Reddit mentions: The best historical study books

I'm assuming you're looking for things geared toward a layman audience, and not textbooks. Here's a few of my personal favorites:

Sagan

Cosmos: You probably know what this is. If not, it is at once a history of science, an overview of the major paradigms of scientific investigation (with some considerable detail), and a discussion of the role of science in the development of human society and the role of humanity in the larger cosmos.

Pale Blue Dot: Similar themes, but with a more specifically astronomical focus.


Dawkins

The Greatest Show on Earth: Dawkins steers (mostly) clear of religious talk here, and sticks to what he really does best: lays out the ideas behind evolution in a manner that is easily digestible, but also highly detailed with a plethora of real-world evidence, and convincing to anyone with even a modicum of willingness to listen.


Hofstadter

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid: It seems like I find myself recommending this book at least once a month, but it really does deserve it. It not only lays out an excruciatingly complex argument (Godel's Incompleteness Theorem) in as accessible a way as can be imagined, and explores its consequences in mathematics, computer science, and neuroscience, but is also probably the most entertainingly and clearly written work of non-fiction I've ever encountered.


Feynman

The Feynman Lectures on Physics: It's everything. Probably the most detailed discussion of physics concepts that you'll find on this list.

Burke

Connections: Not exactly what you were asking for, but I love it, so you might too. James Burke traces the history of a dozen or so modern inventions, from ancient times all the way up to the present. Focuses on the unpredictability of technological advancement, and how new developments in one area often unlock advancements in a seemingly separate discipline. There is also a documentary series that goes along with it, which I'd probably recommend over the book. James Burke is a tremendously charismatic narrator and it's one of the best few documentary series I've ever watched. It's available semi-officially on Youtube.

Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City is an amazing book. The main point is about Ford trying to create a company town in Brazil in order to grow rubber. But the books gives you a great picture of Ford the man, the company, what the era was like and the larger philosophical and economic ideas behind this project. Honestly, for me it read like fiction- I couldn't put it down.

They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America October 1967 looks at the Vietnam war from three different perspectives, from students protesting, to the actual front and then from the government officials. The narrative is amazing and it's so well researched that it was captivating as well, but I think he really captured the feeling of the times as well, which is so great to see in a book.

Michael Pollan is know most for Omnivore's Dilemma (which is a great read) but I really love his first book too, and that doesn't get as much attention, which is still very interesting is The Botany of Desire. He goes through the history of 4 different plants, apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes. Not too interesting on the surface, but he makes the stories fascinating. It's a great in its overarching nature about our relationships with plants.

[Marriage: A History by Stephanie Coontz] (http://www.amazon.com/Marriage-History-How-Love-Conquered/dp/014303667X) is another one I always recommend. It is an expansive work showing that the idea of Marriage has been in flux since the beginning and completely depended on the culture and time period. It's well researched but also a compelling work.

Dozens of countries have no form of direct taxation. Half a dozen countries really excel at it. So, look to Bahamas, Caymans, etc for examples. The United States didn't have any federal taxes for the majority of its life.

The Price of Lichtenstein wrote a good book on how a transition would occur; named "The State in the Third Millennium" Basically, make the use of government services voluntary, and charge for them. Operate core government functions like a charity - preferably funded from a Trust for stability. A lot of great writers have written a lot on the topic - more than I could reasonably cover here. Several societies are close to zero taxation (maybe a handful of tariffs). For example, the Cayman government owns the airline that runs in and out of the country - it is one of the largest sources of revenue, and funds schools, roads, etc. Other countries (middle east) with no taxes fund government services through profit generated by state owned business.

However, the objection to taxation is a moral point more than a logistical one. Imagine if it was the 1700's and I said - Slavery is immoral and needs to be eliminated. A response of "Who would pick the cotton? / Prove to me that everything would work to an level I find acceptable" would be odd.

Consent and force are the issues I have with taxation.

But, you seem like a nice person. Honestly -I'm not being sarcastic. Here is a quick ballpark idea involving math worthy of a reddit post. Lets assume you roll over 90% of the functions of government into a national charity. This charity would operate like the government without the power of coerison / force. No having to shake people down... To aid in this transition, establish a trust to run the core government services and fund the trust by the sale of national land. Strategic oil reserves, etc.

> the U.S. government owns:

• More than 900,000 separate real assets covering more than 3 billion sq. ft.
  
  
• Mineral rights, on and offshore, covering 2.515 billion acres of land, more than the total surface land in Canada
  
  
• 45,190 underutilized buildings, the operating costs of which are $1.66 billion annually
  
  
• Oil and gas resources on and offshore worth $128 trillion, roughly eight times the national debt of the country
  
  let assume they sell the buildings, land, oil, minerals on the open market and place the earnings in a trust. They bring in a conservative $120 trillion. That money invested safely will net a return of 3% per year. Higher returning years can be placed in a slush fund for lower earning years. Excess Slush fund holdings can be reinvesting into the core trust.
  
  That means, the trust would generate 3.6 trillion in revenue. Every year. Forever. More than enough to fund essential government services without taxation.

I've a few recommendations here, both about writing and about langauge as a whole

• Cuneiform by Irving Finkel as a (very) short but nice introduction to Cuneiform. I enjoyed it a lot, especially since I couldn't seem to find other popularized introductions to the subject.
  
• Empires of the Word by Nicholas Ostler. This is a behemoth, a world history in the context of languages. I love the book, although it can be a bit information heavy at times. The focus is on langauges, but comes with lots of nice examples of writing as well. (I found this book through The Language Instinct by Stephen Pinker, which is tries to describe language from a neurological PoV, an amazing book)
  
• Breaking the Maya Code by Michael Coe, one of the players in the breaking of the Maya script. I didn't know a thing about mayan language or script before reading this, and albeit being too detailed on who-did-what, the mayan script is beautiful and this books documents this wonderfully.
  
• The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox. The theme is similar as the one above, but this is focused on the decipherment of Linear B, where both script and language was unknown. Very recommended, especially in the methodology on how to catalogue large number of correlations between script pairs in the time before SQL...
  
  I'm following this thread closely... :)

I used to love all those new age books! Why not head down to the used bookstore and pick up half a dozen books that look fun out of that section? There's always something entertaining there. If she's a true believer, avoid anything that suggests people can survive by eating nothing but air.

Or, if she's not a true believer but just interested in the subject, have you considered getting her some non-fiction books that delve into the psychology behind ghost sightings and such? Like Investigating the Paranormal (less skeptical) or Demon-Haunted World (much more skeptical)?

Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches was a fascinating read and IIRC largely historical. She might also enjoy branching out into a book like The Predictioneer's Game, which is about game theory and how to use it effectively in modern life.

If she likes mysteries at all, I suggest Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time. It's about a police officer who is laid up in hospital and decides to use the time to solve a famous historical mystery. You could also consider biographies of strong and active women who inspire -- Princess Diana, maybe, or Martha Stewart?

(Edited to add links)

Counterfactual questions can be useful, but I've generally had an ambivalence toward them for several reasons. There's one reason, in particular, though, that I'd like to use to open up further questions and comments.

Most who frequent this subreddit might be familiar with this book. It's a fun read, but a quick look at the table of contents reveals that the essays are overwhelmingly addressing questions about military. Now, this isn't surprising, given that the book's concept is an expansion of an earlier one focused solely on military history. Thirty-three of the forty-five essays in the book revolve around "what-if-this-person-lost-this-battle" or "what-if-a-certain-war-had-been-won-by-the-other-side."

I figured that a lot of those essays were written with a different audience in mind, and since it wasn't my cup of tea, I didn't give it much further thought. But after reading this question and looking back through the book, I think that table of contents might explain my uneasiness with counterfactual historical questions.

It wasn't the fact that those questions were overwhelmingly on a subject for which I had only a tangential interest that bothered me, but that all of them, save for a handful, were placing the power to significantly alter history into the hands of a few great men. Napoleon Bonaparte, Otto von Bismarck, Robert E. Lee, Alexander the Great, Adolf Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, V. I. Lenin, and George Washington all figure prominently in these essays; there is little about everyday people, scant minority voices, and nothing about women.

However, I wonder if this isn't just a casualty of the way these questions are posed; even the most intriguing essays that attempt to incorporate multiple voices - the one at the end asking what would happen if potatoes were never transplanted to Europe from Peru is a good example - end up ultimately placing the power of changing history into the hands of a single man. In this case, it's completely on Pizarro bringing back the potato; there's no chance that peasants in Europe would have chosen not to cultivate it, there's no room to speculate if it might have gotten there by some other means.

This raises several questions, then (and this is the TL;DR version): Are counterfactual questions only useful or interesting when they're posed about the "big players" in history? Is it possible to ask such questions about "lesser" figures? And does focusing on the counterfactual marginalize the power/agency that everyday people had to alter the course of history?

In a sense, any use of counterfactuals could be considered fiction. The case I gave considered how things might have played out, but didn't. It's certainly not simply contained to novels though. The historian Livy was the one that posed the Alexander question and concluded Rome would have kicked Alexander's butt. This is certainly engaging in a little bit of fantasy, but also helps Livy deal with real historical questions like to what extent was Alexander's success his own and not a consequence of weaknesses in a decadent Persian empire.

This was a book I read growing up which is very, very pop, but has some big names - David McCollough, Stephen Ambrose, Keegan. These are not fiction writers (well, maybe Ambrose wrote more fiction than he meant to).

Here is a more recent one by Niall Ferguson.

Of course you can write counterfactual novels just like you can write historical fiction.

Honestly, I don't think its worth arguing about whether Alexander or Nazis is more popular. Questions about Alexander are certainly older, and I'll take that as a win.

What to read...

There's so much!

"The Ancient Near East" by Amelié Khurt is a great overall history.

Someone already mentioned History begins at Sumer and Ancient Iraq, they're a bit dated but still quite good. For a simple synchronic overview with nice maps look at Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia by Michael Roaf. Also another good history book A History of the Ancient Near East by Marc Van de Mieroop.

Regarding texts, there's a great book that does the history of Mesoptamia through primary sources The Ancient Near East: Historical Sources in Translation ed. Mark Chavalas.

That should get you started. Those book are all quite current or still very usable, let me know if you need anything else. As for later periods (i.e. post-Achaemenid) that's not my field... I read A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani which was quite good and as far as I understand a well respected overview of later Mesopotamian history.

This varies, but in general, I think historians deal with bias by accepting it and understanding what a point of view brings to or detracts from a historian's work. Every historian brings a bias to the archive and the keyboard. Heck, even the selection of a research topic is indicative of some sort of bias -- why would someone devote 5-10 years of their life to a project in which they had no interest?

You will likely never find any academic work that doesn't give at least some short shrift to the side(s) with which they disagree. I don't know if it's a Quixotic quest to find one that's perfectly even, but I do think it's pointless. Embrace diverse opinions and read many works on the same subject. This will help you not only understand something closer to an agreed-upon-truth, but it will also help you develop critical thinking skills.

If you'd like to read a book that does a much better job of explaining this than I do, Find a copy of Peter Novick's That Noble Dream. It's a little old and there's been quite a bit of ink spilled praising and reviling the book, but I think Novick does a good job of probing the question.

some things are best to be clued into and let one discover for oneself. i've read a bunch of books & authors (still am reading) from tool's recommended reading material, like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell and Bob Frissell You Are a Spiritual Being Having a Human Experience. I even admit to owning a Drunvalo Melchizedek book on the Flower of Life which reads like a New Age Bullshit Hippy Dippy Textbook on advanced circle drawing with a compass. I like the idea on the Flower of Life but Melchizedek is waayy out there. Maynard talked about that briefly in his book. I finally got around to John Crowley's Aegypt recently, which is actually a series of 4 novels, very good and I highly recommend it. Crowley is such a great writer and there's times you can clearly see influence in mjk's lyrics. There's a book called The Secret History of the World that covers these subjects through human history, if you are curious it's a great resource.

Idealism and Materialism are differing stances on Mind and Matter. Materialism is actually not respected among philosopher, mainly because it does not make rational sense(there is a very strong argument for idealism and no argument for Materialism, pure logic suggests that there is a world where concepts in our world are real) Most every modern institution ascribes to materialism, because for example science does not believe in a spiritual dimension and imagination is not an organ of perception but a funcion of chemical processes in the brain. Spiritual means you believe in spirits and Spirit. Spiritualists are almost unilaterally idealistic which means that they believe that God exists and also there is a spirit world and a hierarchy of spiritual dimensions and beings from God to Earth. This is a good book to read if you want an idea of an idealistic worldview. You are using a hegelian corruption of the pure Philosophical concepts. Most religions are opposed to Materialism. For example the Satan of christianity is modified from a former God of Materialism and Time also called Kronos. I can't explain this all in a reddit comment but Satanism for example confirms this idea. Satanists worship the physical world, dont believe in ethics, are generally hedonistic and speak about the relativity of truth. The sophists too, believed in the relativity of truth, a markedly materialistic concept.

