(Part 3) Reddit mentions: The best american history books

Well, arguing that you “should” have a moral compunction to do anything is a virtually impossible task, because morals are internal motivation. I can try to appeal to those morals through guilt (which you don’t like), though calculating marginal utility and appealing to your sense of community (the EA approach, which you don’t like), or by demonstrating that you did benefit from other people (which I will continue to try). But if you truly believe that you are entitled to everything you have and not only owe nothing to people to whom you profited from (because that’s the way the world works) and do not wish to address disparities even though the cost to you is much less than the benefit to someone else (because it’s yours and you worked for it), then you are free of moral compunction and I can’t change your mind. That’s why this is usually the provenance of religion, which promises a punishment from a higher being to encourage what many societies have defined as “the right thing to do.”

First, I would like to agree with you about capitalism as a force for good. The expansion of globalized trade and capitalist economies has made the people on this planet healthier and wealthier than at any other time in human history. Those gains have been distributed, but they have not been equally distributed, and as a result, there is massive global inequality both between and within nations. And actually, the OECD suggests economic strategies by which lessened inequality promotes more growth, growing the pie for everyone (so the pursuit of maximizing only profits at the expense of other developments is not necessarily the greatest global good).

That being said, I will address your three points.

The most important is #2. The idea of “business-friendly values” is a very popular one, but values alone cannot make an economy thrive (or a government or a society) without institutions that protect and promote those values. It is not at all clear that implementing “western values” create prosperity in any kind of automatic way, and certainly not without protective institutions. In addition, it is rare for people in positions of power to voluntarily give up that power, and so disenfranchised people tend to remain disenfranchised. I would say that in your example of immigrants that come to the “Western world” and prosper can do so not because of their values, but because of the institutions that allow that to happen. I suggest Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail and Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion as further reading.

It’s also part of the reason that innovation tends to come from a subset of economies. Countries that innovate, have good institutions, and invest in education tend to have more innovators, find a balance between protection of profit and distribution, and make more innovators. There is also an incentive to oppress innovation on discoveries outside of the original innovation centers, which is why we have overzealous patent protection and unequal business agreements that use proprietary tech (Point #1).

Which brings me to the idea that international business can perpetuate disenfranchisement. Many companies use economic power to subvert the power of the people in order to protect their profits, whether through appropriating the use of force or through lobbying elected officials. BP lobbied the US and the UK to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Iran to prevent oil fields from being nationalized (and resource profits sent overseas) in 1953. The United Fruit Company convinced the Eisenhower administration to overthrow the government of Guatemala in 1954 to avoid agrarian reform policies. In 2007, Chiquita banana admitted to funding a terrorist organization in Colombia to protect their interests. Domino Sugar today refuses to comply with labor protections in the CAFTA agreements, using disenfranchised Haitian-Dominicans to harvest sugarcane (part 1) (part 2). Conflict minerals in the DRC and Zimbabwe are still used in a large proportion of electronics. Nestle still uses child labor to harvest cacao in the Ivory Coast.

Rich countries are not immune. Fossil fuel lobbying in the US is a real and problematic thing that is bad for the earth and bad for the green energy industry.

So though it’s true that you did not personally oppress any Tanzanians or Iranians or Koreans (or Guatemalans or Colombians or Haitian-Americans or Congolese or Zimbabweans or Cote-d’Ivorians) (Point #1), if you made money as a shareholder of those companies (or consumed their products), then you profited from the unethical behavior of those companies. As a direct result of those business decisions, people in other countries received less money and you received more. Period. I don’t think that this necessarily makes you a perpetrator, but I think that it does make you complicit.

If you consider this kind of capitalistic profiteering ethical (or “the way the world works”), I can agree that you do not have a moral compunction to support disenfranchised people and reject these company behaviors. However, if you think that any of these actions are morally wrong, then you should feel guilty from profiting off of them. (And I am speaking explicitly about investment income here).

Even if you do not profit from stocks in those companies, you may profit as a consumer – when you buy cheap gas or bananas. Taxes that the companies paid may have supported your elementary school. Benefits from medical protections may have been reinvested in new therapies that cured your grandmother’s cancer. The global economy is complex. But generally, the people who are already rich are those who reap a larger share of the benefits.

If you believe that this is morally acceptable (or “the way the world works”), then you do not have a moral compunction to donate to charity.

However, if you do have a problem with these behaviors and you feel morally uncomfortable with the results, you have two routes to address the issues, and both routes should be followed at the same time: to ameliorate the effects through global giving AND to pursue system reform to make it stop happening.

There are far too many to describe one as "the best", but here are some of my favourites.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is a well deserved winner of the Pulitzer Prize. A combination of history, science and biography and so very well written.

A few of my favourite biographies include the magisterial, and also Pulitzer Prize winning, Peter the Great by Robert Massie. He also wrote the wonderful Dreadnaught on the naval arms race between Britain and Germany just prior to WWI (a lot more interesting than it sounds!). Christopher Hibbert was one of the UK's much loved historians and biographers and amongst his many works his biography Queen Victoria - A Personal History is one of his best. Finally, perhaps my favourite biography of all is Everitt's Cicero - The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician. This man was at the centre of the Fall of the Roman Republic; and indeed fell along with it.

Speaking of which, Rubicon - The Last Years of the Roman Republic is a recent and deserved best-seller on this fascinating period. Holland writes well and gives a great overview of the events, men (and women!) and unavoidable wars that accompanied the fall of the Republic, or the rise of the Empire (depending upon your perspective). :) Holland's Persian Fire on the Greco-Persian Wars (think Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes! Think of the Movie 300, if you must) is equally gripping.

Perhaps my favourite history book, or series, of all is Shelby Foote's magisterial trilogy on the American Civil War The Civil War - A Narrative. Quite simply one of the best books I've ever read.

If, like me, you're interested in teh history of Africa, start at the very beginning with The Wisdom of the Bones by Alan Walker and Pat Shipman (both famous paleoanthropologists). Whilst not the very latest in recent studies (nothing on Homo floresiensis for example), it is still perhaps the best introduction to human evolution available. Certainly the best I've come across. Then check out Africa - Biography of a Continent. Finish with the two masterpieces The Scramble for Africa on how European colonialism planted the seeds of the "dark continents" woes ever since, and The Washing of the Spears, a gripping history of the Anglo-Zulu wars of the 1870's. If you ever saw the movie Rorke's Drift or Zulu!, you will love this book.

Hopkirk's The Great Game - The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia teaches us that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I should imagine that's enough to keep you going for the moment. I have plenty more suggestions if you want. :)

You're very welcome! I learned most of what I know about New York City history by reading as much as I could about it. It started off as an interest, became a passion, and over the past few years I've been able to turn my love of city history into a career.

There are definitely some fabulous blogs and websites about NYC that are a good place to start if you're interested in learning more, such as Forgotten New York, Daytonian in Manhattan, Untapped Cities, Ephemeral New York, and The Bowery Boys, to name a few. The New-York Historical Society, The Museum of the City of New York, The Brooklyn Historical Society, and The New York Public Library are all great places to visit, and their respective blogs (here, here, here and here) have a ton of valuable information. Other organizations and groups have websites and social media feeds that are worth checking out. Here is a list with some amazing websites and resources to check out.

In terms of books, I recommend starting with Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace. It is comprehensive, informative, and incredibly well written. I have read it numerous times over the years, and I reference it constantly. Empire City: New York Through the Centuries by Kenneth T. Jackson and David S. Dunbar is also a good introductory book to get yourself up to speed. I have compiled a list of books for /r/nychistory, which you can view here, and it has plenty of other good choices to pick and includes different categories.

In the event that you enjoy what I do and want to learn more, feel free to check out my Twitter page (you don't need an account to view it), where I have shared over 7,000 unique historical images and photos from the city's history. I also have an Instagram account, where I am able to provide more in-depth stories about the events, buildings, views, and people that have helped make New York City the place that it is today.

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!!

The last excellent work of fiction I read was City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling. The book that I feel best captures the feeling of New York City, however, is Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin.

I mostly read nonfiction books about New York City history, and I'll share a few of my favorites with you. The definitive tome, of course, is Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 by Mike Wallace and Edwin Burrows. Another favorite of mine, as I love the history of New Amsterdam, is Island at the Center of the World:The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto. One of the most fascinating subjects I have been learning about is Native American history at the period of first European contact, and I really recommend checking out Adriaen Van Der Donck's A Description of New Netherland (The Iroquoians and their World), which many scholars agree is just as much of a significant work as William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, and would be the definitive guide to the new world if it had been written in English. Evan Pritchard's Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquian People of New York also offers an incredible look at native culture.

If you are interested in the subway system, check out Stan Fischler's fantastic Uptown, Downtown. One of the most underrated books I have picked up recently explores the construction of the amazing Grand Central Terminal, and I learned an incredible amount from it: Grand Central's Engineer: William J. Wilgus and the Planning of Modern Manhattan. If you are interested in urban planning, I would also suggest The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel Jr., Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor.

At this point I've read a ton of nonfiction books about the city, so if you have any questions or want any other recommendations, feel free to ask!

>Eli Lake can "raises questions" all he wants but All of NIAC'S budget, is about $1.5 million. Less than what AIPAC spends on shoeshines, and if that amount only %20 can be used for lobbying.

That was just one lobby for the pro-Iran side. There were many other special interests that were itching to do business in Iran. There was a lot of money floating around during negotiations.

>Pretending that Israel does not have a pernicious and unbalanced influence on US foreign policy is just being a flat earthen when even the most distinguished mainstream US experts say it does:
http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

Pernicious? No I don't think so. It is not surprising a lobby representing Israeli interests is focused on Israeli interests. Unbalanced? Well they certainly are stronger force than many other countries. Here's a list from 2013 showing which 10 countries spent the most lobbying the US.
http://wapo.st/1g4xzvO
As you can see, Israel didn't make the list. Even if you include all of AIPAC's money as Israeli government lobbying, they don't even crack the top 5. There are many foreign governments trying to influence our policy in ways that befit them.

>What other FOREIGN GOVT gets the special treatment given to Osrael? Our congressional and presidential candidates and office holders regularly appear before AIPAC and swear never ending fealty to a foreign govt. We don't do that for the Germans, Poles, Japaneae...just Israel.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SVLELDY90-E

I think this is reaching a bit. Israel are our allies. We share lots of tech and intel that have benefited the US greatly. Just take a look at Israeli tech and it will shock you how much has been developed there. They are the only democracy in the Middle East with freedom of press, religion, and speech, meaning we value the same things and many times our interests align.

We require foreign governments to be US friendly or we don't support them. In fact with the amount of regimes and democratically elected governments we have toppled it could not be any more hypocritical to call out other countries for trying to influence us. Further, you could make similar arguments about politicians needing to pledge allegiance to Citigroup or Exxon. Israel is just one of many strong lobbies. They're not pulling the strings and dictating what will happen - they simply try to influence the outcome as best they can. They are no more nefarious or pernicious than any special interest.

I recommend these just as general Iran books. All of them touch on the Revolution a good bit and will help you understand Iran better:

All the Shah's Men
It does get a bit boring at parts but will help your overall understanding of Iran/the Revolution.

Shah
This is another must read to understand the revolution and Iran. This touches on the Constitutional Revolution as well.
The Ayatollah Begs to Differ
One of the best books about Iran I have ever read. The author (Hooman Majd) has a good bit of "insider" access to some Iranian elites and offers a unique perspective on Iran.

A must see documentary in my opinion is The Queen and I An Expat Irani and the Last Queen (Farah) of Iran. Very interesting and shows a whole new perspective to it all.

I also strongly recommend the videos about the topic found on youtube. There are countless options on the site, most of which have been very reliable in my experiences.

PS Tell me more about your studies. History scholars are always of great interest.

> She also has way too much power in politics. She doesn't have to pander for the votes.

Hillary is in a dominant position in today's DNC, but I highly recommend you read Game Change. It's a blow-by-blow recap of the 2008 Presidential Election with all the seedy gossip and insider scoop from all the camps. It chronicles Hillary's torturous fall from power among Democrats with the rise of Obama. Main takeaway is: Influence and power in the Democratic party can never be taken for granted, and pandering is necessary for everybody.

> Why should I believe she's not going to put some corporate shill in there that supports gay marriage but is really there to reinforce and build corporations?

This scenario is possible but highly unlikely for a couple reasons. Judges nominated for the Supreme Court will have a public record of all their rulings open to public scrutiny. We'll be able to have 100s of pages of evidence to analyze the political leanings of each judge. If she's nominating a closet conservative, very likely all of DC will know, and I highly highly doubt liberals like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, and Chris Murphy will let that slide. She'll need ALL the democrats (and some republicans) votes to be on board with her pick for them to be confirmed.

