of excellent books. This first is just a collection of essays, so doesn't require the same attention span as the second I will recommend.

What's the Matter with Kansas?

This next book is by a former managing director of Goldman Sachs (a rather high title if you've never worked on Wall Street, I have). This one explains how Wall Street privatized profit and socialized risk to bring down the global economy.

It Takes a Pillage

A Man on the Moon by Andy Chaiken is considered THE text on the Apollo program. If formed the basis of the mini series From the Earth to the Moon

Failure is not an Option by Gene Kranz is a wonderful first hand account of life in the trenches from Mercury thru Apollo.

And my personal favorite space book - Roving Mars which was turned into a great IMAX movie as well.

Highly recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253

Class: A guide through the American Status System, by Paul Fussel. it was written in the mid 80s, but I think the information is still relevant and the writer basically spends the entirety of the book answering your question about social class signifiers (why do New England upperclass have an affinity for nautical decor? find out in chapter 3).

To the part of the question about regions, you might be interested in this book: http://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures/dp/0143122029

it is about the whys behind American regional political and class differences based on who immigrated to certain areas of the country, the values and ideals they brought with them and how it changed the American landscape and informs the current social and political climate. Interesting stuff.

It's been vastly superceeded by more scientific based research, (I still loved the book though) instead of Diamond's approach more on "is one society better"-type outlook.

I recommend Why The West Rules--For Now by Ian Morris - basically the best book on the subject of why the west rules ever written, its a bit advanced though, having read Guns first will vastly help.

Next would be 1491 by Charles C. Mann an educated look on the pre-Colombian Americas and why we were so wrong in viewing them and why the myths persist. Highly recommended.

"What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America" is a great book on this subject. It talks a lot about how rural conservatives have been convinced into voting for harmful measures against small town America.

https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-Kansas-Conservatives-America/dp/080507774X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478737100&sr=8-1&keywords=what%27s+the+matter+with+kansas

Written by Mary Roach who is hilarious and has other great books! I recommend these in particular:

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal

So it took a year of on-and-off reading, but I finally finished Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

Anybody here ever give it a read? I think the salient takeaway I had was that almost all of the social issues discussed via old and new media today (racism, economic freedom, war, politics) have occurred and been solved -- to an extent -- with relative frequency over the history of the US. There's a lot to take away from our history that grants perspective regarding modern struggle, which in turns has a calming effect.

Time is a flat circle, I guess. Everything we have done or will do we will do over and over, forever. Something comforting in knowing that.

just some of my standard answers.


The Disappearing Spoon- yes, it's chemistry but I found it very interesting.


Abraham Lincoln's DNA- if you have a good background in genetics you might already know many of these stories. Read the table of contents first.


New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers- disease based biology. There is a follow up book if it turns out you like it.


Stiff- more than you wanted to know about dead bodies.


And by the same author but space based... Packing for Mars.

I hope these help... Cheers.

Seconded; for a great history of this, check out Cadillac Desert

Also, one problem I have with this graphic is how the United States is treated as a single entity. While the West is running out of water, the Great Lakes region sits on 1/5 of the world's available fresh water. To this day one of America's strengths is abundant natural resources.

Yes! For those interested, it's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. She has several others out (6 books and one compilation). Gulp might be my favorite but I really enjoyed Packing for Mars and Bonk. This sub would also really appreciate Spook!

That's a great question. I'm not a sociologist, but even many researchers will tell you there isn't a single answer for the definitive rise in social isolation. To make some sweeping, general claims, it largely has to do with:

• Moving from tight-knit communities to large cities
  
• More Americans living alone (25% of the US population.)
  
• Less involvement in community institutions (church, synagogue, community centers, supper clubs, etc.) – Bowling Alone is a great read on this.
  
• More controversial, but our reliance on technology for connection. We all have a tendency to conflate surface connections with true intimacy, but the size of your network has no effect on your level of loneliness. Loneliness is better understood by a lack of supportive outlets, instead of simply not being around people. Technology can be great for intimate or surface connections, but social media is generally geared toward the latter.
  
  And right! The study you reference might be the General Social Survey from U Chicago. It's really astounding that it's hard to talk about loneliness publicly, considering the former surgeon general labeled it an epidemic. Hard to believe there can still be a stigma about something affecting so many people.
  
  If you're interested in this, two great books I recommend are The Village Effect and The Lonely American. Both have excellent theories and explanations.

I'm a lady! I started on rotten.com a long time ago, too. I've always been a little morbid I guess, but I am also just fascinated by the things we don't see that (a) we used to or (b) other cultures still do. My mom worked around a lot of medical illustrators for most of my life, too, so I grew up seeing random fetuses in jars and understood the importance of cadavers.

Also, Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is one of my favorite books.

But I'd add, as other meta posts have before, that I learned way more than I expected when I started coming here.

Bones breaking isn't necessarily what kills you in rapid deceleration situations. Often times it's your heart detaching from your aorta. Every once in a while someone survives a jump off the golden gate bridge or something, and it's usually because when they hit the water their heart happened to be not full of blood for that split second, and wasn't as heavy, thus staying attached.

edit: this comment got a little more attention than I thought it would. If you're interested in this kind of thing, I would highly recommend Mary Roach's book Stiff.

> ... and totally not known even remotely enough in general.

I think this is one of the reasons I'm so open about recommending his work. He seems to have the ability to take topics that most people may not be exposed to and make them comprehensible. It's similar to the way I feel about Mary Roach in books like Stiff, Bonk, and Gulp.

Along with that, Bryson has some purely entertaining works like A Walk in the Woods, Notes From a Small Island, and The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir that are just a joy to read. I guess I'll stop now because I'm starting to feel like shill.

Edit: spelling is hard.

Anything technical relating to an interest you may have; fiction is good, but reading about topics like fuel cells or woodworking and then experimenting with it is just as fun / well-rounding.

As for history, "Lies My Teacher Told Me" is required reading for anyone wanting a better understanding of US history.

This is frustrating. I agree with Maher on his point, but he really should have prepared himself to explain it. He just made a statement and didn't really bother to discuss it further... and in my opinion, that's probably part of the problem of American stupidity. Nobody has the patience to listen to further explanations or intellectual discussions.

I suggest to anyone interested in this topic to read Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. It was written in 1964, and won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction that year... but it is still extremely relevant today.

I'm from New England and never had a lobster 'til I went to Africa in my 30s :(

I would imagine this is true of lots of salt- and freshwater foods, oysters, scallops, crabs, tuna, salmon...I'm not real sure about the state of the lobster population, but I think high prices for this kind of stuff can be a good thing (depending on how the money is used and the fishing is carried out).