Oh boy, haha. Way to open Pandora's box here.

My own work is primarily on British riots, but I have a broader interest in mass movements in general. I'll recommend the book I mentioned in my comment - Eric Hoffer's The True Believer and Bill Ayers' Fugitive Days to start. Ayers is somewhat controversial because Ayers, but that book is incredibly thought-provoking and valuable.

Less controversial but no less thought-provoking (and currently relevant considering our depressing state of climate-change denial) is Keith Thomas' Man and the Natural World - it's a book about our changing perceptions of the world around us.

Finally, before I give you an 80-page list, I'm going to recommend this one. Peter Novick's That Noble Dream - I don't expect anyone but nerds like me to read this, but if more people understood the study of history itself as a constantly changing profession and philosophy (as well as science) I think the general population would see the value in it more. History isn't a static thing, and the way we approach it has changed dramatically in 150 years.

I'm in the middle of Homo Deus currently. Its great so far, Yuval is a great writer and his books are a lot more accessible than traditional history books. I'm sure there are a lot of liberties taken with some of the history but I think Sapiens is a must-read. Homo Deus is more assumption based on current reality but its very interesting so far.

Gulag Archipelago is one I read based on the recommendation of Jordan Peterson. Awesome book if you are into WW1-WW2 era eastern europe. being an eastern european myself, i devour everything related to it so this book tickled my fancy quite a bit. good look into the pitfalls of what peterson warns against.

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning is another history book discussing that time period and how it all transpired and the lesser known reasons why WW2 went down the way it did. some surprising stuff in that book related to hitler modeling europe around how the united states was designed at the time.

apologies for inundating with the same topic for all my books so far but Ordinary Men is an amazing book chronicling the people that carried out most of the killings during WW2 in Poland, Germany and surrounding areas. The crux of the argument which I have read in many other books is that Auschwitz is a neat little box everyone can picture in their head and assign blame to when in reality most people killed during that time were taken to the outskirts of their town and shot in plain sight by fellow townspeople, mostly retired police officers and soldiers no longer able for active duty.

for some lighter reading i really enjoy jon ronson's books and i've read all of them. standouts are So You've Been Publicly Shamed and The Psychopath Test. Highly recommend Them as well which has an early Alex Jones cameo in it.

There are some great popular anthropological works that attempt something of this sort. For a book that jumps across continents and cultures and, as you want, "highlights the truly astounding human achievements of a given society compared to the other societies existing on the Earth that didn't achieve that particular success and why or why not," I'd recommend something like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. I can highly recommend this book if that is what you are looking for.

There was also, at one point, a whole school of historical scholarship called Universal History. You can still find these books coming out today, but they are less common within the history profession, which tends to focus on more finite questions. For more info on universal history, click here - that should help you get started. Also, here is a running list of published universal histories. I don't tend to read universal histories, so I can't recommend any particular one, though apparently Isaac Asimov dabbled in this at one point and his work, found here has some good reviews.

Good luck!

I've heard the same from professors. Bennett's translations are great for the more casual or less advanced reader, not so great for upper level academic work. I had a similar experience, but with a different philosopher who I cannot remember at the late moment. OP should probably check Bennett's Kant translations out.

Also, I don't know of any free comprehensive guides to the Critique, but if you go to the library you should be able to find a copy of the cambridge edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. Paul Goyer has a relatively concise introduction and it contains a pretty nice overview of the Critique and Kant's project. It helped me gain my bearings when I read the Critique. It might help.

If you have more interest in this idea, there is a book I would recommend.

Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage By Stephanie Coontz

This book traces how marriage has evolved over thousands of years, and deals with a lot of familiar issues to the FGM debate. If you pay special attention to the chapters about the cult of purity during the 18th century, you'll notice how western men society held very similar notions of protecting a woman's "purity".

Now, this book isn't related to FGM, but it's an interesting read if you want to kind of understand how institutions can evolve from restricting women to empowering them to be equal partners (in the best circumstances).

Edit: Changed "western men" to "western society" to avoid under emphasizing women's roles in enforcing these behaviors as well.

An interesting side note: during the era of the "cult of purity" this was one of the first opportunities for women to gain some rights. Because society was focused on protect the innate 'purity' of women, women were able to refuse sex from their husbands, something which western courts had never afforded them. Until then, men had the right to demand sex basically whenever they wanted and were empowered to "reprimand" their wives if they refused.

During this era of 'purity' courts began to rule that women had a right to protect that purity and deny their husbands sex.

https://www.quora.com/Why-has-Africa-historically-never-been-technologically-and-militarily-as-developed-as-the-rest-of-the-world

I've seen you attacking people for "being unwilling to change their stance" a lot but, maybe give this a read. Or if you're actually the "facts don't care about your feelings" guy and are so self assured in your "solid" opinion, maybe give this a read.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Guns-Germs-Steel-history-everybody/dp/0099302780

Here's a short summary since I have a feeling you won't be that interested, and it is VERY short summary.

"To summarise some of the main reasons, 1 geography: in places like Europe the geography of the land contributed 2 main things to societal development, the first being agricultural access(or how easy it is to farm excess) and also the opportunity of trade mostly through water routes. The ability to easily farm lead to specialisations in societies, or people who specialised in specific tasks, enabling that civilisations to further progress. The ease of trade allowed ideas and technology to spread and take root in farther lands than the origin (the Mediterranean). Another big factoring this varied development of societies is domestic animals. While Europe had the cow, pig, horses, chicken, etc. places like Africa had almost no domesticated animals to help mainly agriculture and transport of goods."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel This wikipedia article also breaks many of the key points down into smaller chunks to read over.

saved, thank you. That was probably the most keen observation of how ideas survive I've ever read.

Construct something that seems so obvious at face value that it puts the responsibility on anyone who disagrees with it to build an opposing case. Philosophy starts with finding areas of common agreement to build a case, and then applying a contextual arche to it. So if someone disagrees, they probably use a majority of the pre agreed upon points to build an alternative arche, or interpretation. In the end, the Philosophers like to test their ideas from various situations/vantage points, or even point of views abstractly.

I'm very keen myself on the history of ideas, and popularity and convincing seem to be the mix, which by the way I seriously have to recommend Connections, it was required reading for my univeristy, and it is what got me interested into Philosophy, some early statement in the book got me turned onto Aristotle, and I was like, that's it. Who is this guy Aristotle?

List of Influential RPG Titles

Dungeons and Dragons - By TSR and WotC

Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition - TSR

• Core Rulebooks
  
• Adventures (Keep on the Boarderlands, The Tomb of Horrors, The Temple of Elemental Evil)
  
  Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition - TSR
  
  
• Core Books (PHB, DMG, MM)
  
• Unearthed Arcana
  
• Campaign Settings (Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun)
  
• Arms and Equipment Guide
  
  Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 - WotC
  
  
• Savage Species
  
• Deities and Demigods
  
• Stronghold Builder's Guidebook
  
  Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 - WotC
  
  
• Core Rulebooks (PHB, DMG, & MM)
  
• Expanded Core (PHB2, DMG2, MM2, 3, 4, 5)
  
• Psionics Handbook
  
• Unearthed Arcana
  
• Complete Series (Arcane, Adventurer, Warrior, Divine, Champion, Scoundrel, Mage, Psionics)
  
• Campaign Settings (Ebberon, Forgotten Realms)
  
• Adventures (Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil)
  
  Dungeons and Dragons 4e - WotC
  
  
• Core Rulebooks (PHB, PHB2, PHB3, DMG, DMG2, MM, MM2, MM3)
  
• Essentials (Heroes of Forgotten Kingdoms and Heroes of Fallen Lands, Rules Compendium)
  
• Settings (Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun)
  
• Adventures (Tomb of Horrors)
  
  Pathfinder - Paizo Publishing
  
  
• Core Rulebook
  
• Advanced Player's Guide
  
• Advanced Race Guide
  
• Ultimate Magic
  
• Ultimate Combat
  
• Ultimate Equipment
  
• Game Mastery Guide
  
• Ultimate Campaign
  
• Mythic Adventures
  
• NPC Codex
  
• Bestiaries 1-4
  
  Not Dungeons and Dragons
  
  World of Darkness - by White Wolf
  
  
• Vampire the Masquerade - Vampires are so mainstream now...
  
• Werewolf the Apocylypse - Where there are vampires there are werewolves.
  
• Mage the Ascention - and witches and wizards.
  
• Hunter the Reckoning - and someone to hunt them.
  
• Changeling the Dreaming
  
  "New" World of Darkness
  
  
• Core Book
  
• Expanded Core (Vampire, Mage, Werewolf)
  
  AEG
  
  
• Legend of the Five Rings 4th Edition Core Rulebook
  
• Legend of the Five Rings 1st Edition Core Rulebook
  
• 7th Sea
  
• Deadlands
  
  Other
  
  
• Shadowrun
  
• Savage Worlds
  
• Dungeon World
  
• FATE Core
  
• Call of Cthulhu
  
• RIFTS
  
• GURPS
  
• Paranoia - Super expensive on Amazon, not sure why.
  
• Elf Quest - Also a very popular graphic novel.
  
  Authors to Look for
  
  
• Gary Gygax - Role Playing Mastery and Master of the Game
  
• Monte Cook
  
• John Wick
  
• Dave Arneston
  
  RPG Related Non-Fiction
  
  
• Confessions of a Part Time Sorceress - Shelley Mazzinoble
  
• Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Play It
  
  RPG Fiction, also essential
  
  
• Dragonlance - Chronicles Triligy by Weise and Hickman - Set in a D&D campaign Setting
  
• Drizzit's Series - By R. A. Salvatore. Icewind Dale Trilogy and The Dark Elf Trilogy
  
• The Riftwar Saga by Raymond Feist - It's allegedly the story of the author's long running D&D game.
  
  Other Lists
  
  
• Good Reads Popular RPG titles.
  
• Wikipedia timeline of RPGs
  
  Honorable Mentions
  
  
• Star Wars - d6 Edition, d20 Edition, SAGA Edition, Star Wars RPG (Fantsy Flight)
  
• Star Trek - Various Incarnations
  
• Serenity the RPG
  
• D&D Comic Books
  
• Buffy the RPG
  
• Whatever the heck "Demon" is...
  
  *Please add suggestions below, I'll add to the list as I revisit this thread throughout the day. Adding Amazon links now.

I have always enjoyed Isaac Asimov's non-fiction. He wrote numerous history books, including the excellent
Asimov's Chronology of the World: The History of the World From the Big Bang to Modern Times.

The Near East: 10,000 Years of History

The Land of Canaan

The Egyptians

The Greeks: A Great Adventure

The Roman Republic

The Roman Empire

Constantinople: The Forgotten Empire

The Shaping of England

The Shaping of France

The Dark Ages

Christopher Columbus: Navigator to the New World

Ferdinand Magellan: Opening the Door to World Exploration

The Shaping of North America

The Birth of the United States

Asimov also wrote excellent histories of science and mathematics:

Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology

Asimov's Chronology of Science and Discovery

A Short History of Biology

A Short History of Chemistry

Most of Asimov's non-fiction was aimed at the masses (as was Sagan's Cosmos), so they tend not to go into great depth. However he was excellent at showing how an event or discovery would have direct or indirect impact on a future event or discovery (standing on the shoulders of giants and all that). Most of these were written in the 1960's and 1970's

A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani is a standard. It stretches back before the time of Muhammad to some of the cultural roots of what would later become Islamic law and tradition (for example, the Qur'an and the Hadith's roots in ancient oral tradition).

A lot of these suggestions (including the one above) seem really academic. For a lighter, more contemporary read, try No god but God by Reza Aslan. It's well written, easily digestible, and covers all the important points (including the pre-Islamic history of the region, which is essential especially if you're interested in Quranic law and early politics). Best of luck!

I think that Sor Juana's plays in nahuatl are religious. And the music compositions in nahuatl are religious too.

The book I was talking about is the Florentine Codex. It is written in nahuatl and Spanish and it is about the Aztec world (customs, religion, and even animals and way of living). It was written by Indians that were taught to write, under the supervision of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. If I remember correctly these people that learned arts and writing had been nobles before the conquest. It is hard to find sources on my phone. The book can be read online:

https://tecpaocelotl.livejournal.com/25254.html

I did not know about Tupi, but it sounds interesting. I will take a look at that. The Brazilian empire is a fascinating topic. I have seen some videos online that talk about it. I have never learned Portuguese, but I can get way more than the general idea. Brazilian YouTubers produce a lot of good videos about history!