Finally, by the time she runs for reelection, her 2-3 SCOTUS picks will have had at least 3 or more years of rulings under their belt. If we then find that they were conservative, then there's no way she'll be able to win reelection (likely even the Democratic Primary).

If HRC was a secret republican, she'd be under great pressure to appoint liberal justice because she decided to run for POTUS as a democrat and needs those votes in the Senate to do so.

If HRC was a neoliberal (which is the label Bill Clinton and Obama now fall under according to r/politics), that pressure still remains, and all 4 liberal justices on today's supreme court were appointed by neoliberal presidents, which is a comforting thought.

If HRC is a democrat, then she's going to appoint the most liberal justice she can find that the Republicans will accept. If anything she'll try to appoint a hardcore liberal who appears more moderate.

The Genius: How Bill Walsh Reinvented Football and Created an NFL Dynasty
https://www.amazon.com/Genius-Reinvented-Football-Created-Dynasty/dp/0345499123/ref=sr_1_74?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475238145&sr=1-74&keywords=nfl+book

Jaws might be loudmouthed idiot on tv, but he co-authored a pretty darn good book
The Games That Changed the Game: The Evolution of the NFL in Seven Sundays
https://www.amazon.com/Games-That-Changed-Game-Evolution/dp/0345517962/ref=sr_1_67?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475238131&sr=1-67&keywords=nfl+book

And all hail Belichick
War Room: The Legacy of Bill Belichick and the Art of Building the Perfect Team
https://www.amazon.com/War-Room-Belichick-Building-Perfect/dp/006208240X/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475238058&sr=1-11&keywords=nfl+book

The Education of a Coach
https://www.amazon.com/Education-Coach-David-Halberstam/dp/1401308791/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1475238301&sr=1-1&keywords=david+halberstam+belichick

Pretty funny insight into players perspective:

The Rookie Handbook: How to Survive the First Season in the NFL
https://www.amazon.com/Rookie-Handbook-Survive-First-Season/dp/1682450341/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1475237975&sr=8-4&keywords=nfl+book

Also Pete Carrolls book Win Forever is an excellent read.
It has more to do with his Trojan days, but is a very clear telling of his coaching philosophy and why he has succeeded in Seattle. That man knows how to connect with people.

I mostly read speculative fiction, which is typically divided between the subgenres of fantasy, sci-fi, and alternate history. Alternate history is technically considered a subgenre of Sci-Fi, but I read enough of it to make it worth counting as a separate group. Within each of those subgenres, there is a wide variety of styles and some people might find themselves not a fan of one style but a fan of another. If you are not well read in these genres, then you will want to try a few different styles of story before dismissing it. I also sometimes read novelizations of historical events which have their own sort of enjoyment to them that fictional stories lack. Then there are books that are set from an animals point of view, which range from attempts to be as accurate as possible to being practically fantasy stories.

As far as individual books, I will try to give you a few of the best to pick from without being overwhelming. Some are stand alone stories while others are parts of series.

Fantasy single books:

After the Downfall

Fantasy series:

The Dresden Files

A Song of Ice and Fire aka Game of Thrones

Sci-Fi single books:

Slow Train to Arcturus

Mother of Demons

Sci-Fi series:

The Thrawn Trilogy There are a great many Star Wars books worth the read, but this is definitely the place to start.

Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow

Alternate History single books:

The Guns of the South

1824: The Arkansas War Technically this is a sequel to an earlier book, but this one is leagues better and you don't need to read the first book to understand what is going on.

Alternate History series:

How Few Remain

1632

Worldwar

Non-Fiction:

Band of Brothers

War Made New This one isn't even really a novelization, just an analysis of the changes to military technology, tactics, and training over the last 500 years. Regardless, it is very well written and a great read.

Animal POV books:

Watership Down

Wilderness Champion

The Call of the Wild and White Fang These two books are by the same author and go in pretty much opposite directions. Among literature fanatics, there is no consensus over which one is better and I don't think I can decide for myself so I am recommending both.

Edit: I forgot to mention, the first book in the 1632 series is available online for free. This is not a pirated version, but something the author put up himself as a part of an effort to move publishing into the modern day with technology and make books more accessible to readers.

You'd have to be obtuse to think that the people of the UK voted in the EU referendum based on the merits of the EU and the relationship the UK had in it. The previous UK PM fucked up tremendously in allowing that referendum to be put forth knowing how politics would warp it.

Venice isn't a principality. Neither is Hong Kong which is on borrowed time. Hong Kong became a major city because it was the British trading post to China for a century. That was its edge and it doesn't have that anymore and China is puffing up native Shanghai as its business center instead.

Singapore exists because of the current international system with treaties and the UN makes it way too inconvenient to invade and also it has two weak neighbors. Singapore's edge is that it's next to the Straights of Malacca so it's like an an Asian Panama Canal--shipping is focused there. Thailand and China are working on a canal to the north of it which will drink its milkshake.

Monaco exists because France allows it. Monaco is some luxury apartments and a couple of casinos in less than 640 acres on the side of a mountain on the French Riviera, that's pretty meaningless economically and politically. Monaco defaults back to France as soon as there isn't an heir to inherit the princedom.

Some city-states were tried in the late 1800's and after WWI but they didn't last.

You're probably thinking NYC is the model of a principality. NYC is one of the top 2 or 3 cities in the world not because of some special New York City-ness to it but because it New York City is the economically central city in a massive country. NYC would be greatly diminished if NY State or even New England were separated from the rest of the country.

New York City exists as it does because of the rest of the US. NYC got its edge when the Erie Canal was built that connected (funneled) the Great Lakes to the Hudson River. In the early 1800's Baltimore and New York City were rivals and neck and neck. Unfortunately for Baltimore it was much harder to build a canal from the Ohio River to the Potomac so all of the bounty of the Midwest went by boat across the Great Lakes to the Erie Canal then to the Hudson River and down to NYC. This is the same reason Chicago was the #2 city for a century. Chicago was the start of the funnel of all the agriculture and industry of the Midwest. Everything got sent to Chicago and then shipped by boat and later rail off to NYC. If this is interesting to you, you can read more about this in Nature's Metropolis.

Cities are not on islands where everything more than 20 or 30 miles away doesn't matter or is interchangeable. Cities exist where they do because there's a reason for a city to be there and the reason usually involves stuff more than a few miles beyond the edge of the city. There's a large city where New Orleans is because there is a good spot for a port to interface between barges on the Mississippi River system, railroads, and international shipping right there and then there's a feedback loop that having those facilities attracts additional industry. If New Orleans were part of a different political/economic unit than the rest of the Mississippi River basin, or the Mississippi River decided to flow somewhere else, then there wouldn't be much use of a port there which means there wouldn't be much of a city there in the long-run.

For comparison look at the Danube River in Europe! It's a big-ass river but there are only dinky cities along it because the river runs through like 9 different countries. It's hard or expensive and complicated to trade on that river so there aren't any large port cities there in that part of Europe. In comparison the Rhine River isn't particularly deep, wide, or long but it flows through two countries: Germany and the Netherlands. (It borders France and Switzerland too but that's upstream.) It's easy to do trade on there and subsequently it's a massive river in economic terms, running right through the heart of German industry and the largest port in Europe is at the mouth of that river in the Netherlands.

Cities and the regions around them are chicken-and-egg situations economically and geographically. You can't separate the city from the region and country around it.

For the Revolutionary War

• This Glorious Cause. One volume book, so it's not going to cover everything but for a general overview of the Revolutionary War it's great.
  
  
• Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy I'm partial to this one because of the focus on the Navy.
  
  
• Paul Revere's Ride Fischer does a great job in explaining the build up to the Revolution using Revere as a central figure.
  
  
• The First Salute. Barbara Truchman writes here about the vital role the Dutch played in keeping the Revolution alive via trade, and the consequences of that trade for the Dutch. It can sometime lose focus as Truchman goes into great detail about things that probably would be better left to footnotes, but it's still a great read. (Her Guns of August won a Pulitzer, and in my opinion it's a must-read for anyone at all interested in WWI.)
  
  For the Civil War
  
  
• The Civil War: A Narrative, by Shelby Foote. I'm a big fan of this, but it is three volumes so that means it's rather long.
  
  
• Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson is also another classic in the field.
  
  
• Grant's Memoirs and Sherman's Memoirs are both must-reads.
  
  I have to recommend Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane and Killer Angels by Michael Sharra, both fantastic military fiction.
  
  
  
  

This might be a better question for r/bowyer as they are more experts on bow making.

Other than that sub I would check out some of the archery videos by shawn wood including one on a yew bow but I would suggest watching all of the Otzi the iceman series he did so you can see how to make all the tools as well as the arrows. He recogmends the Bowyer's bible so I would suggest investing in that resource.

I also like this video from shawn though the bow is probably a lot less powerful than the one you are envisioning, it would be ideal for small game and birds and certainly a good practice bow if you haven't made one already. I made a bow based on this method and it did work rather well, until it snapped but I think I may have whittled the ends too much.

Shawn also did some good videos on bow strings, including; sinew, flax and hemp which I found interesting.

Leo Szilard hade ideen och var orolig att Tyskland skulle komma först redan 1933.

~

Allmänt.
En av de bästa böckerna jag någonsin läst:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb

Håller med varje ord i denna recension. Vill tillägga de fantastiska anekdoterna:

1. När Fermi dirigerar världens första kedjereaktion under en squash läktare i Chicago. En stoppstav hänger i ett rep från taket och en gubbe står med en yxa ...Fermi instruerar utdragande av bromsstav millimeter för millimeter, Geiger räknaren stiger och slår i botten, skiftar område, stiger och slår i botten igen, skiftar på nytt område ... Personer lyssnar på tickandet som går över i ett högfrekvent tjut och är osäkra om de ska stå kvar eller springa därifrån. Fermi är cool och deklarerar experimentet lyckat och avstängning.
   
   
2. Det är en fin hög ("pile") det där, säger en hantlangare när uran anländer inför chicagoexperimentet. En vetenskapsman hör det, blir kritvit, sliter fram och arbetar räknestickan några minuter innan han slappnar av och säger: "Nej, det är det inte". Fotnot, en del av uranet kommer från en kapad tysk ubåt på väg till japan med det senaste i tysk teknologi, inklusive Me 262 delar).
   
   
3. Teoretiske kärnfysikern och judinnan Lise Meitner begrundar ett brev i ett kyligt Göteborg (vädermässigt och något antisemitiskt) efter att precis ha funnit det nödvändigt att lämna Tyskland. Brevet kommer från hennes före detta kollegor och vänner, etniskt tyska vetenskapsmän som inte förstår resultatet av ett experiment de precis genomfört och ber (teoretikern) Meitner hjälpa till att förklara det. Flyktingen Meitner blir på så vis ensam i världen att först förstå att kärnvapen och kärnenergi har lämnat sfären av spekulation och nu är reell och trolig verklighet. Tyskarna (Otto Hahn bla) hade klyvt uranatomen utan att ha förstått det.
   
   
4. Den tyska atomklyvningen tillkännages (av Nils Bohr?) på Columbia University. Den hade hemlighållits, inte av militära skäl, det kommer snart, men för att säkerställa vetenskaplig preferens, rätt personer skall få äran av upptäckten. En undergraduate springer ner i Columbias källare och upprepar det tyska experimentet innan föredraget är över.
   
   
5. Nils Bohr smugglas till England från Danmark i ett Mosquito bombrum. Hans huvud är för stort för hjälmen och han svimmar av på vägen av syrebrist.
   
   >The book covers the subect on a number of levels. First is the factual story of the events leading up to the making of the bomb, which in themselves would be fascinating. For example, the fact that in two years the Manhattan Project built an industrial plant larger than the US automobile manufacturing base. That only in December of 1938 was the fission of Uranium first discovered, but the course of events were so rapid as to lead to the Trinity test in July of 1945. As a sometime program manager, but no General Groves, it was a fascinating account of the world's most significant projecct.
   The second level is a very enjoyable history of nuclear physics as the reader is lead through the discovery process from the turn of the century to thermonuclear fusion. That discovery process is the vehicle for the third and fourth levels of the book. The stories and personalities of the scientists, around the world, who added to that knowledge, what shaped and motivated their lives and how they indiviually gained insight, brilliant insight, into the riddle that was physics. I felt I got to know people like Rutherford, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Szilard, and Teller. The fourth level was that the insight was not really individual but collaborative. This book is one of the finest descriptions of the scientific process and how this open, collaborative and communicative process works across boundaries.
   