Reminds me of something I read in In the Heart of the Sea, an awesome book about the shipwreck that inspired Moby Dick, but also more generally about the Nantucket Whaling industry. Nantucket was the world's whaling capital in the early 1800s, some days they could practically do their harpooning from the docks. A few decades later, they're sailing from Massachusetts to the Pacific to make their catches.

Then again, I'm sure some of that pricing is just high because it can be. There are weeds in my yard that fetch insane prices at microgreeneries and heirloom farms.

So, if you knew the position of every atom in the universe, you could write perfect history? So what?

One of the difficult things about history is you have limited evidence. Every written document from Anglo-Saxon England we possess would fit into a small box. The largest amount of surviving text we have from Ancient Rome is monument and gravestone inscriptions.

Our most sophisticated computer models can't predict the weather in 10 days or the stock market opening tomorrow, and we know way more about the current prices of stocks or the current weather data than we do about, say, Ancient Sparta. The data for any model based approach just isn't there. It some ways, environmental determinism in history is like being given a puddle of water and the room temperature and trying to figure out what the ice cube looked like.

There's a reason economic determinism in history has gone out of fashion, and that ecological determinism never really went in: it's a less useful model for understanding why things happen compared with a more nuanced approach.

FWIW, Diamond's follow up book, Collapse contained several sections specifically rebutting the suggestion that he was an "environmental determinist."

Mary Roach! Mary Roach Mary Roach!

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Packing of Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

I can't recommend these highly enough. Mary Roach is the most engaging, funny science writer I've read.

Also [A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman]http://www.amazon.com/Natural-History-Senses-Diane-Ackerman/dp/0679735666/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323874194&sr=1-1

If you wouldn't be weirded out by it, I high recommend reading Stiff. It's a really great read about the various ways they use cadavers for scientific research. It's actually quite helpful and important. There's a story in there about medical students at a University (I can't remember which) who would have memorial services for their cadavers at the end of the semester. Really neat stuff.

If you haven't read it, you should check out Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. Each chapter is about a different use for bodies that have been donated to science. It's humorous, engaging informative, and fun. Really great read!

>When Justice has been achieved and society is perfect.

Define justice, and define perfect. (Asking this question reminds me of this awesome book http://www.amazon.com/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do/dp/0374532508 )

Here's one for you

>Progressives are the conservatives of the future.

Great conversation starter.

You have peaked my interest. In your ethical point of view, who's money is your money?

As for the people of Haiti, do they work harder to survive? Has the developed world influenced their country more than say the Domicanan?

If you want a good book on this and many other things, check this out.

https://www.amazon.com/Under-Black-Flag-Romance-Reality/dp/081297722X is one of the best nonfiction book on pirates.

If you want a sword & sorcery, fantasy version of pirates, Red Seas Under Red Skies is a great read. If you want just piratey fiction, Captain Blood is one of the best pirate books. It's older, but still in print. I love that thing!

In the heart of the sea is a great book on the true account of a group of sailors this happened to in the 1700's...adrift in the pacific for like 69 days i think...it was the influence for Moby Dick because a whale sunk their ship...never has a nonfiction book read like such an action novel for me

One of my all time favorites is Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, about a climbing season on Mount Everest where a lot of things went wrong.

I also enjoy Mary Roach - she has a great gift of being able to convey information while being really entertaining in the process. Stiff is my favorite of hers, but I also really enjoyed Packing For Mars.

Well yeah because they ruin the experience, for the most part they are new to all of this. It's like a frat party with kegs and people just going to get fucked up and get laid. I've been guilty of being a snob too, I just want to see things progress. I think music has an effect on society as well. It's complicated but I think if we can get a good combination of fun and deep music it will have a profound effect. I saw what happened when hip hop became all about vip and same thing is happening with dance music.

I think the problem with music in general is that commercial side becomes anti-intellectual and the underground get's marginalized, and can then become elitist, which sometimes leads to the death of both and that's why we have cycles in music. It's so much more complicated, but you can blame big business like live nation and clear channel for that, the agencies, the artists..greed in general.

Check this stuff out, want to see more of this

http://www.businessinsider.com/bottle-service-is-over-at-nyc-clubs-2013-3

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/arts/music/pacha-in-ibiza-feels-dance-clubs-center-of-gravity-shift.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Less of this.

http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Richard-Hofstadter/dp/0394703170/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370284623&sr=8-1&keywords=hofstadter+anti-intellectualism

Basically it all needs to come together, and I'd like to think we are headed in that direction. Thanks to the Interwebs.

Black people are concentrated in urban areas in the US as a direct consequence of discriminatory mortgage lending and realty practices in the mid 20th century that forced them into de-facto segregated neighborhoods.

Now, granted. Dems have taken advantage of that concentration to use these folks as a power base constituency. But those neighborhood circumstances were not created for political advantage. They were created to marginalize black people as much as possible during the period now known as the Great Migration when so many were fleeing the Jim Crow south.

Sources:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679763880/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_vlJkDbTN6HPGS

I'm assuming here that you haven't really studied any history since high school, and at the time you likely found it dreadfully boring (don't we all). If this is correct, take solace in the fact that you were being taught history in likely the worst way possible, and the system almost seems designed to bore you and the rest of the students to death.

One tactic, then, would be for you to work on thinking about history more as it is: seeking answers to the fundamental "why" questions that tell what it means, collectively, to be us. It's a study of choices and struggles and understanding the challenging, horrible, daunting circumstances they faced. High school curriculum drives out such notions of struggle and difficulty because they invite controversial questions, like why the rich manipulated the poor or why the white mistreated and killed the black/Native American. In doing so they deny any of the historical actors, whether oppressed or oppressor, their humanity, and without that who cares about studying them?

I would hope that once you get more exposed to actual history and not names and dates, that you'll grow more of a natural interest for the subject. As such, I have two books to recommend you:

1. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. This book, initially controversial, will turn your initially learned narrative of American history on its head. The good people are usually bad and the quiet people are loud. Be careful, though. It's a new, highly useful angle from which to view American history but its not some gospel of truth either, just because it has a forbidden fruit feel, like you're learning what they don't want you to know.
   
   
2. Lies my Teacher Told Me by James Loewen. This book says in better words that I mentioned already, how school textbooks water down American history into nothing so that everyone swallows it without complaint. It'll also shake up a bunch of assumptions and, hopefully, leave you wanting more.
   
   These books won't give you a complete view of American history but my hope is that they'll introduce you to a form of history that's interesting while also exposing you to a wide array of American history topics. From there you can see what you actually enjoy learning about and pick better books from there.