In Mexico at first friars tried to evangelize in the indigenous languages, but because it is too much work (they did learned the languages, and even wrote grammars sometimes though) they decided to stick to nahuatl, the biggest language. They kept using the language also for some legal affairs until the crown changed the policy hundreds of years later. I read the detailed story in the following book:

https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Word-Language-History-World/dp/0060935723/ref=asc_df_0060935723/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312155960128&hvpos=1o3&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11995308479004741996&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007733&hvtargid=pla-452502828902&psc=1

What he says makes a lot of sense, but I have never tried to find other sources. I guess there are many sources in Spanish concerning the use of nahuatl after the conquest. This book also talks about the history of Portuguese and other global languages.

I read Vasconcelos' essay not long ago, because I found an article somewhere on the construction of the Mexican identity. It seems that the phenomenon of trying to find elements to be different from Europe at the end of the XIXth century happened all across Latin America then. Ironically nationalism at that time seemed to have been a European idea too.

I do not know of any other works like Vasconcelos', but you should look into what his friends were doing at the time. They might have had similar ideas. This is a TV show he made in the 50s:

https://youtu.be/Hmhq1bcnrKM

He appears in the show and mainly discusses history.

You should also look into Mexican muralism (ca 1920). The painters incorporate indigenous elements in their works (and socialism too):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_muralism

Plenty of Christian apologists were convinced by Christianity. What do you think would cause a staunch atheist to convert?

>Why do we distinguish between apologetics and philosophy?

Often we don't, and oftentimes a philosopher is an apologist and vice versa.

> Why are so few philosophers theists?

This wasn't the case for most of human history, and I don't think it's fair to draw the conclusion out of the current state of secularization in academia.

>If you think you've got something good then by all means share it, but I don't expect to be surprised.

Have you read the following?

Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis - Lewis was an atheist for most of his life, but later became the most well-known Christian apologist. You might also want to read his autobiography, Surprised by Joy.

The Reason for God by Tim Keller.

The Language of God by Francis Collins -
This one is more about how science and religion relate, and it's written by one of the leading scientists of the modern day.

Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas This is the original apologetic. If you're alright with some more-serious reading, this would be a great book to have read, both from an intellectual and historical perspective.

Descartes' Meditations While I'm not really convinced by his arguments, Descartes is known as the "Father of Modern Philosophy" for popularizing rationalism, or the use of reason/logic as the chief source or test of knowledge.

Pascal's Pensees

The Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant This is known as "one of the greatest works in the history of philosophy" Quite the opposite of Descartes, Kant actually argues against the notion that we can use reason alone to understand the universe.

Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard - This is definitely not apologetics. However, he was an incredibly Christian philosopher, and is known as the Father of Existentialism (interesting that the founder of existentialism was a devout Christian, though now it is often associated with atheists such as Sarte and Nietzsche).

I've gone into biology textbooks, philosophy writings, How To Win Friends And Influence People, who is your audience, what do they read, what could they read, what do you have that they would be excited to read?

Yeah, finding that exciting stuff is tough. Reddit is decent, personally for all of the modern english folk language styles. I find lofty books like Carl Sagan's stuff or things like https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-History-Will-Durant/dp/143914995X have good language inspiration by hitting those "God" neurons that maybe are near those groove neurons with well learned/polished professional/scholar language.

Notebooks are good, there are crazy writings in almost every house.

Some factions may see sharing inspiration sources as dirtying your music :P not what I make, but that can be cool. Just go out in the world and find interesting writings, collect folk knowledge, tunes, words.

Start with: How to Change Your Mind (start with this detailed annotated summary). The pop culture starting point these days. The summary is all you need to read to understand the entire book but the book is well worth the time.

After that you'll have more ideas where to do. Below is a lot of stuff. I've watched/read all of them, so happy to answer any questions/give more guidance.

​

Study the "classics" by taking a look at these (skim the long ones to start):

Seeking the Magic Mushroom (first western trip report on mushrooms)

My 12 Hours As A Madman (another historically important trip report)

The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based On The TIbetan Book of the Dead (classic book on guided trips)

LSD My Problem Child by Albert Hoffman

Al Hubbard: The Original Captian Trips

​

Docs to Watch:

The Sunshine Makers (documentary)

Orange Sunshine (documentary)

Aya: Awakenings (documentary)

Dirty Pictures (documentary)

A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin (documentary)

Hoffmans Potion (documentary): r/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFfblVjCwOU"

​

And a whole lot of others:

​

Books

The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide – James Fadiman
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction – Gabor Mate
Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream – Jay Stevens
Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD from clinic to campus – Erika Dyck
The Natural Mind: A Revolutionary Approach to the Drug Problem – Andrew Weil
Acid Hype: American News Media and the Psychedelic Experience – Stephen Siff
Acid Dreams: The complete social history of LSD – Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain
Drugs: Without the Hot Air – David Nutt
A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life – Ayelet Waldman
Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research Since the Decade of the Brain – Nicolas Langlitz
The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America – Don Lattin

Videos

Terence McKenna discusses the stoned ape theory

A Conversation on LSD – In a video from the late 1970s, Al Hubbard, Timothy Leary, Humphry Osmond, Sidney Cohen and others reflect on LSD’s heyday

Alison Gopnik and Robin Carhart-Harris at the 2016 Science of Consciousness Conference

The Future of Psychedelic Psychiatry – a discussion between Thomas Insel and Paul Summergrad

Documents, Articles & Artifacts

Al Hubbard’s FBI file

Remembrances of LSD Therapy Past – Betty Grover Eisner’s unpublished memoir about her role in developing psychedelic therapy

LSD, Insight or Insanity – Transcript of excerpts from hearings of the Subcommittee
on the Executive Reorganization of the Senate Committee on Government Operations [concerning federal research and regulation of LSD-25] May 24, 1966

The Brutal Mirror: What an ayahuasca retreat showed me about my life —A Vox writer’s first-person account

​

Forums

Ayahuasca.com: Includes experience reports, discussion of spirituality, ecology, healing, and recovery by means of the vine are collected here. A place to learn from members of ayahuasca churches, as well as a few foreign language channels.

Bluelight: A 20 year old online harm reduction forum that fosters open and factual discussion of drugs and provides support for those seeking recovery from addiction.

DMT Nexus: A hub for underground psychedelic research on botanical sources of tryptamines and other psychedelic compounds.

5Hive: A newer forum devoted specifically to 5-MeO-DMT — synthetic, botanical or toad-derived.

Mycotopia: All things mycological — discussions of edible, wild, and psychoactive fungi.

The Shroomery: A forum  devoted to cultivating psilocybin-containing mushrooms and sharing trip reports.

TRIPSIT: A 24/7 online harm reduction resource.  Users can chat instantly with someone about their drug experience, or questions they may have about about the safe(r) use of a wide variety of controlled substances.

Not many historians have that nice, rolling narrative style of Mr. Foote. It's so easy to read and it tells the story in a compact, but intimate way with a focus on the people and their motives.

To answer your question I would look at histories written by journalists such as Barbara Tuchman - Guns of August. I also like S.C. Gwynne's Empire of the Summer Moon, Hampton Sides Blood and Thunder, and Ghost Soldiers. Lot's of good narrative histories out there - just keep looking and share any new good ones with Reddit! Good luck!

I can only relate to you what I've experienced and realized and only hope that it can offer something to your journey. What I tell you is very subjective.

When I said a universalist approach towards religion and spirituality, I mean that doctrine and creed do not hold me back from the quest for knowledge (Truth is after all an endless pursuit of higher knowledge and realization). If I read a book on philosophy or spirituality, credibility, authority, and citation are not as important as the message the author is trying to convey. After all, the former three are principles of the material sciences which is only a limited lens into which we can peer into spiritual reality. Science cannot measure or describe a soul or what happens to you after you die (maybe how your body decays but that assumes that you are only your body and not a soul or a spirit).

Even though I lament on how overly scientific modern religion is, I also go on to say that I treat religion and beliefs like education. I constantly seek knowledge or experiences that will challenge and expand my beliefs and faith in a way similar to studying and passing class examinations in order to move to the next stage of learning. Nothing is lost in what I learned, it is only expanded upon (we can learn from our mistakes or wrong beliefs). I rely on logic and reasoning (just like the scientific method) to guide myself through all things spiritual and religious just like all things scientific and all things of immediate concern (like budgeting, relationships, pros and cons of something...). I'm being consistent is what I'm saying.

I highly recommend The Secret History of the World by Mark Booth as a good read to really change your perspective on the world and life. It opened my eyes to a whole other way of seeing reality.

If you really want something intellectually challenging yet spiritually captivating, the Urantia Book has it all and more.

Something that doesn't dive in too deep but is about military history and a fascinating Tour De Force are counterfactual essays. An historian ponders what a different outcome in some important event (like a battle) could have changed. I read a book called "What If?" and was pleasantly surprised and entertained.

Read one of these long ones linked here by all means, but these essays take you to a lot of places and are a good read for in between.

I enjoyed reading Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz, which covers what relationships looked like in several different time periods and cultures. Its a really good book, and addresses the questions you're asking. I read it when I was thinking about getting engaged and it helped me think about what I wanted my marriage to look like. What feels like the widely-held 'ideal' status quo now (monogomous life partners who provide emotional satisfaction) really is a fairly new idea.

https://www.amazon.com/Marriage-History-How-Love-Conquered/dp/014303667X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1527796012&sr=8-1&keywords=coontz+marriage

Bionomics - Economy as Ecosystem by Michael Rothschild, Well written and mind-blowing.

Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches by Marvin Harris. TL;DR many irrational cultural practices are in fact imminently logical objectively.

Long, but good:
The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power, Pulitzer winning book on the Oil industry from its beginnings.

The Armchair economist - the Economics of everyday life, sort of an earlier and better version of 'freakonomics'.

Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution

Dogs and Demons: Tales from the dark side of Japan

Reflections on a Ravaged Century Robert Conquest

A History of the American People Paul Johnson. Good stuff.

If you want an account from a solid source read this:

http://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Hope-History-World-Time/dp/094500110X

It's a tough read for sure but here and there Quigley explains how this .01% influenced major world affairs. Also he denounced the idea of the illuminate having anything to do with the Rhodes group. That idea was born out of a book called "None Dare Call it a Conspiracy." This is on record and you can listen to an interview he gave on YouTube called "the professor who knew too much" where he says as much.

Yes there are very powerful rich men whom try and often succeed at influencing if not at times controlling government, public opinion, and international affairs.

The answer, as everyone else has pointed out, is YES. The best example of this actually comes from the colloquialism 'Whiggish history' meaning history that is written in a teleological mode with an excessively celebratory tone about the current institutions in power.

If you are really interested in this, standard reading in many history masters and PHD programs is a great book by historian Peter Novice called That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession

These are a little obvious, but if you haven't read them, you're definitely missing out:

Connections by James Burke

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

Not really original, but great fun, great stories and exactly what you seem to be looking for.

No, any historian would not agree. I don't know where you get your info from, but "pulling shit out of my ass" does not equal "most historians agree".
Your problem is that I DID the research. I'm a research biologist holding a PhD, who was trained in critical thinking and research. I also have an avid interest in history, so guess what, I read a lot. A bit more than you do, apparently, judging by your comments... (I'm still amazed by the North Korea stuff... Please elaborate.) Here are a couple of the best books on WWI. Perhaps they would help you.

http://www.amazon.com/Sleepwalkers-How-Europe-Went-1914-ebook/dp/B008B1BL4E/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395256616&sr=1-2


http://www.amazon.com/War-that-Ended-Peace-abandoned-ebook/dp/B00CNQ9PFK/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395256616&sr=1-4

http://www.amazon.com/Catastrophe-1914-Europe-Goes-War-ebook/dp/B00C4BA4C2/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395256616&sr=1-5

http://www.amazon.com/Guns-August-Classic-Bestselling-Outbreak-ebook/dp/B002TXZS8A/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395256616&sr=1-6

http://www.amazon.com/Paris-1919-Months-Changed-World-ebook/dp/B000XUBC7C/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395256616&sr=1-11

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/143980.The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_British_Empire




Your naive, and frankly, idiotic image of the US stepping in... well that is just hilarious. All this after more than 150 years of imperialism. Ask people in Latin America or the Middle East about how benevolent your country was. And YOU want me to do research. Amazing.

I have a handful that are part of a setting for some stories I'm not yet working on (busy with the far-future stories right now).

Before I give examples, let me plug these great books, very handy for this kind of worldbuilding:

http://www.amazon.com/What-If-Foremost-Military-Historians/dp/0425176428

• Harold wins the Battle of Hastings
  
  He came close. It means no William the Conqueror, no Norman England, and England remains part of the Scandinavian/Germanic economic world instead of becoming part of the Romance/Mediterranean economic world. One plausible outcome, since England shifting its engagements southward had a chilling effect on Nordic economies, is that in the alternate timeline Nordic westward expansionism continued and expanded, resulting in much earlier European expansion into North America, which in turn results in a very different dynamic. The Europeans brought horses and diseases, but not guns or industrialization, which means the dynamic of their interaction with the natives was on quite different terms.
  