   >http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Atomic-Bomb-Anniversary/dp/1451677618

They made an economic decision to live in a balloon-frame timber house, and not use cable ties for their roof and foundations. How should we react to people who spend more money invested on making their homes look decorative rather than sturdy?

All people and all societies need charity to survive. However, that charity shouldn't be so overwhelming and institutionalized that it discourages people from making good decisions.

I live four feet above sea level. I know the risks, and I accept them. I find it unreasonable that anyone else should bear the burden of my choices. After Katrina, I lost nearly all my possessions and "important" documents, but I was perfectly healthy and was able to help family, neighbors and fellow citizens cut their way out. For a period of time before we were able to return, my family and a million other people sorted out a bit of couch surfing. Those people who maintained a lot of positive goodwill with friends and family had a more comfortable camping trip than others. In the period before we could settle down the real task of digging out, I helped a private group from Seattle setup a computer network for refugees to access helpful sites like searching for missing relatives, sites that were run by private groups or individuals. Our other intention was to help them access government aid websites, but I saw very few people attempt to do this, and even fewer succeed at it. Mostly, bored children played web games, and I busied myself with making it harder for them to download spyware and viruses. It was a losing battle. People that can't help themselves generally can't be helped at all.

Katrina was when I stopped believing in the organizational capabilities of government. That was when I traded in Zinn's "A People's History" for Voegelin's "Modernity without Restraint."

Good question! This relationship has actually come under some academic scrutiny recently. In terms of realpolitik - israel is a US ally where there aren't really a great wealth of state actors who are considered us state allies, so the practical advantages of having a friendly nation state slap bang in the middle of an area that is teeming with anti American sentiment is clear ( arguably due largely to the sheer scale of US intervention in the middle east, which intensified from and after the gulf war in the 1990s, there's a book called "blowback", I forget the author but it could really contextualise the debate). The book I came on here to reccomend to you is by Miershiemer & Walt, called "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" - here's a clumsy amazon link (I'm on my phone) http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0374531501 - it was fairly influential and has been discussed at policy level. It essentially argues that the costs (favourable arms agreements, housing grants [that can't be spent in the legal minefield of Palestine, but, sort of is]) don't actually outweigh the benefits of having Israel as a dedicated ally. It's definitely worth a look because it will weigh up all the pros and cons for you and show you what America gets for its massive expense, and will set out the debate so you can get an edge on the competition, good luck!

>When you give a group an environment where they can flourish they seem to do a lot better when they’re solely with people of the same culture, there’s nothing inherently racist about that

Correct. There's nothing inherently racist about that. The problem is that this way of thinking is only applied to races right now. So really, it is kind of racist.

>People point to some predominantly white Scandinavian and European counties that have remarkable economies and next to no crime and tout this as a victory for white race, whilst the opposition claims this is yet another case of white people ruling the world by oppressing minorities.

European empires that dominated the world didn't do so by mining their own countries. England doesn't naturally grow tea, yet they're known for it. England and other European countries only have so many natural resources, but they got them from other countries and they drove the regions into political turmoil in gathering them. India is largely shaped by British occupation even to this day.

One book I'll recommend to you is this one: The History of White People. It does a fairly good job of breaking down, via historical agreement and evidence, how White cultures aren't what alt-right or even "light" alt-right people claim it to be. People claim Scandinavia is a great model of racial purity and a homogenous society. Save for the part where Norse and Scandinavian history largely involved moving people around and settling areas that weren't their own, and bringing many immigrants in to do work. But let's forget all that for our narrative.

The greatest civilizations on Earth learned that cultural segregation was a pretty bad idea. The Mongol Empire, Egyptian, Mali, British, Roman, Greek, Aztec, whatever: they all learned how to unite people. Albeit, depending on how far back and which ones, in bloody ways. They all reached similar conclusions, like that it's a good idea to build sewers and educate people. They all reached the same mathematical standards, like how pi can be 3.14 or 3.16. We know it to be 3.14 ad infinitum, but that other cultures got so close is amazing too. Every Greek philosopher that is seen as the bedrock of Western civilization, that's touted by people who believe that West is best? They studied in Africa. And Africans studied in Greece.

The days of expanding are (hopefully) over, but the days of people sharing ideas and moving about aren't. Only now, people are deciding to move and not being conquered. Instead of Rome coming to your doorstep, other people are arriving in Rome.

I haven't espoused my own views on immigration or multiculturalism, but the idea that we need segregation like the alt-right suggests is just stupid. There have always been people who believed we shouldn't mix. Those people are dead and died out, because they refused to do what comes naturally to humans - get along with others.

I guess I'm not sure what to say about your "climate cult", but scientists and engineers (and the jobs they create) will go to where the culture favors them. That was the US from the 1930s to today. Perhaps you want them to go to France now?

I strongly encourage reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

This book details how the UK, Germany, Holland, France, and Russia all had a few pieces of the puzzle, but only the USA brought the scientists and engineers together to make the first atomic bomb and fucking win WWII. It's a star-spangled version of science and industry, far better than the Moon race.

Denying climate change basically says "fuck everything we have ever learned about science and engineering in the 20th century, let's let a few rich oil fucks make a few last bucks while America rots."

I say fuck that shit, we're better than that, let's continue taking the best scientists of the world and producing the best high-end products. But we can't do that unless this country welcomes the best and the brightest. Which means we cannot be Baghdad Bob about climate change.

Because the ones who tell public who to vote for are for large part Zionists. Then there is the AIPAC and myriad of other smaller lobby groups working for intrest of Israel, including influential and rich Evangelical Christian groups believing that Israel is the manifestation of God's will. Supporting Israel also keeps the militant evangelist Christians happy that way. Finally, supporting Israel gives USA a good strategic foothold in most oil rich corner of the planet.

A lot of factors play into this question, but in nutshell:

• Zionist media control
  
• Political strength of various religious groups sympathising with Israel for Biblical reasons
  
• Zionist lobby which uses mainly the above two as leverage for persuasion against politicians
  
• Genuine US long-term intrest for resources, geopolitics and divide et impera politics
  
  Source book: http://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375300968&sr=1-1
  
  In his review in The Times, journalist Max Hastings wrote "otherwise intelligent Americans diminish themselves by hurling charges of antisemitism with such recklessness. There will be no peace in the Middle East until the United States faces its responsibilities there in a much more convincing fashion than it does today, partly for reasons given in this depressing book."
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy#Praise
  
  NOTE: this is the politically correct edit of my earlier badly worded post, which I apologise for if it offended anyone.

If you suspect that you're not getting the whole story from television, I'd suggest picking up Noam Chomsky. He literally wrote the book, Manufacturing Consent, on the propaganda model for analyzing the media. Maybe start with The Common Good or What Uncle Sam Really Wants. That last one was one of the catalysts that started my own ideological transformation around your age that led me to becoming a conscientious objector and leaving the USMC.

Admittedly, Chomsky is a leftist intellectual, a self described supporter of anarcho syndicalism and libertarian socialism, but then, a lot of thinking people gravitate to leftism. Einstein wrote a letter entitled, Why I am a Socialist-

>'The oligarchy of private capital cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organised political society. The members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties financed or influenced by private capitalists. Moreover, private capitalists control the main sources of information (press, radio, education).'

• Albert Einstein
  
  The majority of scientists, who are generally analytically gifted people, and whose daily job is essentially to understand and describe the nature of reality, are also political leftists. So maybe there is something to this very wide body of thought.
  
  At any rate, I think that you'll be hard pressed to make yourself more informed by watching TV. I second the notion others have proposed of reading up on history, and offer Howard Zinn's [A People's History of the United States] (http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States-P-S/dp/0061965588/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342240464&sr=1-1&keywords=a+people%27s+history+of+the+united+states) as a counterbalance to some sanitized versions of history.
  
  Anyways good luck! Happy to answer any questions you might have!
  

> For example, black people and white people very obviously have different nose shapes.

This was refuted in literally my first week of Anthropology 100 in my undergrad. Which of these is the black nose?

This one?

This one?

This one?

This one?

This one?

>If it were only skin tone that influenced how we label different races, we'd find it impossible to tell the difference between, say, some Indians and some African Americans, but it actually isn't that hard at all.

Except it is, which is why a number of "African Americans" successfully posed as Indian during Jim Crow, for example Korla Pandit.

>but the one area where there is variation is in the characteristics we as a society have picked out upon to make the racial split in the first place.

You really should read the books I linked about the construction of race in America. To reiterate, those were Racial Formation in the United States, White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race, The History of White People, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime and the Making of Modern Urban America.

One of the commenters who came from /r/sociology after you suggested I cross post in subs where the users have relevant academic training also added to that some Franz Boas, which I'd like to reiterate. A good introduction to biological anthropology will reiterate what I've said about white/black groupings that you're assuming and then reifying, as will all the resources here as will a good intro to sociology.

To reiterate (1) genetic populations exist, and may share some characteristics -- for instance, San people in South Africa are reliably different than Zulu people. (2) When you try to group those populations together into something like "black" it just doesn't work. The 5 or 7 or however many you want "races" do not have any basis in biological reality (3) groupings like "black" or "African American" are too diverse to make statements like "black people all share thus and such cranial shape/nasal capacity/whatever." Therefore, (4) it makes no sense to say that you can "hear" when someone is "black" because of something biological or physiological because "black" is not a biologically meaningful category, despite its incredibly high social salience. I further argued, above, that what OP does hear is likely an accent, from an ethnolect, which came about precisely because of the social construction of race. I have friends who have "black" parentage, but everyone treats them as "white" because they "look white" and "sound white." You cannot tell by listening that their parents are black, because it's not a biologically meaningful grouping that would actually affect physiology such that it had an affect on language.

A logical terminus of the inverse argument others have proposed above is that there are fundamental biological differences, directly related to race, which affect language production. We know this to be false.

Even in your aside on tone, you're still assuming "white" and "African American" are biologically meaningful groupings, when they're not.

Einstein wasn't really involved in the project, though he played a significant role in warning the US government that it was possible and how bad an idea it would have been to let the Nazis get it first. Even though he wasn't involved, he had the name recognition that the president would read something that he sent.

Oppenheimer was basically in charge of all the science during the project.

Feynman did work on it, but he was pretty young at the time, so he wasn't one of the senior people.

There's a really excellent Pulitzer Prize winning book by Richard Rhodes that describes everything, if you're interested.

If you're interested in this it's covered in the book The Evolution of Useful Things .



If you click on the 'surprise me' page a few times you might get to see page 10 on which it spends a little time talking about how the fork emerged from being a carving instrument to being a normal part of the dinner table, moving from 2 tines through to 3 then 4 tines. The suggestion is "4 tines provide a relatively broad surface and yet do not feel too wide for the mouth. Nor does a four tined fork have so many tines that it resembles a comb, or function like one when being pressed into a piece of meet."


Honestly if you love questions like this that book is well worth a read, it covers the development of things like the paperclip, flatware/cutlery, zips and tools etc.

It's quite a lot to bite off, but everything you want is contained in these four books:

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-25th-Anniversary/dp/1451677618/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb-ebook/dp/B008TRUB6O/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Arsenals-Folly-Richard-Rhodes-ebook/dp/B000W93DEO/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Bombs-Challenges-Dangers-Prospects-ebook/dp/B003F3PKXQ/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Rhodes is the guy for nuclear history. I've read all four, but the last two are, admittedly, somewhat forgettable. They deal with the continuing command issues surrounding nuclear arsenals and the eventual political movement to eradicate (or, as it happened, simply limit) strategic stockpiles.

That being said, the first two, Making of the Bomb and Dark Sun, are utterly indispensible. The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, 1986 history of the scientific effort to elucidate the physical principles which led to bombs and of the miliitary-scientific-industrial effort to realize the possibility of a weapon. It discusses many interesting characters within this history, such as Ernest Lawrence, Leo Szilard, and of course, Oppenheimer.

I have to be honest with you - I've saved Dark Sun for last for a reason. This is one of the most phenomenally engaging books I've ever read. It has everything: the creation of doomsday weapons of, and I don't use this term loosely, unimaginable destructive potential and the obsessive quasi-fetishization of their refinement and testing on behalf of the United States' and Soviet militaries. Rhodes discusses the post-war split within the scientific community over whether to develop a hydrogen "Super" bomb, whether to share information relating to it with the Soviet Union, and the factional leveraging of security privileges and political favor to exclude those from research who did not take a sufficiently hard stand against cooperation with the USSR.

Dark Sun details bomb physics and the minutia of the testing program in just enough detail to remain compelling and accessible. Rhodes also does his best to humanize Soviet scientific personnel such as Igor Kurchatov, the father of the Soviet bomb, and the strained relationship they shared with their political patrons, such as the Darth Vader-esque Lavrenti Beria.