I learned more about US history from the books below than anything I learned from my high school teachers. I did have some good college professors - but they are the ones who recommended these books. Also, "Untold History of The United States" documentary by Oliver Stone on Netflix. If you like dry stuff any Ken Burns documentary.

Lies My Teach Told Me

People's History of the United States

>Thank you for that article, it did clarify your argument about cultural communities in America immensely.

I recommend picking up a copy of American Nations for yourself; it's quite illuminating. Our Patchwork Nation (book & website) and The Nine Nations of North America are also worth a look, but they are a bit ahistorical and place too much emphasis on economics rather than culture.

> I have to ask what the intentions are behind rejecting science...

With "science" lets be specific, as people (conservative or otherwise) tend to accept and promote scientific findings which confirm their biases. When people complain about conservative opposition to "science" they typically mean the following:

Rejection of Evolution

This position is assumed by many Evangelical Christians who embrace Biblical Litteralism. It is an article of their faith that the Bible, which states humanity was created in it's current form, is the true and inerrant word of God.

I think it's noteworthy that this issue has become more controversial, not less, over time; i.e. there are more people in America today rejecting evolution than there were in the 80s and 90s. I believe that for many Evangelicals rejecting evolution has become a necessary affirmation of their faith as part of the broader fight against Liberal cultural imperialism, which tends to be secular.

Rejection of Climate Change

The environmental movement in America is largely based in the liberal cultures of the Left Coast and Yankeedom (digression: I hate that name and tend to think of Woodard's "Yankeedom" as 'Greater New England'). In fact, the Left Coast was dubbed "Ecotopia" in The Nine Nations of North America, because of the importance of the environment to that culture.

This means that the primary proponents of climate science are the cultural enemies of America's Conservative cultures. By itself that would make the science suspect to those cultures.

Addressing the issues raised by climate change will require even more use of the federal government to enforce a cultural value of the aforementioned liberal cultures (specifically, environmentalism). It should come as no surprise that Conservatives increasingly suspect it's simply all propaganda meant to justify ever more cultural imperialism by the left.

Rejection of "Social Science"

On this front I have a lot of agreement with Conservatives. Much of "Social Science" seems, at best, to be a pseudo-science, heavily influenced by the biases and assumptions of its practitioners. Much of it also emerges from Universities based in liberal cultural regions, which explains why conservatives reject it.

Put simply, when it comes to the conservative "rejection" of science, what they are really rejecting is the arguments of Liberal Cultures, even when those arguments are right. The sad truth is, it doesn't matter if you've got the facts on your side, when the people you need to persuade can't trust you.

Scenario: two people come to you, asking you to choose a side in their argument. One is a trusted community leader or the representative of an industry that provides something you value and employs thousands of people. The other is someone who holds your beliefs in contempt and who promotes values you find offensive. Who would you believe?

Rejection of Healthcare

The great irony of the current health care debate is that the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) was based off a plan from the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank). So why are Conservatives so adamant in rejecting it?

Again, it's a matter of trust. All they can see is an effort to bring healthcare under the control of the federal government, and thus under the control of the liberal cultures.

If a conservative President had proposed the plan they would have supported it. Instead they are opposing it, because they don't trust the intentions of the people pushing it.

Rejection of Education

I actually went to the trouble to look up the Common Core standards which conservatives are up in arms about. Frankly, I found them so vague and innocuous that I suspect they were only passed as a "feel good" measure to make it look like the administration was taking education seriously.

Nothing in them innately challenges conservative cultural values, so again I believe it's simply a matter of trust. It looks to them like Liberals using the federal government to indoctrinate their children, so they are fighting it tooth and nail.

>there are instances in which the conflicting values of a larger nation must be resolved

Very true, but unless you are going to use force, such resolutions require compromise and compromise requires trust. The cultural imperialism of America's liberal cultures, their open contempt for conservative values and their willingness to use the federal government to enforce their values on conservative communities, has destroyed any hope of establishing such trust.

>The fight for Civil Rights was an extremely controversial movement at the time, and many communities rejected it as progressive imperialism, which it certainly was. It was also the minority demanding change from the majority. If you look at it like that, making many people change for few might seem unfair but that is an extremely limited way of seeing. First of all, what exactly did the majority have to give up?

What the majority had to lose, was exactly what it did lose: the national consensus. In the wake of the Great Depression the Democratic party forged a political consensus between Americas various cultures, which allowed the nation to progress economically and stand united in the face of foreign threats.

That consensus, which prevailed into the early 1960s, saw America rise to the status of a global super power, entailed the strongest sustained economic expansion in our nation's history (before and since), and vastly expanded the middle class. That consensus was based on a social contract which entailed the liberal cultures ignoring the racist policies of the south.

Look at where we are today: declining global influence, rising economic inequality, and extreme political dysfunction. We have arrived at this situation precisely because the national consensus was sacrificed on the altar of liberal cultural imperialism.

That being said, it wasn't the passage of the Civil Rights Act which dealt the fatal blow. That act was, in many ways, simply an evolution of the national consensus. It was the product of a democratic process; passed by an elected congress and signed into law by an elected president.

The legalization of abortion, deregulation of contraception, and abolition of school prayer, were qualitatively different. They were forced on the nation by un-elected judges. These decisions were not the product of a national search for consensus and they galvanized the formation of the religious right, without which the Republican party would not have an effective electoral coalition.


___
> It is infinitely less expensive to fund contraceptive services than to pay for pregnancy and childbirth

This is actually a very short sighted view. Since the wide spread adoption of contraception ,western nations have seen a marked demographic decline. If it weren't for immigration the U.S. population would be declining. Nations with aging and shrinking populations face stagnant or negative economic growth (see Japan).

Unfortunately, importing relatively uneducated workers from the third world to replace highly educated and productive first world workers who refuse to reproduce, is not a viable long term solution. Western nations might soon have to consider banning contraception in order to ensure their long term viability.

>insurance companies already "subsidize" men's sex lives, by covering erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra. That insurance companies were already covering those drugs was part of the reason why the Employment Equal Opportunity Commission ruled in 2000 that insurance companies providing prescription coverage could not exempt birth control.

That's a specious comparison. Erectile dysfunction is a medical problem requiring treatment. Fertility is not a disease, it is in fact a sign of health in premenopausal women. Comparing one to the other is like comparing reconstructive surgery with purely cosmetic surgery.

It's worth noting that the EEOC is an appointed body, not an elected one. Their rulings are not the product of a national debate in search of a consensus.

>Actually all the Planned Parenthoods in my area provide a big bag of free condoms to any person who asks for them.

Bully for them, but are they being required to by federal law? It's fine for an institution to promote your values in your culture. It's not alright for the federal government to coerce institutions in other cultures to enforce values which conflict with their own.