  
• Adams wins the election of 1800
  
  It was close enough that if not for the three-fifths clause of the US Constitution, Adams would have won. It was close enough that the electors had to vote several times in order to obtain a valid result. With Adams winning, Jefferson is not in a position to reverse course on US engagement with Toussaint Louverture's government in St. Domingue. The US continues in its course toward recognition of a Caribbean state founded by a slave revolt. The divide in the US over slavery came to a head earlier. There was no Louisiana Purchase, both because Jefferson's administration wasn't there to test the constitutional powers of the presidency by attempting it, and because Napoleon, deprived of Haiti by the US support of its rebellion, elects to fortify New Orleans, turning the US and Napoleonic France into rivals. That common rivalry drives the US and England into compromise that results in a smaller US and a stronger British America. By the late 1800s, North America is a collection of loosely-allied republics, city-states, and members of the British and French commonwealths.
  
  
• Washington never quashes the Newburgh Conspiracy
  
  In the real world as the end of the Revolutionary War approached, officers of the Continental Army grew increasingly concerned that they would not be paid, and the compensations promised them for their service would not be forthcoming. A rebellion in the ranks formed, with officers writing to Washington demanding that the promises of Congress be honored. Washington was shocked and infuriated, but agreed to meet with the officers and, meanwhile, urgently pressed Congress to come up with some sort of relief to forestall an open revolt. He then met with the army and, solely by force of charisma and persuasion, convinced them to lay down their arms and back off. What if he hadn't? His health was not at its best, and he was profoundly upset at the incipient rebellion. Suppose he suffered a bout of ill health and couldn't make the meeting? Or suppose he just decided he was too outraged by the officers' conduct to treat with them? In this alt history the army marches on Philadelphia where it is met by Adams and Jefferson serving as spokesmen for Congress. They negotiate a set of promises to fulfill Congress' obligations, making good with land grants in the event that enough hard currency isn't available. This agreement establishes a precedent that military service has to be paid for and must be based on a valid contract, which completely changes the basis of power in the future United States.
  
  There are more, of course, but that's enough off the top of my head. Read the What If? books. They're golden.
  
  

Hey, I'm unsure if you got my reply on the Discord so I'm reposting it here:


"It's not really that rare to see naturally segmented sleepers. It's also not THE natural pattern, but instead one of two natural patterns. People who slept closer to the equator slept in a Siesta-patern, and people who slept closer to the poles slept in a Segmented-pattern. Artificial light plays a huge role here. It's because of it that people started sleeping in a monophasic pattern. Fire doesn't affect peoples melatonin levels, so I'm refering to the industrial revolution.


Not everyone has a 25h circadian rhythm, but even you would have such a rhythm it still does not force you to to sleep monophasically.


There are over 500 historical reports of people waking up in the middle of the night, or people describing their "second sleep" (apparently in this book https://www.amazon.com/At-Days-Close-Night-Times/dp/0393329011, supported by this study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4763365/). Our circadian rhythm also has the SWS and REM peaks so far away from each other that regular monophasic sleep does not cover both. We also have a drop in energy during the day. Why would this be the case if we were meant to sleeo monophasically? There are also tribes who sleep in a Segmented-pattern today (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajhb.22979).


So our historical documents support us being biphasic, same thing with the structure of our circadian rhythms and the fact that there are modern tribes sleep biphasically."


In addition to this I would like to add that there are indeed some tribes that sleep monophasically. There is also the Piranha tribe that sleeps in several chunks each day, and there are tribes that sleep biphasically. Due to the circadian rhythm being structures the way it is I at least believe that we are meant to be sleeping either biphasically or triphasically. There's also this cool study done (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327919664_SLEEP_PATTERNS_OF_MEDICAL_STUDENTS_THEIR_RELATIONSHIP_WITH_ACADEMIC_PERFORMANCE_A_CROSS_SECTIONAL_SURVEY), which shows that biphasic sleepers had the best academic performance!

>or at least, the ones that are dominant now.

yes, of course. that's why I said " one type of religion or another". protestantism is only 500 years old, so certainly another may become dominant - see mormonism, unitarianism, etc

>Is it any surprise then that people would have become more religious?

nope, religion and strength of government tend to be inversely related. for thousands of years, rulers have used it as an aid to their power. When they are strong enough on their own, they exert supremacy, but until then, there is usually a partnership

>Then again, I mentioned that kind of philosophical illiteracy among modern Westerners... that's a huge issue for both religion and just ethics in general.

I think religion is a kind of philosophical shorthand for most humans on earth, and thats why its always been dominant. Most people are busy scrapping out a living and need a shorthand

I have a good book recommendation (dont worry, its only 100 pages) that talks about some of these macro trends from IMO the most eminent historian of the 20th century, Will Durant. Its fantastic

https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-History-Will-Durant/dp/143914995X

This all seems pretty similar to the fall of rome in a way, and Durant has a great little wrap up here

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

let me know what you think

First, TH Huxley was his grandfather, my bad. But TH Huxley was very close to HG Welles. They wrote books together and constantly were meeting and having discussions. Alduous Huxley was a fly on the wall for many of these discussions and recounts the influence HG Welles had on him in his book Brave New World Revisited

Both TH Huxley and HG Welles were part of a group called the Rhodes Round Table (a part of the Round Table movement at the turn of the 19th Century) which would be comparable to the CFR today. A Harvard professor named Carroll Quigley wrote an amazing book about their history, rise and fall, called Tragedy and Hope. If you weren't aware, Alduous Huxley was a teacher of Eric Blair (George Orwell) and they both worked in high society circles. Both their books were what they believed would be the logical conclusion of what they saw happening on the inside at the time and this is explicitly stated in this letter from Huxley to Blair.

Huxley's "Brave New World" title is a response/retort/satire to HG Welles' New World Order HG Welles is the originator of the term "New World Order" and that is what Huxley is referring to when he says we're head toward a Brave New World. In his book, Brave New World Revisited, A. Huxley even explicitly makes fun of HG Welles' book The Open Conspiracy for being so evil and moral-less that it is sure to work.

> No successful society follows a libertarian zero government model

Yes there have been and are now, in fact you owe most of your current affluence to the part of your own society that functions like that - the everyday anarchy you've gotten so used to you can't even see it and take it for granted. Even at the formal (governmental) level lots of societies have implemented freedom-centric policies and many still do, you just have to read the constitutions for most western countries: they all start by affirming inalienable rights that the state is not the source of and cannot strip them from. You should read what this actual head of state has to say about it. Meanwhile, I can point to mass graves everywhere freedom is frowned upon.

I don't understand why you equate libertarianism (=do not harm others) with love of corporations (=let's get rich by any means necessary). Could you point me to actual examples of corporate feudal slavery ? How do they compare, say, to the feudal model of tsarist Russia ? This is a genuine question, I value people's autonomy more than ideology.

Daaamn good book. It's not exactly a good starting point for learning about Arabic history though... Maybe A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani... I haven't found many single books that explain early Arabic/Islamic history in detail very well, but often have to read several books about parallel subjects. I am at the moment reading The House of Wisdom by Jim al-Khalili which is fascinating so far. Could be better in objectively presenting some material, but still a good read and is so far accurate from what I've read elsewhere.

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for, but you could try Marriage, a History. It's a non-fiction book about the shift in the culture of marriage and the growing importance of romantic love over time. It was written in 2006!

I say this as a fan of Evola and someone who embraces the idea that we are in the Kali Yuga: people have been complaining about the decline of their civilization forever, stop being so melodramatic about it. I get it, there is clown world shit happening that makes all of us see red, but that is no excuse to just give up. Stop waiting for some mythic event like the return of Christ, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, or whatever deus ex machina story people have been talking about since the beginning of time. Start your own damn thing.

​

Many modern oligarchs did not expect to be as successful as they ended up.

• Erik Prince of Blackwater (per Jeremy Scahill) - "Erk Prince might now see his empire as the fifth branch of the USA military, but his designs for Blackwater started off much more modestly."
  
• Elon Musk thought that Tesla would fail.
  
• In 2015 who expected Trump to end up as president?
  
  ​
  
  I also see a lot of complaining in here about the overwhelming amount of simps in the world. Simps aren't a problem, simps are an opportunity. Modern capitalism basically turned most of those bluepillers into serfs. Why shouldn't they be your serfs? Why should Jeff Bezos get serfs and not you?
  
  ​
  
  There are an incredible amount of people (99%?) who have completely given up thinking, which translates into an incredible amount of opportunity. Men have survived and even thrived despite incredible suffering throughout history. While we have dire problems to face, our ancestors went through shit like seeing 30-60% of their continent die.
  
  ​
  
  Fuck clown world. Build your own fiefdom. Most people are serfs and you don't need that many people to make a significant change in your own small corner of the world. Find a few people who are completely intolerant of clown world and start digging.
  
  ​
  
  From The Lessons of History:
  
  ​
  
  "So we cannot be sure that the moral laxity of our times is a herald of decay rather than a painful or delightful transition between a moral code that has lost its agricultural basis and another that our industrial civilization has yet to forge into social order and normality. Meanwhile history assures us that civilizations decay quite leisurely. For 250 years after moral weakening began in Greece with the Sophists, Hellenic civilization continued to produce masterpieces of literature and art. Roman morals began to “decay” soon after the conquered Greeks passed into Italy (146 B.C.), but Rome continued to have great statesmen, philosophers, poets, and artists until the death of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 180). Politically Rome was at nadir when Caesar came (60 B.C.); yet it did not quite succumb to the barbarians till A.D. 465. May we take as long to fall as did Imperial Rome!"
  
  ​
  
  Nassim Taleb: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority
  
  ​
  
  "It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences."
  
  ​
  
  Jack Donovan - Becoming a Barbarian
  
  ​
  
  "There’s an old Greek proverb that says, “society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” If you don’t like what’s happening around you, what’s happening to culture, what’s happening to men and women, what people are becoming — get out there and start digging. Plant the seed of something new. Of something better. Plant the seed of something you really want — not just whatever you think you can have. Show others that there’s a different way to live. Spend the rest of your life tending a root that may one day grow into a tree of liberty."

Not specifically about LSD, but good:

Anything by Aldous Huxley (Doors of Perception in particular)

About LSD and great:

LSD: Doorway to the Numinous

Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD

Anyone interested in the history of LSD or its therapeutic use should read "Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD." Fascinating book. It talks a lot about the CIA's investigations into using it for espionage, the psychiatric uses (and how it was used successfully to treat alcoholism), the hippies and counterculture, etc.

http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623

asimov's chronology of the world: the history of the big bang to modern times?

i can't claim to have read it, but my friends who have say it's pretty good.

link

Read this, it's a great book. Farming appeared gradually (and somewhat serendipitously); since we're pretty smart, we soon realised the advantages and it spread and advanced and evolved technologically

It isn't the cheapest or most easily obtainable of books, but it is on Amazon right now, and here's my favourite interview with him, definitely worth a watch. He is the reason why I love it when people use a "Somalia" argument against me in libertarian discussions.. I just go "Nuh-uh, Liechtenstein."

I was thinking about writing a review of his book and push for the Mises institute to add it to their suggested readings, what do you think?

What if we aren't white or east-asian, but still support your cause and understand the threat to western civilization, the finest on earth which has given us the most progress humanitarian and technological progress, from a human biodiversity perspective?

Even Hitler had honorary Aryan's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorary_Aryan

There's a series of books related to this subject, which has, unsurprisingly, been largely ignored, titled "Black Nazis!": https://www.amazon.com/Black-Nazis-Veronica-Clark/dp/1934703516

Being a strong hereditarian, HBD proponent, and anti-natalist; I would never spread my diseased genes. I'm even planning on altering my facial appearance so as not to offend your eyes.

> For example, how much words you would create if you have only 2 letters?

Are you serious? That makes no sense. If you have e.g. only 10 letters you can create exactly 1814400 different 8 letter words, so one could assume that 10 letters is enough for a language that would have close to two million 8-letter words, which would be more than enough for anything since one needs to know ~1000 words to understand 75% of English.

That's simply not how languages are formed/transformed, nor "measured". E.g. German is considered the most expressive language because whenever there's a term missing for something they simply lump words together and they have a new word (and that's the reason behind claims of superior German philosophy). So it's not "how many words can one invent", but "how much information can one put in the least number of words".

But I honestly believe that you should learn a bit more about languages, even from popular literature like Steven Pinker, but I'd always suggest Empires of The World to anyone.

Go for it. I hope it works out for you.

I'm interested in going back to school to study linguistics/history. This book cemented the idea that language is fundamentally the most important aspect of individuals, society and humanity as a whole.