I hope this answers your question, and I hope that you enjoy these books as much as I did!

> 4) Area 51. I suspect the truth is pretty mundane, but it'd be neat to see what projects they work on there. Maybe, just maybe, there's a group of giant space cockroaches there that shoot the shit around the coffee station.
>

https://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/dp/0316202304

That book is a pretty good read about Area 51. Essentially an Air Force (military) and CIA (civilian) aeronautics research facility. Doing research and operations that are extremely sensitive. Also reverse engineering and studying foreign aircraft like MiG and Chinese warplanes. Specifically the U2, F117, A12/SR71, and drone reconnaissance aircraft (before anyone even knew what a drone was) development.

It was/is also used to study effects of using nuclear weapons. Specifically contamination effects and how long it would take to clean up a nuked city (they did this by setting off nukes to contaminate the desert and see how much dirt they had to dig out to make it safe again). I believe the defense contractor EG&G handled most of the nuclear research at Groom Lake.

I'm basing it on the story told in Game Change, wherein he asked her on November 13th, 2008. Up until that point, she was privately under consideration for either State or Defense (though she did not know it), but many in his circle thought she'd pursue her own agenda, bring her husband in, or undermine Obama. Daschle, Kerry, Richardson, and Clinton were all under consideration for State, but Obama wanted a "wow factor" selection and respected her greatly. Excerpt below:

The following week on November 13th, Hillary met with Obama in his transition office in Chicago. She had some theories about why she was there, but being offered Secretary of State was not among them. Two nights earlier at a dinner in New York with her and Bill, Terry McAuliffe had asked about the rumors swirling in Democratic circles that the gig might be tossed her way. "It's the craziest thing I've ever heard," Hillary replied. Not that she thought a job offer was out of the question, but she expected it to be a token unity gesture, something both sides knew she would almost certainly turn down - maybe Health and Human Services. When the chatter about State picked up, she assumed the Obamans were floating it and was suspicious about their motives. "Why are they putting my name out?" She asked her friends. "How does it help them? What game are they playing?" But now, here she was, sitting alone with her former nemesis, and Obama was talking about the job in earnest.

After that, the story goes that she initially turned the position down, but later accepted it after he more or less talked her into it.

Belated Edit: The above book relies very heavily on unattributed "insider" quotes, so there's no guarantee of the above story being true. Just wanted to provide some more background info on this version of events.

War Room is a great book that gives insight to how teams are built, prepare for the draft, and gives background on the 1995 Browns Staff that ended up having like 3 GMs and 7 head coaches

I'm at work right now, but will add some more as I think of them.

Edit: There's also "The GM" which gives insight about being a GM, the decisions made, and again building a team. It's centered around Ernie Accorsi who was the GM of the Giants, and one of the more respected GMs in football history.

And of course, everything you are looking for can be found in The Winning Edge by Bill Walsh. Literally covers everything from top to bottom on how to run/build a football team. But it is super expensive. If you can find the means, I highly suggest it.

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?"

The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petroski has a wonderfully detailed section of precisely how this came to be. Cans were cheaper per beer, so the large breweries naturally gravitated towards putting their highest volume product in cans first to save money. The highest volume beers just so happen to be the cheapest beers (coors light, bud light, miller lite, etc.). Even though the canning process is actually superior to bottling in delivering high quality beer, as mentioned above, a stigma was quickly attached in the consumers' minds that cans = cheap beer. Cans also had many issues in the past with liners and tabs (at one point there was basically an epidemic of beaches littered with razor sharp aluminum tabs).

I definitely recommend the book to anyone interested in design, engineering, and the social history of how both are interweaved into our present day culture.

> I don't really know much about how general people around Europe would have reacted towards Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however I can help a little with how the scientists of the German Atom Bomb project reacted.

> The scientists who had though to have been working on the German Nuclear Program had been detained during Operation Epsilon and then interned in a bugged house in England. During that time, the reaction these scientists had towards the Bombing of Hiroshima was recorded.

> Obviously, they all have differing opinions on the subject, some for example, such as Otto Hahn, who had discovered Nuclear Fission and won the Noble Prize in 1944, but otherwise had no part in the program, was glad that the Germans never achieved making the bomb (he even considered suicide, believing himself responsible.) Others however, where dismayed they had failed.

> They all seem to wonder why Germany didn't manage to build the bomb, comparing that project to the thousands of people working on the V1 and V2 rockets, as well as talking about the relationship between Germany, and the Scientists, compared with how America treated there project, because they say the Germans didn't trust the Scientists working on the project, and the project would have been difficult to push through because of this, especially as they say the German Government wanted immediate results, not having to wait a long time until the project was complete.

> They also had conversations about what went wrong with the theory behind the German Project (and Heisenberg soon worked out how to build the bomb, after hearing of the dropping of the American Bomb).

> If you want to read more about it, main source is Operation Epsilon: The Farm Hall Transcripts, which has an extract here which says which books you can read the whole transcript in.

After having read "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (a historical work on The Bomb that won the author the Pulitzer) and seeing how many resources the USA was putting into The Bomb, I don't believe Germany could have ever done it during war time. They were making good progress on an energy producing reactor, but a deliverable bomb was far beyond their war-time means.

His Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work is an excellent book as well, just making my way through Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States , I think it's up there with Seeing as his best work in my opinion.

Don't Sleep There Are Snakes - Excellent read about a linguist's study of an Amazon tribe with a language unlike any other. Contains very interesting musings and science regarding how language and culture can affect how we perceive the world around us.

The Evolution of Useful Things - Very cool read if you are at all an engineering or design inclined person. The author has a great way of weaving in cultural and historical context into how all the tiny and useful things around us have evolved and come to represent very specific functions.

>it isn't a utopia as you say.

I didn't say it was a utopia. I said:

>Where you could casually throw out a net a couple times a day and immediately catch fish. Or spend a couple hours in the bushes gathering up enough nuts and berries for the next 3 days. Because it was that abundant. We assume that hunter-gatherers worked terribly hard just to subsist, but a lot of the time it was pretty chill.

Which is true.

Are you sure YOU can read?

As /u/danachos says, the horribleness of the hunter-gatherer way of life is a myth created to justify taking their lands and destroying their culture.

I've been studying this, as a layperson, for going on 30 years. I'm not going to link to every book I've read and every documentary I've watched. The info is there - look it up for yourself.

I'm currently reading a new book that updates a lot of these ideas based on more recent discoveries.

https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States/dp/0300182910

The upshot is that, then as now, HGs were not in a great hurry to abandon their way of life because it worked pretty well for them.

I've also been fortunate enough to spend some time with indigenous Australians and learn a bit about their ways. They had a great life! They certainly were not waiting until some other group showed up to teach them another way. And their life really was exactly how I described: Coastal people could catch fish and seafood easily, literally just paddle out for 20 minutes, spear something or scoop it out - boom, lunch sorted. In some areas they can still do this.

Six Frigates

It’s about the early years of the US Navy’s first Frigates. A really great read, especially if you enjoy American or Naval history. It manages to hit that perfect balance of delving deep into subjects like ship building while still being very entertaining. Plus the audiobook is narrated by Stephen Lang, who played General Longstreet in Gettysburg and the scar dude in Avatar.

I think that more so has to do with the origin of the criticism--UMass is a heterodox school, Harvard is one of the premier economics schools in the world by prestige (if you can trust rankings, #2, but that's bubba meisa).

Additionally, the finding in the R&R paper was extremely politically convenient at a time when some, including well respected thinkers like Stiglitz, Krugman, Akerloff, Schiller, Summers, were calling for a return to a more a fiscal-based anti-crisis policy.

Had their paper not come out, some other talking head would have been found to justify the austerity claim (not that the R&R paper even really does justify austerity--the issue is long term average debt, balanced over the business cycle, not its static measurement at any given moment), which occurs regularly.

Also, the more intense your prestige, the less likely you are to publicly fess up. You see this in other disciplines. Chomsky, who, by any metric, is an incredibly intelligent man, who changes the conclusions of his theories regularly, will, nonetheless, never own up to their being issues in generativism generally & the minimalist program, specifically.



It really may be a Harvard & MIT disease. Steven Pinker was savaged by Taleb's statistical analysis, not to mention substantial rebuttals from anthropology, sociology, poli sci & economics which disputed his claims (notably everyone from Douglas P Fry to James Scott to Jared Diamond to John Gray disputes it, despite their lack of agreement on anything else)--but he only ever doubles down. Ditto for Pinker & other talking heads on the issues of adaptationism in evolution and genocentrism & other issues in biology generally. Larry Summers (who, academically within econ actually has some integrity) famously gave a talk about differences between men & women's career outcomes--he cited someone for his claim who was literally in the audience at the talk and during the Q&A said he mis-interpreted the data. He recast himself as a martyr for free speech later, even as this was impertinent to the subject at hand.

A professor is not a government official. Republicans are idiots. Bill Cronon is also one of the BEST historians the U.S. has right now, by the way. Read Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West to have mind blown by a brilliant writer and educator. This is one of the best books on U.S. history ever written!

If you ask the Patriots who their gunner is, they will tell you that it's Matthew Slater.

If you ask the Patriots who their General Manager is, they will tell you that the position doesn't exist.

This is not semantics, either. The position has never existed under Robert Kraft's ownership. Most of the people on this subreddit were not alive the last time the Patriots had a General Manager.

When Kraft assumed ownership of the New England Patriots, he inherited Bill Parcells as his head coach. Parcells had been hired by the previous owner, James B. Orthwein, and had essentially been given full control over player personnel.

Over time, Kraft did not feel like Parcells accepted enough of his input in player personnel decisions. This came to a head in the 1996 NFL Draft, when Parcells wanted to draft defensive end Tony Brackens with the 7th overall pick, but Kraft overruled him and selected WR Terry Glenn instead. Parcells resigned from the Patriots after the 1996 season, and took over as HC of the NYJ.

His experience with Parcells led Kraft to believe that coaching and personnel should be separated, and as a result, his next head coach, Pete Carroll, was given no authority over personnel decisions. When this arrangement failed spectacularly, Kraft had to revise his thoughts about separating coaching and personnel, and agreed to give new head coach Bill Belichick broad authority over personnel decisions, provided that Kraft himself would be included in discussions.

Thus, the duties traditionally carried out by a General Manager are handled by a group of individuals working together, which include Kraft, Belichick, and some lesser-known people like Nick Caserio and Monti Ossenfort. Kraft believes that this is the best way to run the front office, and that's how Belichick wants it to be run anyway. The reason why Thomas Dimitroff and Scott Pioli have been successful in their GM jobs in Atlanta and Kansas City is due, I think, in no small part to their expanded duties as part of the Patriots front office.

Source: War Room: The Legacy of Bill Belichick and the Art of Building the Perfect Team by Michael S. Holley

Every tribe was different, many of the eastern tribes did have permanent cities and complex agriculture. The tribes that settled in our region didn't do a lot of permanent agriculture, but they definitely managed buffalo herds with some sophistication.

According to Charles Mann's 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, pre-Columbus plains Indians actually created and maintained healthy grazing grassland through controlled burning, and carefully regulated the bison population.

According to Mann, the huge "seas" of tens of thousands of bison that white settlers reported were actually the result of out-of-whack ecosystem, after European disease epidemics decimated the populations of the Plains tribes.

So it wasn't "ranching" in the way that we know it today, but it was definitely intentional herd management and cultivation of the land, not just disorganized nomadic hunting.

All the Shah's Men is a great book about American interventions in Iran and it's aftermath(s).
https://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/047018549X

Charlie Wilson's War (the book) is the amazing tale about how US got involved in Afghanistan. very well researched and fun to read. https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=charlie+wilson%27s+war

There is a free lecture course given by a Stanford professor "History of the International System" if he'd prefer to listen. free on iTunes, and i'd imagine elsewhere https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/history-of-the-international-system/id384240428?mt=10

Huh. Very good! Also - if you guys are interested in this /u/tacitus's reply, you might like the book How The States Got Their Shapes I read it a few years ago. Pretty great.

Hm, I'm currently reading a history of artificial light, so maybe I'll eventually get around to 1493, but feel like it would be a let down after 1491, and I'm not sure I want to stay on the same topic. I also want to read "The history of white people," whose topic is probably relevant to this thread, but I haven't read it yet. Thanks for your explanation on your issues with Diamond's book. Very to-the-point explanation. My family is 2 social science professor parents, and I've got just 2 more years in my PhD, so it's a very interesting topic to me, and I appreciate your expertise.

I would also recommend The Globalization of World Politics as an introductory text to the field. It's an absolutely phenomenal textbook, while summaries you've posted are indeed comprehensive and succinct.