>>Men pay 70% of the taxes in this country

>And I'm gonna need sauce on this please.

Good catch. This figure is repeated often in the manosphere, so I cited it without confirmation. I think it emerged from this British report, but I can't find comparable numbers for the U.S. Given the disparity between male and female income in the U.S. it's likely men are paying more in taxes than women, but I can't find any hard numbers.

America was founded by several groups, each with different backgrounds, lifestyles, and values. One of these groups were slave owners, who created their region of America in the tradition of a slave society, in which armed free rich whites controlled illiterate, bound black slaves. This is one of the regional models on which America was founded. Other groups, such as Quakers, Puritans, and Catholics, had a more egalitarian, race-neutral vision. But the idea of a society based on a racial hierarchy, with whites at the top and blacks on the bottom, is one of the founding models of the U.S.


https://www.businessinsider.com/the-11-nations-of-the-united-states-2015-7


https://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures/dp/0143122029


https://www.npr.org/2013/11/11/244527860/forget-the-50-states-u-s-is-really-11-nations-says-author

Read this if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/Gay-New-York-Culture-1890-1940/dp/0465026214

Chauncey taught "U.S. Lesbian and Gay History" last fall, and after hearing him reconstruct U.S. sexual history through his unique gloss, I actually felt like I understood myself a lot better in the context of not only today's gay culture. I appreciate a lot more deeply now how the way I interact with and feel around other gay men didn't just pop out of nowhere. Seriously; I really recommend it.

____

"Short" answer: Legal discrimination, oppressive social norms, and post-WWII pressures to maintain a nuclear family structure pushed gay life "underground" and created a collective consciousness. Once gay people understood sexual orientation to be an identity category, (similar to race or gender or class), spaces unique to gay men began to form their own counterculture. In such spaces, where secrecy and discretion were critical to maintaining a "double life," traditional relationship structures like monogamy didn't often fit the bill. On the flip side, these spaces afforded the privacy necessary to play with norms (e.g. drag). Many features of contemporary gay life are thus remnants of this past, and the fact that gay people can even imagine living a suburban life with 2.5 kids, white picket fences, and a happy marriage is an indication of sexual assimilation...well, depending on who you ask.

I obviously glossed over a lot of nuance in that paragraph, but I hope that helps.

In our era carbon capture brings the greatest measurable benefit, and it's young growth that accomplishes that most effectively.

Given the degree to which Native Americans cleared brush before their populations were encumbered by European disease and predation (see: http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/1400032059), "more trees than 1900" pretty much means more trees than at any time in human history."

Together: That means a hell of a lot.

I know I'm late to the party, if this gets under your skin read Lies my Teacher Told Me. The author reviews key points in history like this and what several history books say. Not only does it expand on this it goes deeper than what I thought I knew.

A great read I highly recommend!

Probably the most obvious person to look at is David Graeber as he's probably the best known self-identified anarchist anthropologist. Aside from him, however, you may also be interested in the work of James C. Scott - specifically his book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.

That being aid, I don't remember if Graeber or Scott actually lay out plans for what an anarchist society would look like.

It's also worth noting, I think, that's there's a big difference between a stateless society and an anarchist one, if by the latter we mean one explicitly organized according to anarchist ideas. A lot of anarchists nowadays point to the EZLN as a model for a contemporary stateless society, which is quite understandable. However I don't believe the EZLN actually considers itself to be anarchist, though I think they're sympathetic.

That was more likely to be in American Nations and not in Albion's Seed, which covers only British immigration and is, as I remember it, more anthropological than political.

From a summary by Woodard:

> NEW NETHERLAND. Established by the Dutch at a time when the Netherlands was the most sophisticated society in the Western world, New Netherland has always been a global commercial culture—materialistic, with a profound tolerance for ethnic and religious diversity and an unflinching commitment to the freedom of inquiry and conscience. Like seventeenth-century Amsterdam, it emerged as a center of publishing, trade, and finance, a magnet for immigrants, and a refuge for those persecuted by other regional cultures, from Sephardim in the seventeenth century to gays, feminists, and bohemians in the early twentieth. Unconcerned with great moral questions, it nonetheless has found itself in alliance with Yankeedom to defend public institutions and reject evangelical prescriptions for individual behavior.

From skimming this wiki page, it appears there were multiple rounds of immigration, and that the Dutch who live in Michigan moved 200 years after those who settled New Amsterdam.

Tell us a little bit more about yourself. What entertainment genres do you like? Are there any subjects you want to learn more about?

Here's a few good books I've read recently:

• 1491; about cultures in the Americas before Columbus arrived. There was a lot more going on than you'd think.
  
  
• The Tipping Point: about looking at big trends and processes and finding the place where you can make a difference.
  
  
• Storm Front: Book 1 of the Dresden Files: One of my favorite fiction series. Urban fantasy about a wizard who works as a private detective in Chicago. Phillip Marlowe/film noir sort of attitude with a lot of insight and humor.

I started to read more when I was trying to unplug. TV/Netflix/phones can really pull you out of reality, make your brain weak as you begin to lose control of your thoughts. Just try not watching TV/youtube for 3 days...why is it so hard? Are we addicted to screens or are we just lazy. Research neuroplasticity, and how you can make your brain work for you (any how you fall into additive traps when you lose control of your attention). A lot of people on here are recommending meditation, I can't stress how important this is.

Start by reading someting that interests you...check out r/suggestmeabook if you need some help. Also, I can recommend some great books:

• Snow Crash - Neil Stephenson // The best cyberpunk/sci-fi roller-coaster of a read I have come across.
  
• The Iliad - Homer / Fagles translaition // Read this to understand the mankind's greatest story about war, violence and masculinity - this is about the Trojan war (well 4 days near the end), and was widely considered to be the Bible for ancient Greeks.
  
• A Man on the Moon - Andrew Chaikin // Fascinating (and accurate) account of NASA's Apollo space program from start to finish.
  
• Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed - Ben Rich // Behind-the-scenes account of the Skunk Works program and the incredible achievements they made back in the day.
  
  Best of luck.
  
  

> hundred year old talking points

Official redlining didn't start until 1934. Other forms of discrimination and segregation existed during that same time period. For example, the realtors association of Grosse Pointe had an informal racial point system until the 1960s. This is hardly a hundred-year-old issue. Elderly people alive today spent a good portion of their lives living under these conditions. There are plenty of excellent, thoroughly-sourced books on the subject. Enjoy!

1 2 3 4

p.s. Wealth may not last for three generations, but that doesn't necessarily mean that poverty (and its effect) also does not last for three generations. It's much easier to lose wealth than it is to gain it in the first place.