Good luck!

I'm super curious to learn whatever you find. I read Marriage, A History (https://www.amazon.com/Marriage-History-How-Love-Conquered/dp/014303667X) a while back and it had a lot of great info, but it was focused on the overall arc of what marriage has meant through most of time (spoiler alert: nobody gave a shit about love in marraige until very recently), versus taking an in-depth look at what happened in the US during/after the Civil Rights movement.

You're perfectly welcome. If you're interested in learning more about the geographical influence on the formation of human societies I'd highly recommend reading Guns, Germs and Steel, which discusses the subject in depth.

Couple different reasons:

1. The "Elites" have been writing down their plans for a New World Order since HG Welles coined the term back in the day. His book with the same name explains how the Elites will evolve and then keep the beta human monkeys as their pets: http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/Wells_New_World_Order-5.pdf
   In the 60s, Carroll Quigley wrote the plan down again in his book Tragedy and Hope More recently, Obama string pullers like Zbignew Brezenski have written down the plan for the NWO in books like the Technotronic Era
   
   
2. Hundreds of elites repeat it over and over in their speeches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVYBDIkgxKo . Gary Hart is especially egregious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTOCRa9lTZc
   
   
3. There have been hundreds upon hundreds of whistleblowers throughout the years that have come forward. Listen to the story of Aaron Russo. Listen to Naval Intelligence whistleblower Bill Cooper in 1991. Listen to Darrell Hamomoto (trained through the Rockefeller Foundation).
   
   
4. Look at Wikileaks. Hillary Clinton said outright to Wall St insiders that she wants "Hemispheric Government and trade". That's the definition and fear of the NWO (one world global elitist government).
   
   
5. Look at the TPP. 100% undeniable proof that Obama wanted to consolidate Mexico, America, and Canada into a single "Trans Atlantic Union". Look at the European Union. It's all about the consolidation of power. If you think about the NWO simply as the consolidation of power into globalist government hands, then what Julian Assange says in this interview makes the NWO perfectly clear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6qlc3lStM4

He is an anarchist, however he prefers monarchy to modern democracy. A good example of a monarch he would be happy with is, his friend, Prince Hans-Adam II. I would suggest looking into both. Hans-Adam II Write an interesting book called The State in the Third Millennium.

Here's an interview that Soros did with "60 Minutes" twenty years ago that explains some of his motivations. This video was rumored to exist for a long time, people reported remembering seeing it. After a long hunt, it was finally discovered by a reddit user in a university library with restricted access.

Just watch the man revel in sociopathy. He knows what he is and likes it. Watch George admit he feels no shame for selling out his fellow Jews to the Nazis and pocketing their possessions. Not spelling Nazis, not soup Nazis, not feminazis, but actual Nazis. The social consequences of his actions are of no concern to him. Watch his reaction when the interviewer asks if he feels guilty.

He promotes completely open borders, devaluing the US dollar and replacing it with a singular global currency. Literally a new world order. (The term for this is "globalism")

The answer to a lot of your questions is "we don't know just yet". I know you're trying to ridicule, but super-rich elites really do exist and they really do control a frightening amount of the world we live in. Globalists care no more for human lives than a homeowner cares for the ants that live in his lawn. They will tinker and experiment and if that means starvation for us, they're willing to make that sacrifice. Fortunately we live in an unprecedented era of transparency and we are slowly assembling the answers and finding out who really rules us, and how.

If you really want to educate yourself, read the book Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time
by Carroll Quigley. This book is not for the faint-hearted, at 1348 pages it is three inches thick. But it basically lays out the blueprint that globalists like Soros and the Rothschilds believe in. The Dodd Report to the Reece Committee is also worth reading. These are serious, sober works and not froth-at-the-mouth conspiracy theories. I found Carroll Quigley to be quite an affable and communicative writer. He's for globalism, not a raving lunatic decrying it.

There are enough keywords in my last paragraph to keep you busy searching for a while. I hope after you finish reading you can help to spread the word about the works of Quigley, and especially that 60 Minutes interview.

It's not exactly my thing, but I will make two book suggestions. One book that I found extremely helpful in understanding Zionism's beginnings and the development of Hebraic nationalism (almost wholly apart from the conflict with the Palestinians) was Arieh Bruce Saposnik's Becoming Hebrew.

Another, more classic work in the discipline would be Alber Hourani's History of the Arab Peoples. Of course only less than half the book deals with this issue, but it would be very interesting for you to read.

And lastly, a fun new book about Ottoman Palestine that turns some of the things in the previous two books on its head is Michelle Campos' Ottoman Brothers

Acid Dreams -- www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623/

This is a great book on the history of LSD and the personalities (and government agencies like the CIA) that led to the acid explosion of the 60s. Well sourced and well written.

> “An engrossing account of a period . . . when a tiny psychoactive molecule affected almost every aspect of Western life.”—William S. Burroughs

There is a lot of stuff in this book that supports the idea that psychedelics have a place in mental health treatment. A great read, I recommend it if you are interested in this topic.

John Dee comes up a lot in this: https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-Mark-Booth/dp/1590201620


I don't know about 'magic', but the practice of alchemy is that of self-improvement and freedom from controlling dogma and the current limits of humanity. There's no doubting that newton was brilliant, as was John Dee. I would say a safer bet is to study math over magic.

> https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-Mark-Booth/dp/1590201620

Have you read that? How is it.

> I would say a safer bet is to study math over magic.

You're probably right, but the image of Newton doing rituals to get in touch with multi-dimensional beings to gain knowledge is pretty seductive to me. A sicnece man, or THE Science Man, practicing magic is an alluring image.

This is a pretty good book that you'll find interesting, I think: https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Word-Language-History-World/dp/0060935723

This one should be good, too: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Lingua-Franca-English-Return/dp/0802717713

As far as I know, the book is still representative of the current state of scholarship concerning the period. It deals exclusively with the period between 1914 and 1922, which is, by this time, relatively declassified in terms of documentation, so I wouldn't expect another book to eclipse it any time soon, unless someone happens to write a better synthesis of the available material.

It looks like the publisher recently released a 20th anniversary edition with an afterword from the author. That wasn't the edition I read, but I would imagine Fromkin's afterword serves as an index of more recent developments in the study of that period.

As for follow-up reading, my plan is to go regional, with a string of books about the development of the nationalisms that got their start in that period. So, on the one hand, I want to start digging backwards into the Ottoman Empire prior to the Young Turk movement (which more or less starts APTEAP), and on the other, I'd like to examine the modern histories of Transjordan, early Jewish nationalism, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. Before I get to all of that, though, I've got A History of the Arab Peoples by Albert Hourani, which ought to keep me occupied for a while, once I start it.

> (T)he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.

-- Georgetown University historian Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1975

What a telling quote! Quigley is a NWO insider.

Other great quotes from the article:

> Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again.

> However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money.

-- Josiah Stamp, former Director of the Bank of England

> We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

-- Aesop

. .

The article proposes a return to debt-free currency. I made the same proposal a few days ago at /r/NewAmerica. See "Debt-free currency!"

> If America controlled its own money, it would be interest-free, and taxing people to pay it wouldn’t be necessary.

> Early colonists did it. So did Lincoln. Why not now by returning money power to public hands where it belongs. Onerous taxes would be minimized or eliminated. Money for productive growth could be created inflation-free. Prosperity could be sustained. Full employment and social justice would be possible.

> Imagine that America. Imagine the entire world that way, instead of one plagued booms, busts, inflation, deflation, instability, crisis, and perhaps the greatest ever Depression today bankers caused for their own self-interest to achieve greater consolidation, wealth and power.

-- Stephen Lendman, "Money Power World Rule", NWO Observer, 20 Dec 2011

. .

We Americans are led to believe that wars and depressions "Just Happen". We cannot imagine anyone deliberately creating such catastrophes. But one man's catastrophe is another man's windfall opportunity -- an opportunity to buy up real estate at pennies on the dollar, for example, or an opportunity to loan billions to both sides in a war.

However great the opportunities for profit, we can't imagine ourselves inflicting so much suffering on others. But what if we belonged to a xenophobic supremacist culture? We might then view other human beings as a threat, as an enemy, or as less than human. The devastation inflicted on others by war would seem like a delicious payback. The hundreds of thousands of dead would thin the ranks of our enemies. The carnage would be of no more import than the destruction of an ant-hill. If our culture taught us to see fellow human beings in this way, we might indeed be tempted to reap huge profits from their immiseration.

Thanks! I really appreciate your reply. I'm just a couple chapters away from finishing Secret History of the World and I most definitely will dive into Illuminatus Trilogy as soon as I'm done!

From the little I just read on Discordianism, I'm pretty fascinated. You may have just converted me :) Seems like a religion based on paradox, which really interests me. I may be understanding it completely wrong, but that gives me an excuse to check out Principia Discordia!

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Amazon Smile Link: Acid Dreams


|Country|Link|Charity Links|
|:-----------|:------------|:------------|
|USA|smile.amazon.com|EFF|
|UK|www.amazon.co.uk|Macmillan|
|Spain|www.amazon.es||
|France|www.amazon.fr||
|Germany|www.amazon.de||
|Japan|www.amazon.co.jp||
|Canada|www.amazon.ca||
|Italy|www.amazon.it||
|India|www.amazon.in||
|China|www.amazon.cn||




To help add charity links, please have a look at this thread.

This bot is currently in testing so let me know what you think by voting (or commenting). The thread for feature requests can be found here.

You, my wonderful lady, are the recipient of one of my coveted RES tags. I freaking love this stuff.

In return, this is one of my favorite short books on human culture. Highly recommended if you haven't read it before :D

source https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/094500110X/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=094500110X&linkCode=as2&tag=humarefre-20&linkId=VK7GP2KQIKF6OK6U

Bank of International Settlements

Their stated purpose is to “promote the cooperation of central banks and to provide additional facilities for international financial operations.”

and is owned by

Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bank of Italy, Bank of Canada, Swiss National Bank, Nederlandsche Bank, Bundesbank and Bank of France.

BIS holds at least 10% of monetary reserves for at least 80 of the world’s central banks, the IMF and other multilateral institutions.

BIS serves as financial agent for international agreements, collects information on the global economy and serves as lender of last resort to prevent global financial collapse (GEE WHERE HAVE WE SEEN THIS DONE BEFORE??!!!)

BIS promotes an agenda of monopoly capitalist fascism. It gave a bridge loan to Hungary in the 1990’s to ensure privatization of that country’s economy, for example.

I'll let you gather more information from there if you are asking questions in good faith (as opposed to just being a troll). This is plenty of information to start you down the rabbit hole.

They weren't just dosing citizens for experimental purposes - they would regularly dose each other just for shits and giggles. It began as a search for a mind-control drug.

Acid Dreams is a great book about the history of the CIA's interactions with LSD. You'll also find appearances by the likes of Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey and their kin. It gives a nice contrasting view of the two (or three, or thirty) different ideologies present amongst the assorted Acid taking groups of the 60's in regards to what they could all agree was a chemical that was going to change everything.

Thanks for asking, I was about to ask this question too.

Anyways here's my contribution, haven't read it yet (as I was reading another book recently) but here you go:

https://www.amazon.com/Language-Death-Canto-Classics-Crystal/dp/1107431816

Language Death.

https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Word-Language-History-World/dp/0060935723/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=B4NRG3VGFM2K6R058R97

This one is recommended with "language death", seems interesting but I'm not sure how it is.

One I recently read from my library was Lingo, https://www.amazon.com/Lingo-Around-Europe-Sixty-Languages/dp/0802124070/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479413646&sr=1-1&keywords=lingo and this oe was a pretty fun light read, with little tid bits about 60 languages from Europe.

That Noble Dream
Peter Novick

It is a history of 20th century American professional historians and a real eye opener. One highlight: Charles Beard was the most respected historian in the country in 1940. His books were the best. His research was the tightest. People near-unanimously described him as one of the nicest people they ever met.

He became a pariah overnight because he had misgivings about the World War II project. The wikipedia article alludes to this, but if you read Novick's presentation your head will spin. And not just his telling of the Charles Beard story. The entire book is like that.

Books I would add to balance this list out:

Anthropology

Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches by Marvin Harris. Unlike Germs, Guns, and Steel, this book is written by an actual anthropologist (sorry Mr. Diamond) and is a really easy read--it covers topics from the sacredness of cows to cargo cults. It's fun, too, as Harris is an entertaining and engaging writer, and it's a slim book.

Bonus Level Challenge Anthropology Read:

In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio by Phillipe Bourgois. This is another monograph written by an actual anthropologist. This book is more challenging subject matter, and I should put a big Trigger Warning on it for violence against women.