To elaborate, with more comprehensive texts (should the OP choose to read them), IR is a broad field. But specifically regarding International Politics, I would recommend Nye's The Future of Power, as a current perspective on international power (and the fairly recent differentiation in power resources, eg. "hard" and "soft" power). Focusing specifically on International Politics (as opposed to other IR subfields like development), the seminal works for the current theories on international politics include:


Theory of International Politics by Kenneth N. Waltz (1979), which serves as the foundation for structural realist (or neorealist) school. Neorealists are generally split between offensive realists (like Mearsheimer) and defensive realists (Waltz and Walt) as general categorizations, and you can find related works from these scholars for a focused view from either on the issues they disagree upon.

After Hegemony (1984) by Robert Keohane is the neoliberal institutionalist response to Waltz (Power and Interdependence by Keohane & Nye (1977) is probably its founding text), and one of the leading works of the theoretical field itself.

Finally, Social Theory of International Politics by Alexander Wendt (1999) is the comprehensive overview of the social constructivist school.

These largely cover all the major theoretical branches of current International Political theory (without diverging too heavily into IR subfields), though I do emphasize that these classifications are fairly fluid, given the readiness of offensive realists like Mearsheimer to look into the "black box" of domestic politics in the (highly controversial) piece, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy. Again, these are the main theoretical works in these respective schools, and it is not necessary for you (the OP) to read through all of them to understand the subject.

While not exclusively International Politics focused, World Systems Theory is highly influential critical theory for IR studies, and understanding it (and Marxist-influenced dependency theory) as well as game theory (Nash Equilibrium etc) are both integral to modern IR methodologies and theories. By in large, Hobbes and the Leviathan (and a bit of Rousseau) is the only political theory that you need to start delving into IR theory, so you should be good on that front.

There are also specialized and diversified IR fields such as Development, Peace and Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights, but those are most likely not necessary given the scope of your conference (by the sounds of it, predominantly focused on state-centric International Politics).

At lot of people mentioned some pretty cool map books already, but these are two geography-related books I'm getting for Christmas: How the States Got Their Shapes (probably better if she's American) and Guns, Germs, and Steel. The latter is less to do with maps and more to do with how geography influences civilizations. Hope that helps!

I have, actually. You might try a couple books I've found to be very helpful in that regard.

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

A People's History of the United States

I'm only halfway through the second one, but there's really nothing quite like reading history through the words of everyday people like you and me. Rather than the heroic narrative that glorifies and omits based upon the preferred narrative of the writer.

• Primitive Technology on YouTube
  
  
• The book by primitive tech
  
  
• The recent AMA by the primitive tech guy
  
  
• Townsends A channel dedicated to exploring the 18th Century lifestyle.
  
  
  
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfIqCzQJXvYj9ssCoHq327g how to make everything channel on YouTube that shows how with fairly minimal knowledge and practice you can make functional (although inefficient) tools and items
  
  
• The Society for Creative Anachronism Researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe, non-LARP medieval reenactors that take it quite serious.
  
  
• /r/bushcrafting
  
  
• /r/PrimitiveTechnology/
  
  
• /r/Homesteading/
  
  
• /r/Leathercraft/
  
  
• /r/Fishing/
  
  
• /r/Hunting/
  
  
• /r/Trappit/
  
  
• /r/HomemadeTools/
  
  
• /r/soapmaking/
  
  
• /r/weaving/
  
  
• /r/knitting/
  
  
• /r/candlemaking/
  
  
• Book Country Wisdom & Know-How: Everything You Need to Know to Live Off the Land
  
  
• Book Restoration Agriculture
  
  
• Book Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition Paperback
  
  
• Book The Encyclopedia of Country Living, 40th Anniversary Edition: The Original Manual for Living off the Land & Doing It Yourself Paperback – October 30, 2012
  
  
  
• Book Five Acres and Independence: A Practical Guide to the Selection and Management of the Small Farm Paperback
  
  
• Book Bushcraft: Outdoor Skills and Wilderness Survival
  
  
• Book Bushcraft 101: A Field Guide to the Art of Wilderness Survival
  
  
• Book The Trapper's Bible: The Most Complete Guide on Trapping and Hunting Tips Ever
  
  
• Book The Traditional Bowyer's Bible, Volume 1 ALL of the volumes in this series are great and for that matter all of his books are.

This book is a great beginner's guide to Marx, very easy to understand and has all of the basics.

A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn is also a great socialist history of the US and includes some anecdotes about radical religious figures.

I would also point him towards anything by Father Dan Berrigan.

It sounds like you have two subjects, Sam Harris on Israel and is there anything stopping them. I am no friend to Islam, in fact I am in agreement with Sam that "it's the mother load of bad ideas." However, my feelings towards Islam does not blind me to the plight of the Palestinians. It's painful to watch and the sorrow that Israel heaps upon them only fuels and legitimizes the Arab/Muslim world against the West, specifically the US for funding Israel. What is going on there is nothing short of globally accepted genocide.

I too am a huge fan of Sam Harris. For the most part, I agree with everything he so eloquently states...except for Israel. I listen to his podcast every day and find myself marveling at his use of the English language in expressing such well thought out concepts and ideas. However, I try to avoid his talks on Israel, but it's really not that hard since it doesn't come up much. I just accept him for being soft on the subject.

Regarding "nothing stopping them" I hate to submit to the idea that they are on the path to steamroll all Palestinians and nothing will stop them. As long as the US is their money-guy, they will do whatever they want and nobody can say anything. Why? Because there is a huge Israeli lobby by the name of AIPAC that will destroy any American politician that questions Israel. They are organized towards one goal and fund both right and left leaning politicians and to see that goal come true, which is to ensure Israel takes ownership of the entire country of Israel and push out the Palestinians. Zionism is alive and well and its victim is the Palestinian people. Unfortunately, to say anything about the subject turns the speaker into a bigot and antisemite; there is no room to criticize Israel.

I suggest reading two books on the subject The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy and Jimmy Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

Natures Metropolis by William Cronon

" Cronon's history of 19th-century Chicago is in fact the history of the widespread effects of a single city on millions of square miles of ecological, cultural, and economic frontier. Cronon combines archival accuracy, ecological evaluation, and a sweeping understanding of the impact of railroads, stockyards, catalog companies, and patterns of property on the design of development of the entire inland United States to this date. Although focused on Chicago and the U.S., the general lessons it teaches are of global significance, and a rich source of metaphors for the ways in which colonization of physical space operates differently from, and similarly to, colonization of cyberspace. This is a compelling, wise, thorough--and thoroughly accessible--masterpiece of history writ large. Very Highest Recommendation. "

There is a whole book dedicated to the invention of the paper clip and everyday things like that. The author is a really awesome guy or at least was awesome when I met him. See http://www.amazon.com/The-Evolution-Useful-Things-Artifacts-From/dp/0679740392

Happily, and I hope I didn't come off as too abrasive. As I said, you seemed to be asking the question in very good faith.

If you or anyone is interested - not so much in the political decision or if or how to use the bombs - but just in the effort of making of them: The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a massive book (often considered 'definitive') that goes through the Manhattan project in great detail. The only other project that really compares to it is the Moon Landing.

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

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

Highly recommend you give this a read, mate.

Lobbies give to people who will support them, that's why the money is useful. They're not going to help fund those who go against their interests. Help elect the friendly people, and then quietly remind them you helped them and they owe you.

Not sure what all the hate is about but I have a degree in Gender Studies and don't regret my education.

I recently finished Girls Like Us which is about sex trafficking and sexual exploitations of minors and learned a lot. It's also an engrossing read, which is always nice. I also recommend When Everything Changed and A People's History of the United States if you haven't read it before.

Fellow patriot. If you would like to get a freedom boner to end all freedom boners the you need to read Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy. You will learn about the Constitution but also the other 5 Frigates that were constructed at the same time: The Constellation, The Chesapeake, The President, The United States and The Congress. It is one of my favorite books.

Rather than reading reddit's analysis on how Israel keeps getting bank rolled by Uncle Sam.. You should read this excellent book about the Israel lobby in America.

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

The book is written by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Even in the preface they go into great depths of how Israel manipulates it's funding by gaining the maximum funding from American tax dollars. For example, Israel doesn't buy weapons directly. They buy U.S. bonds, wait for them to mature and then cash out the bonds for additional interest. inflating the already massive amount of funding they receive. All at the expense of the U.S. tax payer.

You posted a fairly long response to me, starting "Catholic here!" if that helps.

Yes, I understand Francis is good at PR, but what the Church really needs is actual change. It supposedly accepts science, but the morals are rooted really deep in the grain state patriarchy we've been living in for the past 3-4000 years.

I'm reading a book that puts that statement into context, ;"Against the Grain: A deep history of the earliest states"](https://smile.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States/dp/0300182910/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523535106&sr=8-1&keywords=against+the+grain+a+deep+history+of+the+earliest+states&dpID=51bn3kWDVEL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch) by James C. Scott, detailing how the shift from hunter-gatherer and foraging lifestyles to grain-based states impacted human health and history. A fascinating read!

There's a really practical reason why states had a vested interest in a patriarchy, and in fixed-field grain agriculture, and it had everything to do with retaining power in the here and now. I've always suspected that religion was developed as a way to maintain control over populations by an elite, and this book seems to corroborate that suspicion.

But I digress!

For anyone interested to learn more than this wikipedia article about Iran. I recommend All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. It is an excellent book that talks about how exactly the coup happened (In detail) and some of the leadup to the 1979 Revolution. (Also great in Audiobook form!)

Excellent book is The Great Influenza, but reading it will really freak you out. The main theme is that medical care was actually BETTER in the early 20th century because they weren't so reliant on antibiotics.

If this particular virus hit today, we would likely see greater morbidity/mortality.

Not really, but you should read a book by Annie Jacobsen's about area 51 it gives a good overview on the subject. Some of her other books are also very good and 100% good journalism.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316202304/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i2

Edit: She was also recently on JRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VoVIpIzj_c&t=9s

Old dead classical dudes are always good. I ransack Epicurus and Marcus Aurelius for good ideas and advice fairly regularly. There are some excellent secular philosophers and thinkers out there. I enjoy Sam Harris' work the most. One of my favorite reference books is The Portable Atheist, which is a collection of secular philosophers, edited by Hitchens.

To get a sense of your place in the universe, try to find an old full-color hardback copy of Cosmos.^1 For your place in the Human story, Guns, Germs, and Steel, and your place in the American story with A People's History.


[1] As a minor biographical note, I credit this version of Cosmos for getting me through horrible angsty teenager time.

Edit: Also, good question.

These disclosures are incomplete, and leave out some gory details - such as when the CIA sponsored a riot, then got the chief of police to fire on the protesters, all to create the impression that Iran was falling into chaos. The CIA helped design the impression of imminent Communist takeover, in order to justify their actions. They manipulated Eisenhower and Truman, as much as they did the Iranians. All the Shah's Men is a great book on the subject.

What is really sad is, prior to the coup, the US was widely adored in Iran as a non-colonial western power. All that Mosaddegh was asking for was the same partnership that the US had created with Aramco in Saudi Arabia: a 50/50 split of profits between the state and its western concessionaires. If the US had been consistent in applying its values, Iran could easily be an ally today.

As it stands, the only winners to emerge from the CIA's machinations have been the national security apparatus, and the muslim fanatics - in the long term, even the oil industry would have been better off sharing with Iran, rather than pillaging and being thrown out.

A few points in favor of Dale and Holley.

1. They just added a 3rd man and IMO the best patriots blogger out there, Jerry Thornton. Thornography
   
2. Michael Holley wrote this great book on the patriots rise to dominance. War Room: The Legacy of Bill Belichick and the Art of Building the Perfect Team

polio was a good one. And The Great Influenza , while not specifically about vaccines has some vaccine info and is really good history as well.

Nature's Metropolis: Chicago & the Great West is a wonderful read that doesn't pop up on here that much. It analyzes the environmental and economic background of the city from it's foundation until just past the worlds fair IIRC. It posits the straightforward argument that the success and growth of Chicago was an organic and interdependent inevitability based on the vast amounts of natural resources spread throughout the plains and upper midwest. It's basically Third Coast, but focused a hundred years earlier. It is a very dry read for most of the book, but it delves deeply into almost every industry that fed into early Chicago. If you've ever wondered why the Board of Trade is such a figure in the cities history, or why Chicago had the largest meatpacking industry in North America, or why all the grain from the upper midwest ended up here, why the bulk of the timber from the North Woods came through the city, this is your book.