Upvote for The Lost City of Z!! Loved loved it.

Charles Mann's 1491 is wonderful.

It depends on what you're interested in, really.

If any of you are interested, I'd suggest Jim DeFede's The Day the World Came to Town. It's a well written account of what went on in Gander, N.L. on Sept. 11 and the following days. Being an Atlantic Canadian, I was impressed by how he captured the whole thing without making Newfies sound like bumpkins. Good read, highly recommended.

>because the rapid demographic shifts from rural to urban areas would have threatened the Republicans' majority in the House.

Ahhh, the Great Migration. Anytime I hear mention of it I feel compelled to recommend The Warmth of Other Suns. It's a fantastic book that's well worth the read.

Be forewarned though; don't read this if you don't want to end up empathizing with black folk, because it'll getcha in the feels.

I appreciate your desire to find the good in this person, but seriously, do yourself a favor and read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. You'll be appalled.

We don't celebrate Genghis Khan, Caesar, or Alexander the way we do Columbus, because we're not blindly following some revisionist agenda and jingoist bullshit. We should give up celebrating him too. We can celebrate the music of Mexico, the food of Italy, the poetry of Chile, the dancing of Brazil and the books of the United States without bringing his name up.

This question gets asked all the time on this sub. I did a search for the term books and compiled this list from the dozens of previous answers:

How to Read the Solar System: A Guide to the Stars and Planets by Christ North and Paul Abel.


A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.


A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.


Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan.


Foundations of Astrophysics by Barbara Ryden and Bradley Peterson.


Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program by Pat Duggins.


An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything by Chris Hadfield.


You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes: Photographs from the International Space Station by Chris Hadfield.


Space Shuttle: The History of Developing the Space Transportation System by Dennis Jenkins.


Wings in Orbit: Scientific and Engineering Legacies of the Space Shuttle, 1971-2010 by Chapline, Hale, Lane, and Lula.


No Downlink: A Dramatic Narrative About the Challenger Accident and Our Time by Claus Jensen.


Voices from the Moon: Apollo Astronauts Describe Their Lunar Experiences by Andrew Chaikin.


A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin.


Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA by Amy Teitel.


Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module by Thomas Kelly.


The Scientific Exploration of Venus by Fredric Taylor.


The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe.


Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her by Rowland White and Richard Truly.


An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Bradley Carroll and Dale Ostlie.


Rockets, Missiles, and Men in Space by Willy Ley.


Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Clark.


A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.


Russia in Space by Anatoly Zak.


Rain Of Iron And Ice: The Very Real Threat Of Comet And Asteroid Bombardment by John Lewis.


Mining the Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets by John Lewis.


Asteroid Mining: Wealth for the New Space Economy by John Lewis.


Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris.


The Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe Report by Timothy Ferris.


Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandries by Neil deGrasse Tyson.


Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson.


Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon by Craig Nelson.


The Martian by Andy Weir.


Packing for Mars:The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach.


The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution by Frank White.


Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler.


The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne.


Entering Space: An Astronaut’s Oddyssey by Joseph Allen.


International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems by Hopkins, Hopkins, and Isakowitz.


The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene.


How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space by Janna Levin.


This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age by William Burrows.


The Last Man on the Moon by Eugene Cernan.


Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond by Gene Kranz.


Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.


The end

PS - /u/DDE93 this list has all the links.

Fair question. I think genocide is universally offensive. Although, I will admit to laughing repeatedly at Bill Burr's population control jokes, particularly the one where he says we should randomly take out cruise ships.

You know the reason why that's funny? It's because cruises are expensive and people who tend to go on them are kind of the epitome of wastefulness, just eating and shitting everywhere on a boat. They can therefore be the butt of jokes until the end of time. If, on the other hand, Bill Burr tried to make a joke about taking out flotillas of migrant refugees in the Mediterranean, his career would probably end quickly. Those migrants are a vulnerable population of people who need help. It just isn't funny no matter how to spin it.

Now, I understand that Native Americans are not currently in such a dire state. However, the political situation with Native Americans depends on the acknowledgment of their culture and their sovereignty. It's a sensitive situation. It's not cut and dry. It's not one guy's word over another. Yes, they do have protections under the law, but are their leaders done negotiating? No. Constant lobbying is going on. Why do you think this mascot thing keeps coming up every year? It's usually during the playoffs, when the Braves come under national attention. Every single year. Why is this happening? It's because of the delicate political situation with the Native Americans. I cannot possibly explain it here. All I can say is that you would do yourself a service by reading up on it. You might want to start with Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

I'd highly recommend the book, "The Day the World Came to Town." A great overview of the story, with many real accounts of the local residents who helped by taking complete strangers into their homes and their lives.

Traveled through Gander about 10 years ago and spent some time chatting with the local book shop owner, who turned me on to the read. 10/10 would read again. Seeing Gander with my own eyes.. it is tiny. The lengths they went to are pretty heartwarming.

There isn't a universal tech tree in real life. It's kind of hard to say any culture is "more advanced" than another when they're so different. It's especially hard when we just don't know that much about the native societies in the Americas pre-Columbus. There's a really amazing book called '1491' by Charles C. Mann that's a pretty easy read and probably the best summary of our understanding of pre-Columbian America and would answer a lot of your questions.

A lot of the better-researched/possible in the next 5 years stuff will have "speculative fiction" tacked on as a label instead of sci-fi. Just an observation.

In terms of very readable science nonfiction, you might try The Poisoner's Handbook, which is told in anecdotes about murder cases and the development of modern forensics in New York or Mary Roach's humorous essay collections in Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, and others. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan was also quite readable and well-researched (about agrobusiness), but his other books get overly preachy, I think.

The Best Science and Nature anthologies are a good starting point when you're looking for new authors you click with too.

• Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers - I loved her book Boink about sex which I read a few years ago. Really funny and informative.
  
  
• [Pretty Little Liars](http://www.amazon.com/Pretty-Little-Liars-Box-Set/dp/0061801313/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1411518792&sr=1-2&keywords=pretty+little+liars_ =) - I have read 10 of these in the past couple weeks. My little sister got me hooked on them and the show which we binge watched together on Netflix. Yes they are horrible and trashy but my inner 13 year old girl loves them and I must find out who A is!!! Judge away people because I dun curr.

That's definitely a failure of your school system, though I'm not going to comment on Georgia's in general since I know nothing about it. I'm a former teacher who's had experience in several school districts, and all of them required a basic world history course that heavily covered Europe. Heck, when I was in school we covered European geography and history in 5th grade, then again in middle school, and again in high school.