Economics

Wages, Price, and Profit by Karl Marx. It's a shame more people don't read Marx beyond the Manifesto, which he wrote fairly early on in his academic life. W,P and P is a preparatory work for Capital and outlines one of the arguments Marx makes in the much denser and more complete work that was to follow. It's short, and one of Marx's more approachable writings, dealing with something we are all familiar with: how much we get paid, and why.

Bonus Level Challenge Economics Read:

Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V. I. Lenin. This book contains much drier material, as Lenin draws upon common economic sources (I hope you like talking about tons of iron) to illustrate phenomenon like World War 1--which he saw as a competition of imperialist powers to redivide the Middle East and Africa--and even the Iraq Invasion that would come almost 100 years later.

I have actually looked at the constitution of Liechtenstein. The Prince can override any decision of the parliament. Liechtenstein's Constitution makes it in effect an absolute monarchy (Wikipedia notes that media and European institutions criticized it for precisely that). There are 3 important differences. The Constitution allows the people via popular vote to:

1. Abolish the monarchy
   
   
2. Replace the prince with another from the family
   
   
3. A municipality (i.e 400 (smallest) to 6000 (largest) people) to secede peacefully
   
   Interestingly the third part pretty much guarantees the future of the monarchy as even if people vote to remove the monarchy a municipality can secede and keep the monarchy. Liechtenstein is basically a private company owned by the Princey family which provides the service governance and people voluntary choose to be its customers. If they don't they can secede. And it is not like the neighboring countries are bad places to live. They can choose to be part of Switzerland or Austria if they secede. This is not just my interpretation. The Prince wrote a book called The State in the Third Millenium where he pretty much states that the government should be run as a company and citizens are its customers - https://www.amazon.com/State-Third-Millennium-Prince-Hans-Adam/dp/3905881047

Dude, just finished The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test yesterday. It was awesome how much it really put you "in the pudding". Will definitely check it out. Another book on the subject is Acid Dreams: A Complete Social History of LSD. Erowid Review.

Much of this is from a fantastic book about the history of night, and how we modern people have our perceptions of what night was like in pre-industrial times COMPLETELY wrong.

It's a great book, and well sourced. The guy took 20 years to put it together.

http://www.amazon.com/At-Days-Close-Night-Times/dp/0393329011/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1345046946&sr=1-1&keywords=at+day%27s+close

TL; DR: Memes for Dummies

I would add one thing to your explanation of memes targeted towards beginners. A meme is like a gene, only a meme exists in a theoretical construct of all human's thought (for lack of better words, the hive mind), whereas a gene Exists in the physical world.

I would posit that "agents" lie in between memes and genes. cf. Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind and John Holland's Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity but that's for another day. You, my friend, clearly need to take a lesson on evolutionary anthropology with Marvin Harris' Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture and discover the chill pill that lies within. Religions are an archaic but possibly genetically scripted way of passing the knowledge of how to form a society between generations. They are 4-dimensional memes.

As a scientist, can you ignore publications in your field? As an Atheist, can you ignore everything your Father taught you? Bedwetter? These questions are the same.

The myriad religions of this world have discovered some excellent advice for being a human living with other humans. We conscious Atheists/Realists must ensure that we do not discount the results the faithful have obtained through years of memetic evolution despite their ignorance in offering that knowledge. That is, religious people have a bunch of gems in their outdated notions which we should be aware of. Spoken by an atheist ex taoist neo-pagan.

This is true. Outlined well in Acid Dreams by Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain Known as MKULTRA, another interesting aspect is the psychiatric community and some of their personal lives intertwining with those governmental groups.

>It's likely that pre-industrial societies had very different sleeping schedule, and wakefulness in the middle of the night was widespread,

Yes, I read an interesting book on this a while back. There are even studies showing that when you take out artificial light, most participants go back to waking up in the middle of the night for 30 min to 45 min. Participants also had a surge of prolactin, which is probably why throughout history, this period between "two sleeps" was usually reserved for prayer and sex.

>Young children and adults, especially older adults, tend to wake up earlier than teenagers and young adults

"Tend to wake up earlier" is a gross conflation with "a significant number of people were night owls". That's a big straw owl of my argument. I have no doubt that old people wake up earlier and younger people later, the question is whether they are naturally predisposed to activity in the evening and for a substantially different "chronotype". Have we studied this in societies that do not have rampant circadian abuse? Do we find night owls in the Amish community, or in primitive tribes? There's no use studying the prevalence of night owls in developed nations with artificial lighting because the research will never be able to prove the hypothesis that night owls are a biologically-determined category. I mean, theoretically you could, but you'd need a big sample size, and you'd need to track for months, and you'd need a person to change his entire lifestyle including when he talks to his friends using technology.

>for morning people, cortical excitability

Yes, it was actually reading about cortisol this morning that made me doubt the fundamentality of chronotype. For most intents and purposes, cortisol = stimulation and acute stressors. If you surf the web, game, and talk to friends in the evening, you are going to find a huge cortisol spike at night; and because of such a spike, the cortisol awakening response (CAR) is going to be diminished, hence you feel more fatigued in the morning. Your main cortisol release is going to be conditioned to when you mainly stimulate yourself. Talking to friends on Discord in between texting your girlfriend, gaming, doing homework, and engaging in adult behavior is absolutely going to make the evening your main cortisol spike. The body cannot maintain high cortisol forever, it will inevitably need times of low cortisol (even if you have chronically high cortisol), and if the evening is when you're having high cortisol then the morning and early afternoon is when you're having relatively low cortisol.

Note also how reliant cortisol is on blood sugar, and as such type of meal. Fasting will keep cortisol high; carbohydrates will radically lower cortisol for up to 2.5 hours. So you also need to look and see what people are eating, in additional to the myriad number of habits that they've procured over the course of their life.

>it's common knowledge in sleep research that chronotype is a real thing

Yes, I don't doubt that it's common knowledge. I am alleging that the common knowledge is actually totally wrong. I'd love to read more.

To quote Thomas Haskell, "objectivity is not neutrality." I think one can be an objective, professional historian but still engage with one's research subjects as moral beings. I certainly don't check that sentiment at the door. Whether one has moral feelings about a subject is not what is going to account for whether one is biased about it or not. I believe that one can objectively come to strong ethical or moral conclusions about a given subject.

That being said, one wants to avoid being obviously anachronistic, or incredibly stupid about doing such a thing. One wants to avoid flip judgments that rely entirely on the benefit of hindsight. One wants to avoid being overly presentist in one's approach to the past. And so on.

My general approach is to try and phrase the hard moral issues as broad questions. For example, when talking about the morality of the bombing of Hiroshima, I like to pose my thoughts as a question rather than an answer: under what conditions do we find it morally acceptable, if any, to deliberately set large civilian populations on fire? To me this dodges that standard moral approaches, and instead frames it as a general problem (personal and societal) to be solved, rather than trying to pass specific judgment on the people at the time.

That being said, that's not the primary goal of writing history. But it's hard not to meditate about such things if one is working in areas where people are (as they often are) doing quite unpleasant things to one another.

Required reading for anyone doing any kind of serious study in history is Peter Novick's _That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession_. Worth checking out if you are interested in how historians have approach this and many other questions over the last few centuries, at least in the USA. Short version: it's complicated and contested.

Globalism grew out of Cecil Rhodes Round Tables from around 1900, which sought to control the entire world for the benefit of Billionaire Oligarchs like himself.

After Cecil Rhodes death in 1902 the various Rhodes Foundations set up with his vast wealth were administered by Lord Alfred Milner and Lord Rothschild.

With the decline of the British Empire and the transfer of Hegemony and Global power from London to the U.S. between WW1 and WW2, the focus of the Globalist Groups transferred to controlling the politicians in Washington DC.

There are dozens of Globalist groups, but major ones include the Council of Foreign Relations (the CFR which was founded in the 1920's in New York), Chatham House (the CFR equivalent in London), the Trilateral Commission (founded by Rockefeller and Brzezinski in the 1970's), the Rockefeller Foundation, and George Soros "Open Society" forums and their multiple spin offs.

All of these groups seek to transfer wealth and power from the many to the few. The few being the owners and CEO's of major private banks, major Corporations and other Billionaire Oligarchs.

Since the 1980's wealth has been gradually transferred from the Middle Class to the elites in the top 0.01% by transferring well paid middle class jobs to the Third World or other low cost labor countries. This process was hugely accelerated in the 1990's with the advent of the internet, Globalist Trade deals such as NAFTA and the admission of China to the WTO.

Globalists support Open Borders for cheap labor which decreases wages for all but the top 5% of the Western population. (See the decline in well paid U.S. manufacturing jobs, U.S. illegal immigration from Mexico, South and Central America or H1B visas for software programmers from India. Or the expansion of the EU with cheap labor from former Warsaw Pact countries like Poland and Romania.)

Real median male wages in America have now declined to the levels last seen in 1972 and Home Ownership rates have declined to the levels of the early 1960's. Ordinary people from Western Europe have seen similar declines over the last 15 to 20 years.

Globalists seek to transfer power from democratically elected legislatures at State, Local and City levels, to undemocratic supranational institutions controlled by Corporate money (see the expansion of power of the U.S. Federal government in DC, or the EU in Brussels).

TPP and TTIP were both excellent examples of Globalist initiatives. Both included ISDS (Investor State Dispute Settlement) which sought to transfer power from democratically elected legislatures to a transnational arbitration panel composed of Corporate lawyers sitting as judge, jury, defense and prosecution, all paid by large Multinational Corporations.

TPP, TISA and TTIP agreements are massive Corporate power grabs dressed up as trade deals http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/tpp-tisa-and-ttip-agreements-are.html

The scheme to replace democratic governance with one world government controlled by a small cabal of Banking and Corporate Elites was documented in the 1960's by Georgetown Professor Carroll Quigley - a mentor of Bill Clinton:-

Tragedy and Hope by Carroll Quigley https://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Hope-History-World-Time/dp/094500110X

The other strand of Globalist Doctrine derives from the Godfather of Neoconservatism Leo Strauss who also advocated anti democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian, one world government controlled by a handful of Ruling Elites.

The Neocon Agenda and its Results http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/the-neocon-agenda-and-its-results.html

You mean like they've always done throughout all of history? Only recently has love been a theme in marriage. Throughout the majority of history, marriage has been about economic or political benefit. Marriage: A History presents a fascinating view on the subject.

When the politicians of a country are the best that money can buy, outside influence will take that country down what ever path they want. Think of it like a horse race where one group owns all the horses. They are guaranteed a win every time. Which is why it matters not who you vote for. The agenda never changes no matter what party is in power.

If they want a repeat of Hitler's Nazi Germany while they destroy the country's currency they do it. If they want to spy on their own people, torture those that are a threat and obliterate a countries reputation and then jump ship like a parasite to another host country, they do that (bye bye US and the $, hello China).

The problem is most people watch and listen to the news that is sent their way. They don't know any better and don't educate themselves. Knowledge like this falls on deaf ears.

One day, mankind will wake up and see this. After a bit, the cycle repeats. Most however, just keep swimming, just keep swimming with the same mind-set and all the while wondering what happened to their once great nation. Carol Quigly wrote an insiders point of view on this in his book Tragedy and Hope.

http://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Hope-History-World-Time/dp/094500110X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418570542&sr=1-1&keywords=carol+quigley&pebp=1418570545821

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people...
They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson

the 101st has already floated my favorite nonfiction book. So I'm going to go out on a limb and give you something, uh... unofficial. Whether it is true or not is so far beyond what I can answer even the internet could not exaggerate it enough. BUT, it's fascinating.

http://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-Mark-Booth/dp/1590201620

No idea what I'm talking about? Graduate degrees in religious studies and history (the latter with a thesis on early Islamic history) and I read Arabic fluently. Therefore I can go to the original source, not a translated version.

Scholars who agree that the early Islamic empire discouraged conversion:

David Waines "An Introduction to Islam"

Ira Lapidus, in "A History of Islamic Societies"

Albert Hourani in "History of the Arab Peoples"

Martin Lings "Muhammad"

Alex Metcalfe in "Muslims and Christians in Norman Sicily"

Additionally, Jamal Badawi, Karen Armstrong and John Esposito (modern scholars of Islam of great renown) also agree with all the above sources.

So, yes, I know exactly what I'm talking about.
As for the quote you posted, I know exactly who said it. It was Khalid bin Walid, the 'Sword of God', one of Muhammad's companions. It seems that you're unaware of the nature of jizyah and early Islamic society. Like modern governments the early ummah worked to provide for many of the needs of its people, including food, education and security. Muslims were (and are) required to pay a certain percentage of their worth (zakaat) each year to Islamic charities. In the early days, these charities were administered by Muhammad, then the Rashidun, then the Caliphate until the inevitable corruption crept in. Non-Muslims living in Islamic lands were required to pay the jizyah, which was not initially oppressive. The jizyah tax was a non-Muslim contribution to the Islamic state and was similar to modern taxes. The money was collected and social services provided in exchange. So non-Muslims and Muslims alike paid for those services.
As time went on the jizyah became a larger and larger percentage of one's wealth. Even at this point conversion was discouraged because you could tax non-Muslims to a greater degree than Muslims.