Another book worth mentioning: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Won the Pulitzer prize, an instant classic, and perhaps one of the finest non-fiction books ever written. It paints the story of the bomb on a very broad, panoramic canvas, tracing the entire process of turning an outlandish, futuristic idea (all the way back to the musings of H. G. Well) into a real weapon with fatal and geopolitical consequences, through a complex landscape of politics, history, philosophy and psychology. Along the way it drip-feeds a course in elementary particle physics so that the technical details are easy to understand even for a layman — in fact, the first half of the book is pretty much the story of the atomic physics, from the discovery of the atom to modern quantum mechanics. The book is also superbly written; quirkily, occasionally lyrical, and very adept at making its characters come alive with plenty of juicy dramatic tension. (My only criticism about the book: Not enough Feynman!)

If this interests you I would highly recommend reading The Great Influenza. It is very readable and gives some great perspective on modern medicine.

The docudrama was based on a book about all of the teams in the 2008 race, Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime. If you get a chance, I really recommend reading it. It's a real page-turner, which is remarkable considering that you know the ending. It's just that fascinating.

I love reading about disease!


The Demon in the Freezer and The Hot Zone are fictionalized accounts of real events, and very good reads. The Hot Zone is about Ebola, and The Demon in the Freezer is about anthrax and small pox.


A fantastic historical account of the 1918 flu, and how it changed the United States is The Great Influenza. This is a nonfiction book that mostly discusses the reaction to the flu on a national level, and also by the scientific community.

For a comical take on the DC culture today, read "This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America's Gilded Capital" by Mark Leibovich. He's a NYTimes political correspondent and he gives you a look into the private world of the people in DC. You could also check out the book "Game Change" which covers the 2008 election of Obama, if you would like an in depth look at a presidential election.

These two are definitely not authoritative or comprehensive explanations of national politics, but they will probably make for much more interesting reading and may pique your interest in researching various topics, procedures etc. on wikipedia afterward.

Not a great example, as the most dramatic and obvious changes to the flu virus occurs via a process known as genetic shift which has no correlate in mammals.

In laymen's terms, two viral strains possessing different types of neuraminidase and hemagglutinin surface proteins (e.g. H5N1) can simultaneously infect a single host and exchange genetic elements and rapidly and radically alter their surface proteins in a single cell cycle. This is especially dangerous when humans become co-infected with avian- or swine-predominant strains of influenza, to which the population has little acquired immunity. The danger in such cases is mostly to the young, who possess robust immune systems capable of mounting very strong responses to previously unseen antigens.

If you're interested in learning more, The Great Influenza is a wonderful place to start reading.

Finally, take this piece of advice from someone older (though not necessarily wiser): unless you're a high school science teacher, debating evolution with people is a waste. Barring exceptionally poor school systems or upbringings, most doubting the existence of biological change in response to selective pressure lack the curiosity, reading ability, and/or motivation to educate themselves. Your intervention is unlikely to change this. If you're really interested in helping, read voraciously yourself and recommend a beginners' reading list to those interested in better understanding the world. To the others, a big toothy smile and "yeah, bro" will considerably reduce your blood pressure.

Great picture! If you are interested in Constitution and her sisters, I highly recommend the book "Six Frigates".

Band of Brothers, by Stephen E. Ambrose is a great read. I read it after watching the mini series. It's easy to get into, and still an incredibly fascinating and detailed account of what Easy Company went through in the war.

No - one of the ironies of modern medicine is that hand hygiene and isolation of infected patients was probably better in 1918 than it is now. Modern doctors have come to rely on rescue meds/equipment/antibiotics that their counterparts did not have back then. But 1880-1920 was the first golden age of evidence-based medicine, and doctors then knew very well what was killing their patients.

A truly excellent book if you're interested is The Great Influenza by John Berry.

He openly praised Jim Crow, too. He actually regarded America quite highly for that reason.

Edit: A great book to read is "The History of White People" by Nell Irvin Painter. An exhaustively researched examination of race attitudes from Roman times til today, and adds a lot of valuable context to what we're seeing now.

A lot of people mentioned the show, but there is an excellent book that I read a few years on the topic.

It goes quite a bit more into depth than the TV show does with a chapter for each state. There are some really interesting stories about how various borders got there, especially in the Eastern States, where you had a mix of overlapping colonial charters.

Are you asking a question, or making a statement? Would you like to define what you mean by "other stuff"?




If you want to know where I derived the ideas that I formed my comment from. It was mainly from reading these three books -




Security Analysis, 6th edition, by Graham & Dodd




The Intelligent Investor, by Graham




A People's History of the United States, by Zinn

If you like this story, I would recommend the book, The Evolution of Useful things. It tells the history of the design of the soda top lid, paperclips/staples, zippers and other mundane important engineering accomplishments.

There's an informative book titled All the Shah's Men that tells the story. It's been a while since I read it, but it was very engaging and well written. It is slanted towards the American involvement, but discusses in some detail Britain's coercion of the U.S. to join resources.

I'd recommend to anyone who's interested to read "Making the Atomic Bomb". One of the aspects that I didn't know about was one of the physicists(I can't recall which one) going to both Churchill and Roosevelt pleading to tell the Russians about it, saying that by not telling them it would instigate an arms race.

It also highlights Gen. Lemay's cold, calculating process of not bombing certain targets so they could get a good reading on destruction levels when the bomb was used. By contrast it also gives much history on the international level of research going on before WW2 and the discovery of fission and decay of elements. It shows that someone was going to develop the bomb because everyone was doing research in the field.

She was built after the revolution.

If you're interested, here's a good book about her.

This one is very good also.

I really want one of those pens now.

Try the book "1491" -- it's fascinating and goes into detail about a lot of mesoamerican societies. I enjoyed it a lot.

What I can't tell you is whether it's accurate. Like rocket trajectories for Wernher Von Braun in Tom Lehrer's famous song, that's not my department.

Hmm. Interesting. We've only ever heard Bill speak off the cuff. Why is he doing this? Is he a military history buff? I would guess that his management style is somewhat influenced by military culture. I'm reading War Room: The Legacy of Bill Belichick and the Art of Building the Perfect Team right now and I can see a lot of similarities between Belichick's leadership/organizational style and the time I spent in the military.


I mean, if Bill wants me to come play, you know... I'll show up on time for team meetings n' stuff.

What gives the dynamic a particular look is the large population of Evangelical Christians. Now what you have to understand, is while the professed rates of religiosity are extremely high, the general population simply does not know anything about the Bible, or Judaism nor Islam. This goes for the evangelical crowd as well. There are a set of cliches that they all know, you know, 'Jesus saves," type of knowledge. So you end up with stuff like you see in this very thread, with 'we have a Judeo-Christian' background level of rhetoric.

The fact is that people just don't know anything about Judaism or Christianity.

On top of this you had a conscious Zionist political project, to make sure that culturally pro-Israel views dominate the news, academy and churches.

There are two academics who wrote a paper that eventually became a book concerning the influence of the Israel lobby. The book is a must read, but you should give the shorter paper a try for sure.

THE
ISRAEL
LOBBY
AND
U.S.
FOREIGN
POLICY

http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0040.pdf

The book:

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

Pew study on religious knowledge.

http://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey/

This may not be the greatest suggestion but there is a book called Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 that has always looked interesting to me. It's massive, but the reviews are pretty positive. It's considered a textbook, but it's relatively cheap.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195140494?pc_redir=1396203794&robot_redir=1


EDIT: wrong words used.

Overthrowing Mossadegh was one of the greatest mistakes America ever made. This is an excellent book on the subject if you're interested.

I don't know enough to answer your question, but there's a book on my to-read list that I thought you might be interested in, called A History of White People. Written by a highly respected (black) historian, it traces the development of modern concepts of race.

Check out All the Shah's Men by Stephen Kinzer.
It's an easy and compelling read which ought to raise many questions and spur further curiosity on the subject. If you get through that, try giving this gem a go. It's an easy read that give a sweeping overview of religious developments through the region. Many debatable points made by the author, but an easy starting point to branch out from.

I don't rant much on the topic. Generally the ranting people are oversimplifying matters and attempting to reconcile their personal bias with reality. Be attentive of the people willing to step back and question what they think they know about this diverse region.

No, it is not true that AIPAC funds politicians in the USA - it isn't a PAC, it's a lobbying organization.

EDIT: If anybody downvoting me would like to learn something about the truth of how our government operates rather than perpetuate a shallow and illogical conspiracy theory about jewish influence, this AIPAC critical article by Stephen Walt, who literally wrote the book on the Israel Lobby and its negative influence on the american body politic, is a good place to start. For the purposes of this conversation, let me quote the following passage

>Fourth, like other interest groups, the Israel lobby uses a variety of strategies to accomplish its goals. Some of its influence comes from campaign contributions to political parties or politicians (although AIPAC does not do this) ,some from direct lobbying on Capitol Hill, some from public outreach (op-eds, books, position papers, media appearances, etc.), and some from the role that pro-Israel individuals may play in the U.S. government itself.

​

​

Mark Stein's How the States Got Their Shapes is a nice quick-and-dirty rundown of how each state came to be the shape it is today. It's just a fun little pop-history book, though. You won't find much in the way of deep, well-sourced historical analysis in it.

There's also a History Channel show, based on Stein's book and hosted by Mark Unger. It's OK.

Yes, and for anyone interested, Game Change is a fantastic book about that election.

This book made the interesting point that a lot of Oxcart (early SR-71) test planes didn't have black paint but were silver. Flying a lot higher than commercial flights, the recently-set sun would still be shining on them, and could have made them look like bright flying saucers going at then-unheard of speeds.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0316202304?pc_redir=1409111139&robot_redir=1

Passage from the War Room where Bill Belichick discusses with Atlanta GM Thomas Dimitroff about trading up to get Julio Jones:

>"Thomas, I'm just telling you as a friend," Belichick says, "I wouldn't do it."
>When Belichick began studying the 2011 draft, he saw great depth at the receiver position. Why go all-out for someone like Jones when you can have a Jonathan Baldwin, who as far as, Belichick can see, is just as good if not better than Jones?

Take a look at:

• Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism by Massimo De Angelis.
  
  
• Anthropology and the Economy of Sharing - Thomas Widlok
  
  
• Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott.
  
  
• Marx's Inferno: The Political Theory of Capital by William Clare Roberts.
  
  
  You want something on cognitive science?
  
  I recommend you take a look at David Graeber and David Wengrow's Farewell to the childhood of man: ritual, seasonality, and the origins of inequality.
  
  
  Well...I don't what else.
  
  The neuroscientist Jean-Didier Vincent is related to and is a fan of the anarchist Elisée Réclus, so maybe you could read his book The Custom-Made Brain: Cerebral Plasticity, Regeneration, and Enhancement. Agustín Fuentes'(who's kind of a lefty) book The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional, maybe.
  
  

If you actually want to understand why the United States supports Israel, I recommend you order this book :

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

The authors make a very good analysis.

It's more complex than the ridiculous stuff I often hear such as "America always supported Israel" (No, they factually didn't until 1967) or "Israel totally controls America" (No they actually don't) . Those are simplistic childish answers that don't come close to a real analysis.

Have you read John Barry's book about the 1918 influenza? I love it so much. I love reading about diseases! I know too much about the bubonic plague for my own good.

For anyone thinking "What? I thought Area 51 was for aliens!" I would encourage you to read Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen. Really interesting book that explores aerial reconnaissance and nuclear arms development post-WWII.

If you ever wanted to read about the interesting history of the creation of the SR-71, check out this book [Area 51] (http://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/dp/0316202304)

The last chapter or so of this book jumps the tracks and goes off on some crazy conspiracy theories but the first part on the history of the U-2 and SR-71 is pretty good.

Annie Jacobsen wrote a book about area 51 from accounts of the place by people who worked there. I read it and it was really cool. As far as we know they are pretty much an R&D department with a ton of resources. But its pretty cool. If they were building Mach 3 airplanes in the 1970s (60s, 80s? Im not sure sometime around then), then imagine what they are building today. Super giant killer robot of death? I vote yes
http://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/dp/0316202304

it can't be both?

you can't test your two different style of bombs to compare results and show an overwhelming show of force to Japan?

Do I have a linkable source or recording of somebody saying "man that one was great, let's see what the next one does"? no.

But I have read "making of the atomic bomb" by Richard Rhodes and from the information there, I myself came to the conclusion that there was a desire to test both designs.
it's a good book. I highly recommend it:
https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-25th-Anniversary/dp/1451677618

There's a pretty good book about this topic that I recommend to anyone hoping to read more about flu pandemic of 1918 => https://www.amazon.ca/Great-Influenza-Revised-John-Barry/dp/0143036491

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes!

Excellent Pulitzer Prize winning history of the Manhattan program.