Sounds like you got robbed. Luckily, there's lots of great books out there you can use to catch yourself up if you care to, and some of them are free. (I tried to only highlight affordable ones, but libraries are a great resource too!)

That's not really accurate... one of the most well-respected, even-handed, and historically sourced resources on the Stonewall Riots is Stonewall by Martin Duberman. You should read it.

Yes, the extent to which the sparking incident and the subsequent riots were (or were not) "trans PoC"-driven is very often misrepresented, particularly today where we get all these things about how Stonewall apparently didn't have any white or cis people (which is total bullshit), but there most certainly were drag queens and trans people (at the time, those two things were strongly conflated) and nonwhite people heavily and frequently involved at Stonewall and in the riots.

Other great resources include Gay New York by George Chauncey and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers by Lilian Faderman about gay male and female, respectively, identity and culture from the late 1800s through the 20th century.

I definitely would recommend everyone here read Stonewall by Duberman, though. It's a good look at just how involved everyone was and in what ways. Conservative, middle-class white gay men, black trans drag queens, working class people, Latino people, white women, etc. Anyone who claims that one group or another "wasn't really involved" is either ignorant or misrepresenting the facts.

Especially considering the major population centers were, depending on the time period, mostly in Central America and the North American Mid-west. All of those cultures were definitely sedentary.

For good information on this I'd check out Mann's flawed but interesting 1491. I (and many archaeologists) feel he overestimates the size of pre-Columbian populations, but it's as exhaustive a look at demographics in the Americas just before contact as you will find, and it's very approachable for the layperson.

The upshot is, per capita, by European Contact, absolutely most Native Americans lived in sedentary, agriculture based state or chiefdom level societies. Maybe by geographic area nomadic hunter-gatherers might win out, but certainly not by population.

1491 by Charles Mann is a good read, and it gives some great population stats for the Americas.

I would also recommend searching out some peer-reviewed articles using Google Scholar and search terms like "Cahokia prehistoric population" or something. I don't have specific articles off the top of my head.

>So where are they or their civilizations today?

Lehite successor states were ground to pieces by a combination of disease epidemic, climate change, and European aggression like the rest of America's endemic nations.

If you haven't read them, I highly recommend 1491 and 1493.

>Where were they when they were at their peak?

That's a great question that is not answered by modern revelation. John Clark thinks Joseph Smith believed that Book of Mormon events occurred around the Yucatan peninsula. I agree with him but I'm happy to cede ground if future evidences don't support that.

> Based on DNA and archaeology, it's a tough case, no?

Not really. This is an article you may (or may not) enjoy:

https://www.lds.org/topics/book-of-mormon-and-dna-studies?lang=eng

I found that its cautions were very prescient.

No. While there may be many things wrong with American society, there is absolutely no valid historical parallel between American society in 1960 and American society in 2011 that would predict the emergence of mass social movements. The causes for the New Left and the sixties were many, and almost none of those causes are shared today:

• Frustration with a culture of political repression (the McCarthy era) and general conformity.
  
• A decade-long economic boom, which allowed, for the first time, a critical mass of Americans to consider issues less directly pertinent to their lives. You don't have much time, energy, or interest in the morality of a war or the ethics of an existing social system when you're barely scraping together enough money to eat.
  
• A pre-existing mass social and political movement which had involved millions of Americans and already laid much of the groundwork for much of the later movements (from the New Left, to the feminist movement, to the gay rights movement), almost all of which had direct connections to the African-American civil rights movement, which exposed people to the systemic violence, widespread poverty, and racial injustice throughout the South.
  
• There was a high level of political capital and engagement. In the 1960s, political campaigns depended almost entirely on a volunteer staff, and were much cheaper to run. More people voted, more people attended places of religious worship on a regular basis, more people were involved in local organizations (from the local bridge club to the PTA to the bowling league). This meant that not only were people aware of what was going on in the world -- it meant that they trusted each other more, and they trusted government more. If you look at the 1960s, people wanted the government to fix problems in their lives; ever since Watergate, trust in government and other Americans has plummeted.
  
• There was a huge expansion in the number of university students. Between 1960 and 1975, the percent of Americans with a bachelor's degree or higher more than doubled. That's not the percentage of people attending college, that's the percentage of the total American population with a college degree, including old people. The number of MAs and PhDs granted per year tripled in that period. Numerous studies have demonstrated that people with a college education tend to be more socially liberal -- the backlash against the repressive and socially conservative society of the 1950s should therefore come as little surprise as this new generation of young Americans entered the workforce.
  
• There was also a huge number of young people. The baby boom that followed World War II had produced a huge cohort of 18-29 year-olds -- the exact group which also tends to be the most liberal.
  
  The current climate is far different.
  
  
• Until 2007, apathy was the primary defining characteristic of the American political climate. Since then, we have seen spurts of outrage or excitement, but there has been nothing akin to the political repression that we saw in the 1950s, nor do we see anything akin to the political engagement of the 1950s and 1960s.
  
• Since the 1970s, the United States economy has been largely stagnant, with a brief surge of prosperity in the 1990s. In 2008, we entered the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
  
• There has been no sustained mass grassroots movement since the 1960s. Attempts have been made -- the feminist movement, the environmentalist movement, the gay rights movement, &c. -- but none of these efforts were able to sustain the requisite commitment on the part of everyday people. Sure, all three of those movements remain as at least recognizable political influences in the United States today, but as insider politicos: people who raise money for candidates, who hire lobbyists, who send out mass e-mails, and who run issue ads. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is most certainly not a parallel to the groundwork and widespread radicalizing social effects of the civil rights movement.
  
• No one votes anymore, no one is politically, socially, or even culturally engaged anymore. Even on college campuses, it's difficult to get people to turn out for events without bribing them with free food. Books have been written on the decline of the American public sphere (see: Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community).
  
• There has been little change in the percentage of Americans with a BA since the mid 1980s, and what changes have taken place has been the result of older Americans dying off. Moreover, the United States is an aging society -- hence our problems with funding social security and medicare.
  
  While I certainly agree that much has to change, you make the fundamental errors of assuming that it will change, that it will change rapidly, and that it will change as the result of people waking up and realizing what is going on.
  
  EDIT: wanted to expand some more on what I said.

You make excellent points. In-group boundaries can indeed align with cultural experience, and we cannot discount the importance of past experiences - especially for groups that have been the victims of persecution, for example.

However, I think it is a testament to the larger project of human civilization that we can transcend our own personal experiences and use a more abstract form of compassion and empathy to inform policy, law, planning, and our collective efforts to structure and govern society. For example, even in the aftermath of the Holocaust following World War II, the international Jewish community made extraordinary contributions to the advancement of the humanist project worldwide. If ever there were a time when an in-group might have justification to demonize out-groups as "the enemy" that was it. And yet a broader, more abstract compassion arose as a guiding ideal. So I don't agree that hardship and persecution necessarily lends itself to a cynical view of "foolish empathy" as you phrased it.