Now, look at what Khalid said. We can paraphrase it as: "You are now living in the Muslim world. You may choose to become Muslims, OR you may keep your own religion and pay the jizyah. Either way, you will come under our protection. These are your only two options. Otherwise you are rebels, and my soldiers are as ready to die as you are to live."

Now, granted, forced conversion became an issue in later centuries (notable the 1200s and on) but was not a feature of the earliest days of Islam, which is the period under discussion. Indeed, the earliest leaders of Islam frequently said "there is no compulsion in religion" (Ar. laa iqrah fee'l-deen). Do you know who said that?

If they simply "stopped paying attention", how would you explain the CIA's orders to the Jeddah consulate to grant Al Qaeda operatives visas into the country?

How do you explain the fact that once in the country, the alleged hijackers received training at secure military installations.

It is you, sir, who needs to read some books:

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II

Confessions of an Economic Hitman

Tragedy and Hope

Wall Street and The Bolshevik Revolution

Wall Street and The Rise of Hitler

Foundations: Their Power and Influence

Bank Control of Large Corporations in the United States

Wake up to reality my friend. These people are not, and have never been, incompetent or negligent. If they were either, they wouldn't be in the positions of power they are in today.

I've been saving Dan's podcast for a while. Great time to start.

I would also highly suggest Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August" for a taste of the times immediately before and after the breakout of fighting. I would also recommend the same author's "The Proud Tower" which digs into the culture leading up to The Great War.

Psychedelics played a bigger role than most people realize. It was the first time on earth there was a substance available to the mainstream in huge quantities that actually changed your perception on a massive level, and it was being taken by prominent social figures. Even as a psychedelic user and advocate myself, I totally underestimated the impact until I read the book "[Acid Dreams - The Complete Social History of LSD]
(https://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623)". Highly recommended.

Edit: Incoming downvotes from people who probably dont know much about psychedelics

I wonder how many people know that Hitler had dozens of Jewish Generals in his army, many were close friends with him.


Also --

Black Nazis! A Study of Racial Ambivalence in Nazi Germany's Military Establishment: Non-German Ethnic Minority and Foreign Volunteers, Conscripts, Laborers and POWs, 1940-1945

http://www.amazon.com/Racial-Ambivalence-Germanys-Military-Establishment/dp/1934703516

From the reviews.


>Ms. Clark also provides far more than enough written evidence for the fact that German racial attitudes were far more enlightened than anything in the US or British military at that time. Blacks in the German military were not merely truck drivers or ammunition handlers as in the US generally; they were highly trained for combat and for intelligence gathering, especially in North Africa.

G. Edward Griffin, the author of "The Creature from Jekyl Island"
lecturing on "The Quigley formula". A must see.

My favorite quote from Quigley (supposedly one of Bill Clinton's mentors);

"The chief problem of American political life for a long time has been how to make the two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy … [E]ither party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of those things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies." - from "Tragedy and Hope"

Been a while now, but I recall the book "Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches" being pretty interesting, and a really easy read.

> This my friends, is not the first reset done by the elites. I take it that they wait for a certain breaking point in society.

https://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-Mark-Booth/dp/1590201620

The above book describes the timeframe they operate on; although basically it's astrological. They believe that only the periods of time which correspond with certain astrological signs should be permitted to have continuous memory of each other, while there needs to be some sort of cataclysm seperating others, where the memory of the preceding time is wiped out.

They are also very strong evolutionists, and they don't tolerate stragglers. This is part of the reason why they generally do not tolerate the existence of indigenous groups, because they think that the whole of humanity should keep up with whatever they think its' current technological/cultural scenario should be, and they usually kill anyone who they consider regressive. They don't believe in dynamic equilibrium or homeostasis. They think that everything is continually moving forward, and that nothing should be permitted to ever remain the same, even if genuine stability is found.

Judaism is a major exception to this rule; it is an Aries age religion, which has operated continually for three astrological ages, and is now entering a fourth, Aquarius. Presumably the exception is tolerated due to the power held by some of its' adherents, although it probably also had something to do with the motivation behind the Holocaust as well.

This is also why I do not condone evolution as an idea, because I know who it comes from, and what its' social consequences are.

If you find these kinds of stories interesting, definitely check out Acid Dreams.

http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334110187&sr=8-1

Acid Dreams is the one that immediately comes to mind for me, mainly because the only reason I ended up knowing about it and picking it up was through a twitter recommendation by Lorin himself. It's quite an account of LSD culture and opened my eyes (pun intended) to some systematic lies that I never knew existed. Highly recommend if the subject matter is at all of interest to you! Cheers!!

I read "Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond" over the summer, not knowing much about LSD history besides the CIA made it, and it was one of the greatest reads of my life. Explains all of the steps of the movement, about public opinion, the main personalities involved, and the political movements that came from all of these different groups.

Geopolitics isn't a tinfoil hat doctrine. It's studied at universities and people like Henry Kissinger write nonfiction books about it. If you'd like a primer, try Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time by Carroll Quigley. Bill Clinton had Quigley as a professor and called him the biggest influence in his life.

Why's it so unbelievable?

There's a great book called Acid Dreams:
http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623

This documentary blew my mind.

I'm currently reading Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties and Beyond ... and it's blowing my mind even more. Every paragraph is like http://i.imgur.com/EMrknJP.gif . If you like this documentary, you simply MUST read this book. It's fucking unbelievable. The CIA (and eventually the Army) loved LSD in the 50's and 60's and were doing all kinds of crazy and sketchy shit with it.

Interestingly, the old school bankers like Morgan and Rothchild wanted... 'sound money'. They wanted a gold standard. If the banksters were trying to secretly create a fiat system, why did they want a gold standard?

source: http://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Hope-History-World-Time/dp/094500110X

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Nazis-Veronica-Clark/dp/1934703516

Veronica Clark (also known as V. K. Clark) earned her bachelor's degree with High Honors in Liberal Studies w/Global Political Science in 2005; her master's degree with Honors in Military History in 2009; and she completed a year of PsyD courses with a 4.00 GPA in 2010.

Use a good translation: http://www.amazon.com/Critique-Reason-Cambridge-Edition-Immanuel/dp/0521657296

Try out Allison (as well as Guyer's) commentaries.

Also check out a good Kantian dictionary: http://www.amazon.com/Kant-Dictionary-Blackwell-Philosopher-Dictionaries/dp/0631175350 (since much of his conceptual scheme consists of neologisms).

Lastly, you should check out Strawson's essay' The Bounds of Sense.' http://www.amazon.com/The-Bounds-Sense-Critique-Reason/dp/0415040302. It's sort of a modern 'take' on Kantian themes (not an exegesis of Kant, but a modernization of some of the arguments. It actually sheds some light on Kant's project).

And good luck, try not to be discouraged. I've had two graduate seminars on Kant and they've both been difficult. But, it's not just nonsense. There is some agreement about the structure (and importance) of many of the arguments in the critique and they're worth grappling with, even if you're dealing with reconstructions of the arguments from commentaries.

> White Wolf did more to bring people to gaming as a hobby in 5 yrs than TSR did in triple that time, in terms of effort, and we can probably attribute some non-trivial fraction of how diverse the gaming community is to their efforts.

I agree with this, though I must say that TSR was child of a "nerds only" era, when marketing was not an issue, as there were two or three major fanzines where you found advertisement, and most publicity was done by hearsay.
It is to their fault that the failed to adapt to changing times, that's for sure (I would advise anyone interested in their history to read Of Dice and Men, an amazing book), but I can understand why someone "younger" did a better attempt at it...

...by preserving in translation many classical texts that would otherwise have been lost. Do you think Aristotle contributed to the Western Canon? The Roman Catholic church sure does, just ask St. Thomas Aquinas. Now who do you think you have to thank for that? I'll give you a hint.

And guess who Aquinas' favorite commentator on Aristotle was? This guy named Averroes, whose full name was Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad Ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rushd‎.

Try reading a history book; you might start with A History of the Arab Peoples.

I'm assuming you're mostly interested in the LSD/"Mind Control" aspects of MKUltra.

Much of the official CIA/DoD documentation on MKUltra was destroyed during the 1970's in a big document purge around the time of the Church Comittee. After the revelations of Watergate as well as the era of the post J. Edgar Hoover FBI and revelations of COINTELPRO, the CIA began to purge a lot of it's documents as well as turn a lot of them over.

Much of their clandestine works that were being conducted inside the U.S. with testing and experimentation, as well as it's working with the FBI on counter-espionage were shut down, however MKUltra was officially shut down in '73.

Much of the MKUltra research work was basically "outsourced," to universities, pharmaceutical companies, and research and teaching hospitals. It's a well known and established fact that known psychologists and psychedelic researchers received government grants to study drugs like LSD, BZ, mushrooms, peyote, etc. The DoD also conducted their own experiments

One of the ironies of these paid government experimentations was that it "leaked." People like Leary became so enamored with the drug and the atmosphere of a collegiate environment (Berkeley, UCLA, Harvard, etc.), allowed the drugs to quickly get out of hand and out of the laboratory setting. Essentially many of the researchers and doctors being paid by the CIA and government were the first to start the psychedelics movement.

However, by the mid 1960's the CIA had lost interest in LSD, but not before it turned it lose on the world. There were some wild experiments such as dosing an elephant to death, dosing cats.

Some experiments were pretty nasty too. They experiemented on prisoners, and in one case kept 200 patients dosed on LSD for over 45 days. In some of those cases the doctors have been sued or been subject to censure. However, on the whole, many of these scientists and doctors simply went on with their work in pharmaceuticals and psychology.

In the end, over 1000 academic papers were written about psychoactives. However due to the widespread abuse of and criminalization of the drugs, halted experimentation by the mid 1960's. During this period though, people as varied as housewives to Carey Grant and Francis Crick (of DNA fame), experimented and used the drug. Due to the problematic nature of the drugs abuse a lot of information has been clouded and thorough, modern research has not been done until very recently. During it's brief period of testing, it was discovered that LSD combined with psychotherapy in a controlled environment with a trained facilitator had strong potential to aid treatment. There is also strong evidence that it is very useful in treating other substance abuse issues such as alcoholism, but of course this requires more study.

There is a great book about MKUltra and LSD called Acid Dreams which covers the history of LSD from it's discovery through the 1970's to include its use in MKUltra and the CIA, as well as a history of MKUltra's psychedelic experiments.

> I believe there's a possibility of a man named Jesus who was killed, and that's strictly speaking historically.

The consensus among secular scholars is that there was a historical Jesus. I recommend Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches if you're interested in the context of the Jesus movement. It turns out that the several references to his disciples carrying around knives were significant.

> The more and more I looked, the more I realized that organized religion was holding me back.

These were my thoughts as well. Atheism As Congruence verbalized the psychological relief brought about by my de-conversion - perhaps you will enjoy it as well.

What you're describing is the esoteric history of the world. Check out this book (link below) it's worth a read. It basically says the same story you wrote above. It's pretty cool and give an alternative perspective on our concept of religion.

http://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-Mark-Booth/dp/1590201620

There is this really good book on this topic that I enjoyed more than any other document related to this subject by the name of The Guns of August.

Very nice book.

I just made a video about this 2 weeks ago. I included a lots of fiction because I think that's a good entry to get people thinking about deeper issues. My list has Pinker's Language Instinct, of course, and also David Ostler's Empires of the Word for popular nonfiction. That one is historical linguistics.

For fiction, I had Shaw's Pygmalion, C.S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet (linguist get kidnapped and taken to Mars, finds universal language. Strong Christian overtones.), and Maria Doria Russell's The Sparrow (Jesuits send an expedition to alien planet, linguistic, sociological, religious problems ensue.).

To learn more about this and other major world languages I can recommend this amazing book.

Jokes apart I'm sure it can happen. Just finished https://www.amazon.com/Homo-Deus-Brief-History-Tomorrow/dp/0062464310, lots of good arguments in favor of this idea.

the old hippie dude at my job bought me a copy of Acid Dreams by Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain. Fascinating read on the history of LSD.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0802130623/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_SGIfzb67NYKHT

Acid Dreams covers the history of LSD and the CIA's involvement. Lots of time, money and reckless experimentation went into finding a substance that would consistently allow interrogators to influence the minds of captured spies.

Definitely worth a read - some very, very interesting stuff.

For out of game history from those days, I rather enjoyed Of Dice and Men. As someone who got on at the end of AD&D, it gave me some interesting context for the early days of the game.