I like Chris Lefteri's books when it comes to manufacturing materials & processes.

I'm also reading The Evolution of Useful Things which is an interesting read about how common products have evolved very organically.

Study, I dunno. I like to listen to books about nuclear science, nuclear power, weapons, accidents and the like while I'm driving. I don't do many fiction books.

While it may not be studying, learning about the world around you can help expand your mind and keep it active while you're focusing on the road. I've listened to these books a few times over by now.

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3
Link 4
Link 5
Link 6

Books?

• if they're interested in history and historical gear: Traditional Archery from Six Continents http://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Archery-Six-Continents-Collection/dp/0826217516 (ob. discl. I arranged for that to be reprinted and would like to clear out the boxes....)
  
• One coach's perspective: Total Archery: Inside the Archer by KiSik Lee, Tyler Benner, Spencer Adamson http://www.amazon.com/dp/098242650X
  
• Maybe they want to make their own? Archeological European view: The Bow Builder's Book: European Bow Building from the Stone Age to Today http://www.amazon.com/dp/0764341537 or for more detail and performance: The Traditional Bowyer's Bible, Volume 1 http://www.amazon.com/dp/1585740853
  
• or accessories: Bow Accessories: Equipment and Trimmings You Can Make http://www.amazon.com/Bow-Accessories-Equipment-Trimmings-Make/dp/0764330357
  
  

Try to get your hands on this book and dig in a little bit. Super readable and amazing history.

Texts and Reference Books

Days in the Lives of Social Workers

DSM-5

Child Development, Third Edition: A Practitioner's Guide

Racial and Ethnic Groups

Social Work Documentation: A Guide to Strengthening Your Case Recording

Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond

[Thoughts and Feelings: Taking Control of Your Moods and Your Life]
(https://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-Feelings-Harbinger-Self-Help-Workbook/dp/1608822087/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=3ZW7PRW5TK2PB0MDR9R3)

Interpersonal Process in Therapy: An Integrative Model

[The Clinical Assessment Workbook: Balancing Strengths and Differential Diagnosis]
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0534578438/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_38?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ARCO1HGQTQFT8)

Helping Abused and Traumatized Children

Essential Research Methods for Social Work

Navigating Human Service Organizations

Privilege: A Reader

Play Therapy with Children in Crisis

The Color of Hope: People of Color Mental Health Narratives

The School Counseling and School Social Work Treatment Planner

Streets of Hope : The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood

Deviant Behavior

Social Work with Older Adults

The Aging Networks: A Guide to Programs and Services

[Grief and Bereavement in Contemporary Society: Bridging Research and Practice]
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415884810/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy

Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change

Ethnicity and Family Therapy

Human Behavior in the Social Environment: Perspectives on Development and the Life Course

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

Generalist Social Work Practice: An Empowering Approach

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook

DBT Skills Manual for Adolescents

DBT Skills Manual

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets

Social Welfare: A History of the American Response to Need

Novels

[A People’s History of the United States]
(https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0062397346/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511070674&sr=1-1&keywords=howard+zinn&dpID=51pps1C9%252BGL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch)


The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Life For Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Tuesdays with Morrie

The Death Class <- This one is based off of a course I took at my undergrad university

The Quiet Room

Girl, Interrupted

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Flowers for Algernon

Of Mice and Men

A Child Called It

Go Ask Alice

Under the Udala Trees

Prozac Nation

It's Kind of a Funny Story

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Yellow Wallpaper

The Bell Jar

The Outsiders

To Kill a Mockingbird

Cool. This book is pretty good: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000JMKVE4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

The book is really good too.
https://www.amazon.com/Band-Brothers-Regiment-Airborne-Normandy/dp/074322454X


I'd have to say that the HBO mini series is probably one of the best things ever made.

Cool deal. Good to come across someone who read a lot of history. Try reading 1491 by Charles C Mann Here

It is a very good read.

I recommend Against the Grain: A deep history of the earliest states. By James C. Scott. You'll learn what archaeologists know about these questions, how they figure it out, what the evidence is, and so on. Here's the link to the Amazon listing.

/u/brigantus provides a very good answer in this thread that corresponds pretty closely to this book. As far as I know, there is no competing theory, although the experts still debate some of the details.

Amazon and local libraries have free ebooks, buddy.

New ones, too. Just read 1491 for free through the Seattle Public Library.

http://www.amazon.com/1491-Revelations-Americas-Before-Columbus/dp/140004006X

I'm pretty sure this is the same incident as OP mentions. One of the researchers believed there was a small possibility that the nuclear detonation would cause a (fusion?) chain reaction in the oxygen in the atmosphere.

It is mentioned somewhere in the book The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. It's a really, really good book by the way, it won the Pulitzer Price. It's very thorough, they don't discover the electron until page 150 or so.

Anyway, the probability was very low, but they still checked the math. It's similar to the extra hearing they had when they started the Large Hadron Collider, because someone thought they could create a black hole that would devour the planet.

This is a really good book on the influenza pandemic

The Great Influenza

A History of the American People

or if you are a dirty commie

A People's History.

Honestly they are a yin and yang that do an amazing job of giving you US history in broad strokes.

Other than those Chernow on Washington or just this.

Well, Band of Brothers was based off a book about the men of Easy Company. There is of course The Pacific if you're interested in another Tom Hanks/Steven Spielberg/HBO collaboration.

Band of Brothers and Generation Kill were both good books that made for great mini series, I'd check them out.

Sorry that Dream is one of the Santa like stories sold to youth -- especially those of enlistment age. Columbus came for the gold and the the glory. We've been following his mighty footsteps ever since.

Sorry, knew it. Though it is certainly an obscure incident. Hopefully someone will have learned something from our exchange!

Good relevant reading material: http://amzn.com/039333032X

You might be interested in reading Area 51 by Annie Jacobsen. It goes into some really good detail about what shenanigans the Department of Energy and others were getting up to out in the desert.

Most of these are analytical:

Take your eyes of the ball by Pat Kirwan.


The Games That Changed the Game: The Evolution of the NFL in Seven Sundays by Ron Jaworski

War Room: The Legacy of Bill Belichick and the Art of Building the Perfect Team by Michael Holley


The Art of Smart Football by Chris B. Brown

Well I think I did make factual claims, but I definitely didn't justify them to a sufficient extent. Here are a couple of books which develop the only possibly contentious claim, that the U.S. and U.K. backed overthrow of Mossadegh led inexorably to the Islamic revolution:

https://www.amazon.com/Iranians-Persia-Islam-Soul-Nation/dp/0452275636

https://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/047018549X/ref=pd_rhf_dp_s_cp_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=047018549X&pd_rd_r=5WBGQ1NQ4PDPSE4R8MQQ&pd_rd_w=fJdqr&pd_rd_wg=rOgoA&psc=1&refRID=5WBGQ1NQ4PDPSE4R8MQQ

I apologise that I can't really go into depth on this topic myself; frankly I'm not knowledgeable enough to come close to doing the argument justice, and I have simply drawn my conclusions from the existing available scholarship, such as the above.

It should be noted, however, that this is not a particularly controversial position; I'm not a historian and haven't studied history beyond the undergraduate level, or modern history at all, but as far as I'm aware there aren't many academic sources that would contradict the claim that the overthrow of Mossadegh and the subsequent perception of the Shah as a Western lapdog were significant contributing factors to the revolution of '79.

Yea because if you're not a white christian or jew it's obvious

We're fighting Muslims over sand no one should care about

Do you not understand our foreign policy?

Here is the most famous book on the topic

https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501

Written by a harvard and a u chicago professor.

I'll say it again. You have no fucking idea waht you're talking about. White nationalists love Israel. You are so unbelievably ignorant. Fucking Hitler loved Israel

If you think we would have invaded Iraq without our relationship with Israel you're fucking delusional. And again proving your ignorance. Stay out of politics. Clearly you know nothing about anyone politics or American policy.

Not a documentary, but Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 is probably the best book about New York City up until the 20th century.

Also for those that are interested in an in-depth look is the book All the Shah's Men. A great detailed account of these events.

1491 by Charles Mann is a great place to start if you're interested in pre-Columbian America.

US imperial ambitions in the Middle East, and in particular the Levant, are themselves motivated to a large extent by Israeli "security interests." From a pure geopolitics standpoint Israel is way more trouble than it's worth. It's not antisemitic to acknowledge that the Israel lobby plays a huge role in directing US foreign policy.

u/photalysis

I would also recomment Stephen Walt's blog over at foreign policy. He's a realist (defensive neorealism) and has worked with Mearsheimer quite closely (The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy), and has a slightly less controversial take on worldl affairs than does Mearsheimer. Both have pulled me towards realism as having greater explanatory power on international politics, though G. John Ikenberry is also really great (neoliberal institutionalism).

"Inside and Under Area 51 - Underground Cities"

8-Minutes --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-qu_cOo_Dk

"Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base"

"It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere seventy-five miles outside of Las Vegas in Nevada's desert, the base has never been acknowledged by the U.S. government-but Area 51 has captivated imaginations for decades....
...
Annie Jacobsen had exclusive access to nineteen men who served the base proudly and secretly for decades and are now aged 75-92, and unprecedented access to fifty-five additional military and intelligence personnel, scientists, pilots, and engineers linked to the secret base, thirty-two of whom lived and worked there for extended periods. In Area 51, Jacobsen shows us what has really gone on in the Nevada desert, from testing nuclear weapons to building super-secret, supersonic jets to pursuing the War on Terror."

https://amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/dp/0316202304/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1520125771&sr=8-2&keywords=area+51&dpID=419OjHWv5ZL&preST=_SY344_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

{I recommend going to the public library for all your books.}

Science fiction is nice, but it's also important to be realistic, especially when he's consulting others on the future of technology and space. If you're interested in UFO stuff you should check out this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/dp/0316202304/ref=la_B001K7ZHF0_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346813936&sr=1-1

I would highly recommend Thomas Jefferson: Author of America by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens was a journalist and essayist, heavily influenced by George Orwell, Thomas Jefferson, and Leon Trotsky. He's one of the few people I can think of who described himself as a "socialist" of sorts who also admired the American Revolution. An interesting source, but he's a person who hugely admired Jefferson and was also willing to criticize his failings. Basically, you will get the general story that most Americans know, but Hitchens also writes about the more troubling/controversial aspects of Jefferson such as his ownership of slaves and his fathering of children with them.

Anyway, that's Jefferson. For general American history I would suggest reading both A People's History of the United States and A Patriot's History of the United States. Those books will provide general knowledge from two very distinct perspectives. People's is very critical of the country's past, while Patriot's is...well, patriotic.

> Do you have any books you'd recommend that are in the same vein? I have also read about how we ended Smallpox and ebola.

The Great Influenza

> Is the white people book new?

https://www.amazon.com/History-White-People-Irvin-Painter/dp/0393339742"

2011

Super interesting read

I read Nature's Metropolis. It's about Chicago becoming a large city. Like Railroads and I believe it was a huge lumber depot. It was interesting.

Northwestern Territory, yes. But Illinois has a greater claim on Wisconsin rather then the other way around.

If it makes you feel better, Wisconsin was basically deforested to build Chicago (pre-fire, 1871. Source: William Cronon's "Nature's Metropolis")

And the Green Bay-Chicago rivalry transcends football. After the revolution, Chicago, St. Louis, Green Bay, and Cincinnati all competed to be the nexus for trade and goods moving from the western frontier to the East Coast and on to Europe. Chicago actually lagged for several reasons: Shipping would include an annoying portage from the Illinois to Chicago Rivers, and Chicago was an ice or mud locked malarial swamp for much of its early history.

But while the other cities invested heavily into their water passages, Chicago gambled and came up big on the newer technology of railroads. After most of Chicago burned to the ground in 1871, Green Bay began to attract significant investment from New York and Boston betting Chicago would take decades to recover. (Source: Donald Miller's "City of the Century")

Agreed! This is a great book btw: https://www.amazon.com/Six-Frigates-Epic-History-Founding/dp/039333032X

Nope, that's not what I was getting at. Feel free to argue with your own preconceived notions at this point.

I will point out one thing. There is a good academic book on lobbies, particularly Israeli. In this case, is this okay for the government to take their money that ultimately alters US policy? Are you outraged by this or these particular players get a free pass but when Russia gives out a loan it's a subversion of democracy? Are you hypocrite or perhaps you can acknowledge that there is a fundamental flaw in the system and Russians are doing nothing wrong but to play this by the "rules" that Western democracies have established for themselves?

Jonas Salk did some amazing vaccine work (polio is the big one but his work with the flu is important). not sure if that counts but in my mind vaccines and semiconductors are the two biggest life changers science has produced. there were many, many doctors involved but Salk was pretty key. if you are remotely interested this book is really informative on both the science side and practical side.