Having said that, there is undoubtedly a tension among values like self-preservation and magnanimity, and I would never suggest that simply expanding one's sphere of empathy and the broadening of how an individual defines his or her self-interest flatly negates the reality of these types of tension. But these finer details are not an area for speculation or conjecture. Instead, this is a place where science can get to work trying to reveal what is actually going on. Jonathan Heidt has done some interesting cross-cultural research on political orientation, and so I would start by looking at his work.

As for the question of how cultures change with shifting economic, environmental, and geopolitical circumstances, there is a large and growing scientific literature that is trying to us give some answers. The disciplines where I have seen the most work along these lines are cultural anthropology and geography. There are some wonderful popular books on these topics, and I would recommend Charles C. Mann's 1491 and 1493 in particular.

It's probably more of a spectrum, and any given person's place on that spectrum shifts over time due to environmental factors, hormones, brain chemistry, and arguably choice (to the extent that choice exists independent of all of those other factors). This was recognized throughout most of human history going back to antiquity, with many first nation tribes recognizing gender fluidity, ancient assyrian cults based around transgenderism, Indian Hirja, transgender poet mystics in Persian Sufism, Greek clergy of Sappho and Cybele, much of the apprenticeship structure of Japanese culture- particularly during the Edo period, tribes of the Madzimbabwe changing their gender as a way of commanding powerful magic linked to creation of life and virility, first nations berdache, mezoamerican guevedoces, Oaxacan muxe. There were transgendered persons through the Parisian courts of love, in the courts of the Venetian doges, and the courts at Lisbon.

Even the U.S. has a more complex history of gender fluidity than most people assume. Our current bivalent view of being either straight or gay, male or female is only as old as the 1930's, and reflects more of a shift towards cultural assimilation that coincided with the mass migration of population away from ethnic centered city neighborhoods to suburban neighborhoods (where extended kin network and local tavern was replaced by local church and high school) that began with the Temperance/Progressive Movements.

Prior to that, there was an extensive and highly visible transgender culture, particularly in larger eastern cities, particularly in NYC, from the 1880's through the 1930's, and views on orientation and gender were much more fluid than what's assumed to be the natural order today. Transgender "faerie" prostitutes were pretty common. Equally common was male patronage of said prostitutes, which was viewed not as "gay", but as normative, even specifically masculine behavior.

George Chauncey wrote a good monograph about it. https://www.amazon.com/Gay-New-York-Culture-1890-1940/dp/0465026214

It bears remembering that human beings are more weird and complex than simplistic explanations give them credit for.

I'm traditionally more into literary fiction, but I've been exploring non-fiction recently.

Currently Reading: 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

Recently Finished: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration and Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy

Next on the List: Either Guns Germs and Steel or Devil in the White City. Haven't decided yet

The book list just keeps growing in so many different directions that it's hard to identify which I want to tackle next (I also have a tendency to take meticulous notes while I read and that slows the process down even further!). Some of the topics I intend to read about once I'm done with the books mentioned:

• God: A Human History
  
• Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith
  
• The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World
  
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
  
• Occult America
  
• When Prophecy Fails
  
• Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
  
• Cosmos
  
• Norse Mythology
  
• Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
  
• Guns, Germs, and Steel
  
• Misquoting Jesus
  
• On Bullshit
  
• The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe
  
• Why People Believe Weird Things
  
  Plus a bunch of books by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Carl Sagan, and others. There are way too many. And all the fiction books I want to read too! It's not that I didn't read books before, but my faith transition has sparked an intense desire to study and learn far greater than I ever experienced before.

Great map, one of the best I've seen.

You may enjoy this book: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America

https://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures/dp/0143122029

I'll advocate for one small change to the map, New York City and the Hudson Valley should be its own thing. Call it New Amsterdam or New Netherlands. This would range from Brooklyn (excluding Long Island) and up the east side of the Hudson River to Albany.

I've got three books that would be pretty good. If you only read one, I would suggest the last one that I've listed. It focuses on US history after WWII. Not gonna lie, but most people in the US don't seem to care about much from events earlier than, oh, Desert Storm. This will give you a good idea of what has lead up to things more recent.

First is "That's Not in My American History Book" http://www.amazon.com/Thats-Not-American-History-Book/dp/158979107X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406744669&sr=8-1&keywords=thats+not+in+my+history+book

Second is "Lies my Teachers Told Me"
http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0743296281/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1406744669&sr=8-2&keywords=thats+not+in+my+history+book

Lastly: American Dreams: The United States Since 1945
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143119559/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Bonus books:
American Revolution:
http://www.amazon.com/The-American-Revolution-History-Chronicles/dp/0812970411/ref=pd_sim_b_14?ie=UTF8&refRID=1QADK50FADAGE3XG7JGE
Civil War:
http://www.amazon.com/Civil-War-Curiosities-Oddities-Coincidences/dp/155853315X/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406745439&sr=1-6&keywords=US+Civil+War+books


Edit: This is a monster looking book, but it is visual as well. (Okay it is a monster book) but it touches on nearly everything. I've used it as a reference multiple times during college and Kurin is fairly spot on with his assessments.

http://www.amazon.com/Smithsonians-History-America-101-Objects/dp/1594205299/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406745533&sr=1-1&keywords=a+smithsonian+book+of+history

Not a strictly educational read, but a very entertaining and enlightening exploration into something you'll probably become very familiar with in your near future...

Stiff by Mary Roach

Comparing invasive species to GMO crops is a false equivalence. Also, your entire post rests on an outdated and bullshit view of the natural world as existing in this pristine state upon which modern man has recklessly trampled. I highly recommend reading the book 1491, which does a good job unraveling the thesis that 'nature=pristine, man's interference=bad'.

Also, we aren't talking about zebra mussels or rabbits in Australia, we're talking about domesticated crop species that are the result of thousands of years of breeding and cultivation, and generally don't thrive in the wild without human intervention. I'm not talking GMO, I'm talking your 'heirloom' varieties. Inserting a gene which codes for a vitamin A synthesis is nothing like releasing birds because we think they'd be pretty. The rice plant already grows in the Philippines. The fundamental biological method by which the plant grows and reproduces has not changed. If we accept farming as part of the natural tableau of the area, then we're changing nothing in the status quo, aside from providing more rounded nutrition to the population

I recommend you read Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

They go over this in the first chapter. Fascinating and surprisingly entertaining book.

people will have their problems with these but they are good additions or jumping off points for further research.