Richard Rhodes "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" (Pulitzer winner) is widely regarded as the best writing on the Manhattan Project, by far. Highly recommended.

Be very very careful going against Jewish interests. This is one of the most censored topics.

Stuff like Culture of Critique. Already taken down by Amazon. It had amazing reviews, and averaged around 4.5-5.0

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2019/03/12/amazon-bans-culture-of-critique-and-separation-and-its-discontents/

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/182136.The_Culture_of_Critique

"MIND BLOWN.
This should be required reading in school.
Exposes a fundamental issue in our society that most are completely unaware of.
Book is well referenced, and have fact checked many of the claims myself, which i've proven to be true."

Stuff by Ron Unz.
http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-racial-discrimination-at-harvard/

The book the Holocaust Industry
https://www.amazon.com/Holocaust-Industry-Reflections-Exploitation-Suffering/dp/1781685614/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=holocaust+industry+finkelstein
The book the Israel Lobby, written by two Harvard professors
https://www.amazon.com/Israel-Lobby-U-S-Foreign-Policy/dp/0374531501/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=the+israel+lobby

Nobel laureate Solzhenitsyn wrote a book about Jews in Russia, 100 Years Together, that few dare publish.

Roosh V, as a proponent of mens rights, questioned Jews and feminism, and promptly had books deplatformed from Amazon. He was banned from the UK. Books along the lines of Bang, Bang Ukraine, etc.

Check lectures by Michael E Jones. A Catholic that calls out "Jewish influence."
https://youtu.be/uYOcyDRcG1E

Check videos of Alex Jones talking about "globalists", which some say is a codeword for Jews.

If you really want to combat censorship try to find videos that Youtube is about to take down. People keep trying to get the truth out and censors keep taking it down. Look at videos listing 109 countries Jews were kicked out of, as an example.
https://youtu.be/6roAvG02gms

Try to guess the religion of the people usually taking these things down, and not giving people the chance to defend the truth of their work or statements.
https://www.adl.org/blog/pick-up-artist-roosh-v-moves-from-misogyny-to-anti-semitism

Remember, feminism is a Jewish movement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Feminists_by_religion
...there's much more to say, if the censors don't get you first!

1949: The First Israelis is a good one for Israel.

All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror This one is a good primer to understand the politics that got america so deeply involved in the middle east.

Other books in a similar vein I recommend are

• If You Survive: From Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge
  
  
• Band of Brothers: 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
  
  
• Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany
  
  all real nice short reads, band of brothers is as good a book as the TV series
  
  

Popular "argument"???

I meant this book which seems (to my mind anyway) to contain more than simply an "argument"... more like a paradigm shifting change in the way the Pre-Columbian civilizations existed.

To my mind when Europeans jokingly assert that America doesn't really have a "history" -- I believe they are quite frankly, "full of it", because a lot of the "history" of Europe is either large gaping holes (how little we REALLY know of Carthage, or of the Phoenician, Celtic or Germanic histories), or reconstructed "faux" history, with only a superficial "glossy coating" regarding wars and certain ruling family histories.

A very large part of the "American" attitude, psyche, and even "philosophy" of individualism if you will, seems to have been adopted by the immigrants from the native tribes. (Especially if one goes digging into the writings of people like Franklin, Cadwallader Colden, etc.)

Clearly you never heard of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" paradigm.

Also, if you're serious, there's a very good book called "How the States got their Shapes" you should read.

I also forgot to mention AIPAC. They're one of the big reasons you see overwhelming support for Israel in the US Congress. Just keep in mind the US government does not always represent the citizens; hell, just look what happened over the past 10 years. As well, it's important to note that the aid we give to Israel is military aid which is used to support the MIC. I don't mean to keep replying but I'll put it this way: there is a lot to know about Israeli/American affairs. If you want to know more than the typical American does about the situation, I recommend skimming the Israel Lobby (fairly dense), Finkelstein, and Chomsky.

Check out War Room. It's a great read, and gives a lot of insight into how both Pioli and TD view scouting, drafting, and signing players. It's all very collaborative, and conflicts like the one in your hypothetical typically get ironed out through objective measures (hard numbers - so contract, stats, measurables) rather than subjective ones (personality conflicts, a tweet from a year ago, whatever).

Not saying that TD and Pioli both still operate exactly like they did while they were at the Browns/Patriots, but it does give a bit of a look into their relationship and philosophy of the entire organization "speaking the same language" from a talent selection/development standpoint.

Mearsheimer and Walt wrote up the Iraq war substantiating that claim They are among the few recognizable and respected US commentators with good credentials to have done so.

The book Gotham is really solid. I had the author as a professor in college and he was a fountain of awesome information from the 1600's to present day. It also includes world events that affect the city in one way or another. Last I checked he was working on Gotham 2, from 1900-present day.

I want to add onto this by recommending Band of Brothers. It's an HBO series based on the book by Stephen Ambrose, which is based on the story of Easy Company throughout the European Theater. I highly recommend the show (produced by Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks) and the book.

There are several eras of US history and not many books that cover them all sadly:

1. European Settlement of the continent (1492-1712)
   
2. Rising Tensions (1712-1776)
   
3. The Articles of Confederation/finding our way (1776-1800)
   
4. Growth and peace (1800-1820)
   
5. Lead up to the civil war (1820-1862)
   
6. The Civil War and Reconstruction (1862-1873)
   
7. The gilded age/expansion west (1873-1900)
   
8. The progressive age (1900-1919)
   
9. The roaring 20s (1920-1929)
   
10. The great depression (1929-1941)
    
11. WW2 (1941-1945)
    
12. Early Cold War/Baby boom (1945-68)
    
13. Nam and Stagflation (68-82)
    
14. Regan, Greenspun and Deregulation (82-2001)
    
15. War on terror (2001-today)
    
    
    If you want to listen: http://www.revolutionspodcast.com/ for the american episodes, go to the 2.x numbered ones in your podcast player to get the skinny on era 2 and 3 from my above list. Backstory Radio www.backstoryradio.com also has great stories about american history from all 15 eras on my list
    
    If you want to read: A People's History of the United States it is a survey of the history of the US. (from the left side of the political spectrum, but written as a corrective on all the OTHER books that were ignoring the common plight of the people)
    
    Additionally http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/R3W3WGWMB5IJ3V is good but long, https://www.amazon.com/America-Concise-History-One-1877/dp/0312643284 is a midlength textbook.
    
    Lastly, easier than reading any of this (and targeted at HS students, but largely enjoyable by adults too): Crash Course US History

I haven't actually read it yet, only excerpts, but I have the book 1491:New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus coming in the mail. It's about America before the Europeans came, and how vastly numerous and sophisticated Native Americans were.

Bowyers bible, https://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Bowyers-Bible-1/dp/1585740853
And there are a ton of youtube videos about this. Read through the general steps in the book and get more insight into what you dont understand by watching videos on you tube. Thats usually my strategy. Good luck

Read 1491 by Charles C. Mann. It's about civilization in the Americas before the influx of Westerners. It's meticulously well-documented, with lots of good notes for further reading / source checking. The writing is well-done -- it's academic information written for a popular audience, basically a history-book version of "A Brief History of Time". It will completely revolutionize your understanding of the incredible cultures and societies that existed before Europeans showed up.

>AIPAC doesnt spend that much money compared to other lobby groups

They are one of the most powerful lobbying groups in this country and by FAR the most powerful with regards to foreign policy.

Read this book.

A little about the author:

"John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and then served five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. He then started graduate school in political science at Cornell University in 1975. He received his Ph.D. in 1980. He spent the 1979-1980 academic year as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs from 1980 to 1982. During the 1998-1999 academic year, he was the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York."

He's a brilliant writer and this book in particular lays a very solid groundwork for understanding just how much Israel has us on puppet strings. Oman may been an actual anti-semite, but the points she's making are not anti-semitic.

The original idea for the Batman commic is that it would be set in Manhattan. It was changed to make it vague and so they could work with a fluid city, writing in features and locations without having to worry about being geographically accurate. If you want something a little more solid, please read Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898

If he's interested at all in the 2008 election, then I highly recommend Game Change.

https://www.amazon.com/All-Shahs-Men-American-Middle/dp/047018549X

Do yourself a favor and read this book. If anyone wants an objective, historical look at the coup in Iran I highly recommend "All the Shah's Men".

https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0062397346/ref=sr_1_1?crid=26YP0Z8XLW9FE&keywords=the+people%27s+history+of+the+united+states&qid=1571044008&sprefix=the+people%27s+hi%2Caps%2C392&sr=8-1

​

Read this. It'll change your perspective on the things you were taught in history class. It has a great chapter on Columbus, among others.

I would love to take a class in this. I developed an interest in bow making at the same time I got interested in archery. I bought The Traditional Bowyer's Bible before I even bought my first bow.

I am in the middle of making a red oak bow but it's too hot now to sit outside getting covered in sweat and sawdust.

What state is this located?

A football life: Bill Belichick
Year of the Quarterbacks - The Brady 6
those two are must watch

Do your job - The 2014 NE Patriots

is pretty decent

last but not least, not particularily familiar with, but might be worth a watch: History of the New England Patriots

as for books
currently reading Warroom by Michael Holley. after that I already have Patriot Reign and Education of a Coach sitting there waiting on the bookshelf.

Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer: "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" (PDF). This is the key essay that later became a book that explains how strong of an impact the Israel lobby has had on U.S. foreign policy (by both parties) and why. The essay, at least, is worth a read.

Yes. Technology does not have to be a device. Methods, techniques, and processes are also technology. If we understand how to do something, it is technology.

Henry Petrosky has some good thoughts on what technology is and how it evolves: http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Useful-Things-Artifacts-Zippers-Came/dp/0679740392

Examples of technology that looks like magic are herbal medicine and metallurgy. They may not involve the use of many special tools, but they require lots methods and techniques that may not be apparent to the untrained individual.

Second what /u/arjalon said, plus keep in mind that 99.999% of woodworkers aren't bowyers. Some guys might be able to make you something that looks like a bow, but it'd likely snap the first time you drew it.

If you're interested in making one yourself, the library should have(or be able to get) The Bowyer's Bible, the authoritative work on the subject.

If you are interested in more the function of politics rather than its subject matter of policy, then here is a decent list of foundational texts to get you started:

On theory:

The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers


Democracy in America


On Campaigning:

What it takes


Game Change


Campaigns and Elections- American Style


On Legislating/Governing:

Congress- The Electoral Connection


Party Politics in America


Political Polarization of American Politics


Interest Group Politics


Obviously this is quite a bit to read- but renting or using library resources will soften the blow to your wallet.

If I have misread your question, and you are interested in policy rather than politics, more recommendations can be provided depending on both your political persuasion and your specific interests.

PS: Assumed you meant American politics. If not- can provide other texts.

> "But there's no mechanism for evolving non-organic things like dishes!"

Drifting off topic here, but check out this excellent book:
The Evolution of Useful Things: How Everyday Artifacts-From Forks and Pins to Paper Clips and Zippers-Came to be as They are

These supersized countries need to support themselves with taxes. Traditionally these taxes were not money but grain; wheat, rice corn. These grains are easily seized by the collectors sent out by the kingdom as they have very set ripening seasons. Sorghum in the tropics can be harvested any time. (read 'Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States'). This made it difficult for tax collectors to support large kindoms, as the farmers could vary their ripening times, making collecting forays less productive than in India, Europe, East Asia and the Americas.

The article and especially the headline were quite inflammatory. But the larger point should not be taboo. Pro-Israel forces which are largely Jewish have an overwhelming influence on our foreign policy. The Iraq War would not have happened if not for that influence.

A fantastic book on the subject is The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by two of the country's top international relations experts John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

Here's a fantastic lecture and Q&A on the subject which they did at Harvard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzXS3tmZrcU

Best book about this: All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.

If you're interested in learning more about the history surrounding Operation Ajax and the overthrow of Mosadegh, I recommend reading All the Shah's Men.

1491 seems pretty alright, though /r/history can probably comment further

I highly recommend 1491 to anyone that wants to read more, specifically about the depopulation of the new world in the first years of contact, and generally about new world people before and just after contact. Fantastic book.

The episode that stands out most notably in my mind was exploration of Hernando de Soto, who led the first European expedition deep into the interior of the continent. He actually went some distance up the Mississippi River and recorded large populations of natives living in cities. By the time the next European made it that far, the cities and culture and almost the entire population of the "Mississippians" had simply been obliterated. The few people left had reverted back to hunting and gathering and what little we know about the civilization of their antecedents is from what we can dig out of the ground.