A People's History of the World

A People's History of the US - I don't remember if this book talks about Latin American relations specifically but it would be hard to tell this story without at least talking about it tangentially.

(i thought there was one for latin america but I'm not finding one in that series but if there is one, pick that up)

and of course pretty much anything by Chomsky, especially:

Manufacturing Consent

Caution: this is not only a long book but a DENSE one as well. Noam is not known as a storyteller. This book is no different. Every sentence is packed with gravity. It's looking specifically at the media's relationship with the US's relationship with Latin America but that's a good lens to go at that field of study.

In most of his work he focuses a lot on the Monroe Doctrine and its aftermath so you can pick up almost any of his work and you'll get some of it. Especially the earlier stuff.

Thank you :) If you're looking for some rabbit holes, and if it's not gauche to recommend my own work, I've written at length about a few different aspects of the Apollo program:

Going boldly: Behind the scenes at NASA’s hallowed Mission Control Center

Apollo Flight Controller 101: Every console explained

No, a “checklist error” did not almost derail the first moon landing

45 years after Apollo 13: Ars looks at what went wrong and why

How NASA brought the monstrous F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life

Putting my own writing aside and focusing on real authoritative sources, there's also the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. Between that and its companion site, the Apollo Flight Journal, you have a carefully annotated and curated collection of every transmission, photograph, spoken word, and artifact from the entire Apollo program. Warning: you can lose entire weeks of your life here, especially in the high-rez photo galleries (much of the photography was done on 70mm medium format Hasselblad cameras, and the restored and digitized images are astonishingly beautiful and detailed).

If you prefer your space facts in printed form, I very much recommend Woods' How Apollo Flew to the Moon as an excellent one-stop-shop for understanding everything that happened in the Apollo program.

There are two must-have books that completely and totally capture the human adventure that was Apollo. The first is Chaikin's A Man on the Moon, which focuses on the crews and the landings (and was used as the primary source for the excellent HBO mini, [From the Earth to the Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Earth_to_the_Moon_(miniseries), which everybody should watch because it's basically "Band of Brothers in space" and has awesome scenes like this). The second is Cox & Murray's Apollo: Race to the Moon, which focuses on Mission Control and the almost unbelievable amount of work that had to happen on the ground to make Apollo happen.

There are lots of other excellent Apollo books, but those two (Chaikin and Cox & Murray) are the two to buy if you want some absolutely mind-blowing reading.

Sorry to saturate you with links, but Apollo is kind of my thing :D

The brilliant, A People's History of the United States. Here's the Amazon link.

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-Present/dp/0060838655/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377020709&sr=8-1&keywords=howard+zinn

Enjoy!!!

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. The writing is so good you won't care about the squeamish content.

The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum. A perfect blend of a historical retelling and science.

A Treasury of Deception by Michael Farguhar.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks. Short stories of the mentally abnormal patients of Sacks.

My Stroke of Insight by Jill Taylor. Very good insight on what it is like to live with, and recover from brain damage. Also talks science about parts of the brain as a nice intro to the subject.

Mutants: On Genetic Variety in the Human Body by Armand Leroi.

And of course,
Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

Not so much. They've been voting against their own interests forever. This was to be expected to happen again. Why do they vote against their own interests? Read this book:

What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America https://www.amazon.com/dp/080507774X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_8Sj6wbCJ88R90

> Armchair generals can argue over and over about what the English 'should have done', but the fact remains that the decline in archery training led to the downfall of the longbow.

To be honest, half the reason for my asking this question was because I've been reading 1491, rather than trying to be an armchair general for the English. The book mentioned that guns weren't all that much better than bows (in terms of accuracy, etc.), so I was wondering how long that would have been true for.

> There would be no schools or colleges without Christianity. Read your history, then tell me these men evaded thinking. Without Christianity, we would all be uneducated barbarians. Christianity brought brilliance like Bach and Beethoven and created Western Civilization as we know it. Without Christianity, we would be blue-painted barbarians.

This right here tells me your friend has zero knowledge of actual history. The stupid fuck probably thinks that thanksgiving really happened and that Columbus wanted to prove the earth was round. Basically, your friend doesn't have the necessary foundation to even argue with. Your best bet is to ignore the topic of religion, and buy him books like this and this as birthday presents or maybe do a book trade and you both read each other's... and then moved into books like this.

Second, you shouldn't use quotes with people like this, or if you do just plagiarize and say it's your own. Giving quotes gives them something to attack without personally attacking your words, it makes it too easy for them to go on the offensive without thinking about what you're saying.

Gander welcomed travelers in to their churches, schools, and homes. Some independent travelers went to Canadian Tire (like a small Wal Mart with more auto stuff) to buy tents and sleeping bags. The store would not take their money.

A friend of mine was the air traffic controller on for that event. He recalls doing a months worth of work in about 4 hours. And then the logistics of handling that many jets at his small airport. They were dragging them out in to farmers fields.

There is a book and documentary on that day:
https://www.amazon.com/Day-World-Came-Town-Newfoundland/dp/0060559713
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gander+newfoundland+9+11

I have spent three 9-11 anniversaries in Gander. It was special. Met people who came back to see people that became friends from that awful day. Really a special place.

It's not about Stonewall, but Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 explores a lot of interesting stuff most people don't know about. I took Chauncey's queer history class at Yale. It was amazing.

As for trans* stuff, I'd recommend a lot of theory. Judith Butler mainly. I'd also recommend Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity.

Believe it or not, up to about the 1990s it was perfectly acceptable to take a woman bowling on a date. There are simply many better entertainment options now.

There's also this phenomenon - https://amzn.com/0743203046

Have you seen their Highlights for High School feature?

Also, there are sites like Academic Earth that might be useful.

Here are a few blogs with potential. You'll have to decide for yourself if they have inappropriate content.

Here are a few book recommendations covering various fields, in no particular order (though they should all read #1):

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything
   
2. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
   
3. Einstein: His Life and Universe
   
4. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
   
5. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
   
6. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
   
7. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
   
8. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
   
9. This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
   
10. Cosmos
    
11. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
    
12. The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy
    
13. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
    
14. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human
    
15. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
    
16. Thinking, Fast and Slow
    
17. Chaos: Making a New Science
    
18. Isaac Newton
    
19. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
    
20. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales
    
    And here's a video interview with Richard Feynman they might enjoy.

This sounds like the book I just read. I'm pretty sure it is. It's called The day the world came to town. Great read. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0060559713?pc_redir=1410606683&robot_redir=1

I've been on a non-fiction kick myself.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is good. Very funny, very informative.

Packing for Mars and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers both by Mary Roach were also fun to read.