Rebuttal?

sigh you know you're in for a good book when there are comments like...

>"Truth Alert!" The reiteration of the same "facts" and "true events" that have been verbosely over-saturated on every form of "journalism" and news media outlet for the last 65 years are not to be found in this book.

Humans can absolutely be hacked, though, (bribed, manipulated by romance, brainwashed) and one hacked human can do way more damage than one hacked robot.

A.I. can operate on pure logic if we want it to. Why should we give emotional animals authority over one another, when we can bring ultimate, enforceable peace via A.I.? So the spitting drunk guy doesn't get his skull cracked, he gets restrained gently and carted away.

I'm just throwing things out there, but I do get your point about anything using code can be hacked. Maybe we can ask A.I. how to make something foolproof and then let them hold the master key.

EDIT: I want to pimp out this great book by an incredible author, that exactly addresses what we're discussing in a smart, interesting, well-cited way (though I'm only 50 pages in): Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.

If you studied history you would know white countries were the most technologically advanced and were the greater military power, this is an objective historical fact.

I never said it was that way because they are white, It's largely down to geography, I subscribe to the Jared Diamond view of Guns, Germs and Steel. Perhaps you should read it and educate yourself.

My mother is half Arab and is darker skinned, my father is not. Yes I identify as white does that make me a white nationalist now?

Do you know what white nationalism is? It means you want a nation full of white people and to kick all the other races out, never advocated anything like that for one second.

Try again bud.

>https://www.amazon.com/Black-Nazis-Veronica-Clark/dp/1934703516

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Arabian_Legion

>In the armed forces
A number of blacks served in the Wehrmacht. The number of German blacks was low, but there were some instances where blacks were enlisted within Nazi organizations such as the Hitler Youth and later the Wehrmacht.[20] In addition, there was an influx of foreign volunteers during the African campaign, which led to the existence of a number of blacks in the Wehrmacht in such units as the Free Arabian Legion.

From wiki.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Ghetto_Police

Thats very interesting. I never heard of it before, but that's bad luck for the hanged guy, doesn't it?

Btw, if you are interested in the origin of superstiction like I do, you should read "Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches" by Marvin Harris. It gives rational explanations for some religious and common superstictions. Helps to understand how a superstiction grow in the minds of a society.

On the insight of China's rise? I don't know any particular source for this. Briefly, China, when ruled by the Hans, was largely isolationist. Even when they explored the known world with Zheng He's fleets, they were diplomatic and merely traded. No colonies. Today, you see the same diplomacy at work - with only limited military engagement when absolutely necessary. Their peaceful relations in the African and Latin regions support this -- regardless of what the US statement department claims. This is the nature of China. It is a trading nation. Relative to other great powers, it has been only infrequently expansionist. During its most expansive times, it was ruled by non-Hans. The idea that today's China wants to "take over the world" is the Western mindset/experience projecting itself onto China. They reason, "We colonized the entire planet when we were strong. So, of course China will do the same to us.". That fear is only part of the problem. The second problem is that America and some Western allies have never given up global conquest. From that perspective, China is a "threat" -- not to world peace, but to their ambitions.

Read this https://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Hope-History-World-Time/dp/094500110X/

There was also a free book that summarized the main points under a similar title] Tragedy and Hope 101 I think?

As an aside, most scholars seem to think that Josephus was not a fake, but his mentions of Christ are so brief that it's hard to argue, from the standpoint of Josephus, that Christ was seen as anything special in his time. Instead, this is used as proof by many that Christ actually existed.

That's where it gets interesting: Christ's existence (assuming you agree that he did) has nothing to do with his alleged divinity. In fact, I'd recommend reading Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches. In this book, the anthropologist Marvin Harris actually argues that Christ was very militant, even violent, but that later followers had to "tone him down" lest they bring down the wrath of the Romans.

Great stuff.

Like, does it exist? Sure. Is there historical evidence? It appears so: At Day's Close: Night in Times Past https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393329011/ (I haven't read this book yet, but it seems to have been well reviewed.)

It depends on what facet of the government's involvement you're interested in. You might find Acid Dreams interesting.

Where did I say anything in my previous comments about support being official acts of government?

Many times they are, and have been, but there's more than one way to skin a cat.

Do yourself a favor. Step back from everything you think you know about recent world history and read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Tragedy-Hope-History-World-Time/dp/094500110X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

Again, I could give you a list of dozens of books, but you're not even going to read this one, so there's no point.

That is right (at least according to Matt Colville who seems to have a decent grasp on the history of D&D).

I've been meaning to read Of Dice and Men but haven't gotten around to it yet. The NewBooksNetwork interview with the author is really good though.

Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time by Carroll Quigley a must read for any one looking out for truth.

Here is the full pdf of this book at Carroll Quigley's website.

Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage

Rats, Lice and History - Hans Zinsser

The Discovers - Daniel Boorstein

Connections - James Burke

The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould

Control of Nature - John McPhee

If you're in the mood for a great read, you should pick up a copy of Marriage: a History, by Stephanie Coontz. It goes into detail about the rise of marriage as a social construct starting with the rise of western civilizations (Babylonian, Egyptian) to the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages to the modern day. She shows the back and forth game that marriage had with religion and state. Long story made short: started as state, got co-opted by religion, then has slowly been returning to the state. Meanwhile, the meaning of marriage has always been contextual to the surrounding society and has constantly been changing.

This one is awesome: acid dreams

This is a great starting point: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1451640501

It was very accepted and practiced in the 50s. The book Acid Dreams goes into in depth.

Highly recommended: Acid Dreams by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain.

It is a little known fact that Isaac Asimov wrote more science books than novels. I have read one or two of them and can tell you that the writing is clear and straightforward. He is credited with authoring around 500 books.

Here are a few examples:

Understanding Physics

Asimov's Chronoloy of the World

Atom: Journey Across the Sub-Atomic Cosmos(I Read this in the 90's and due to the speed of advances in this field it's a bit dated but it gave me a solid foundation and taught me the difference between a letpon and a baryon)

Everyone should read this book. It explains how the differences between cultures came to be. It's really fascinating.

http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383082241&sr=8-1&keywords=acid+dreams One of the most fascinating books I've read on the movement. Covers LSD from it's discovery to MK Ultra to being used by the counterculture.

The way we sleep, hard as it may be to believe, is just a social convention. In pre-industrial times, it was entirely normal and natural for people to get up for a few hours in the middle of the night, and not just holy ascetics getting up to say Matins. People took this time to pray, smoke, use their marital rights, or even visit their neighbours. Roger Ekirch has written about this in his book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past with extensive documentation.

For anyone interested in seeing Asimov in a nonfiction light, I highly recommend Asimov's Chronology of the World: The History of the World From the Big Bang to Modern Times which is a spectacular history of the world. Totally readable, it gave me a much better understanding of the scope of human history than perhaps any book I read in my teens. Not often discussed in book groups, but an exceptional work of history and literature, IMO.

Sure. The source of this idea is the book At Day's Close by the historian Roger Ekirch. He went through historical documents to try to determine how people in the past slept. In doing so, he found many references to a "first sleep" and a "second sleep". People often refer to taking their first sleep shortly after sundown, then awakening for an hour or two before taking their second sleep for the rest of the night. This is now usually referred to as segmented sleep.

The idea that our 'natural' sleep patterns are segmented was picked up by the media very quickly and it has now become a well-known "fact". Unfortunately, we don't have a whole lot of experimental support for this idea. Under most free-sleep conditions, people tend to sleep in a consolidated fashion. The most important experiment in support of the segmented sleep hypothesis is actually the one I mentioned in my previous post, where people were in bed in darkness for 14 hours per night. Under those conditions, some of the participants appeared to adopt a segmented sleep pattern.

The argument is that we may have lost these sleep patterns through the use of electric light after sunset, which promotes wakefulness and delays the circadian rhythm, pushing sleep onset back much later into the night.

The Intelligence Rift:

Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray

On Civilization:

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive by Jared Diamond

Gums, Germs & Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years by Jared Diamond

The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival by Sir John Bagot Glubb

What If? is a lot of fun to read and sounds right up your alley.

Barbara W. Tuchman wrote three seminal books about WWI, The Guns of August, The Zimmeman Telegram and The Proud Tower.

Acid Dreams is another fantastic book which focuses on the connection between the counterculture and the CIA, including how the CIA distributed acid to the masses

In no particular order:

http://www.amazon.com/Beirut-Jerusalem-Thomas-L-Friedman/dp/1250015499

http://www.amazon.com/Lawrence-Arabia-Deceit-Imperial-Making-ebook/dp/B00BH0VSPI/ref=zg_bs_4995_5

http://www.amazon.com/My-Promised-Land-Triumph-Tragedy-ebook/dp/B009QJMXI8/ref=zg_bs_4995_4


http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=zg_bs_4995_10

http://www.amazon.com/Arabic-Thought-Liberal-Age-1798-1939/dp/0521274230/ref=cm_lmf_tit_3

http://www.amazon.com/History-Arab-Peoples-Albert-Hourani/dp/0446393924/ref=cm_lmf_tit_4

http://www.amazon.com/Women-Gender-Islam-Historical-Modern/dp/0300055838/ref=cm_lmf_tit_9

http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Modern-Studies-Eastern-History/dp/0195134605/ref=cm_lmf_tit_10

http://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805068848/ref=cm_lmf_tit_17


As a non-Muslim, non-Jew, non-Arab, non-Semite, American, and having read these (yay strict immigrant parents!) and some other histories, as well as having had the attacks of 9/11 give me a neurosis about following the news in the Middle East/Central/South Asia as regards potential US involvement and issues:


A lot feels familiar to me, some of it even seems like stuff I know a good deal about, and a few things about "The Middle East" which is a massively rich and complex sociopolitical place and slice of humanity are things I'd consider myself very well read on.


And I don't know shit.


I can tell you as a native born American and US voter what I think my country's policies (in a limited, broad strokes sense) should be - - - but beyond that, there's very little I've ever seen as conclusive and firm coming from anyone who by dint of identity didn't have 'skin in the game' .

This is what did it for me! All of history (up to about 100 years ago) in one source.

http://www.amazon.com/Asimovs-Chronology-World-History-Modern/dp/0062700367
I found it in a library sale for 2$ a few years ago and bought it on a whim. I keep it in my kitchen and read it with my breakfast pretty much every day.

To be fair, a lot of native civilizations had radically different conceptions of marriage specifically, and the gender roles that go with each.

For instance in one specific native american tribe, people married according to which jobs they worked, regardless of anatomical sex.
So a male who did the work normally done by a male, marrying another male who did the work that was normally done by a female would not be viewed as strange at all.

There are plenty more examples, and [this book] (http://www.amazon.com/Marriage-History-How-Love-Conquered/dp/014303667X) does a good job of presenting them.

That being said, anthropologically, gender has usually mimicked sex, which is obviously binary with few exceptions

You can also find the occasional work of non-science-fiction that combines a broad interest in all the manifold aspects of day-to-day-life with a deep detail about how the structure of our life is affected by all the inventions we take for granted, and as you and I would expect, it is awesome.

This is silly. Did you wake up this morning and decide to take up geopolitics as a pastime?

Most of the readers here are too far into this to waste time giving history lessons.

If you want to brush up on the subject here are a few books to start with:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0805075593?pc_redir=1408767114&robot_redir=1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0985271027?pc_redir=1408686538&robot_redir=1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0615602223?pc_redir=1408631528&robot_redir=1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1935439618?pc_redir=1408800754&robot_redir=1

http://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Ultimate-Insiders-Story-Presidents/dp/0684834979/sr=8-1/qid=1163059092/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-8219747-6907339?ie=UTF8&s=books

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/094500110X?pc_redir=1408852909&robot_redir=1


Read these books and then do your own research and look into the claims for yourself. Most of his claims are common knowledge, and have been widely reported with frequency over the past decade. They are easily researchable with rudimentary search engine skills.

Your burden of proof logic games are misguided and add nothing to such a prima facia discussion

Tragedy and Hope by Carroll Quigley. Synopsis/analysis by Jay Dyer of Jay's Analysis. Unfortunately only half of each of eight lectures available for free, but interesting all the same.

Amazon link to book purchase

PDF available on web

Google is full of links. I haven't read this book, but I might... it seems like a compendium of facts I've pieced together myself:

http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History-Sixties/dp/0802130623

you might enjoy this book.

Pretty much a rehash of Marriage, a History, published 6 years ago.

Here's [Keegan's map] (http://imgur.com/p93bJoh) from ['What if?'] (http://www.amazon.com/What-If-Foremost-Military-Historians/dp/0425176428).

I've skimmed the relevant pages, and his argument is that there was very little standing between the Wehrmacht and the oil, especially if they took the southern route. Also, I imagine the Soviet Union would have been happy to stage a repeat the carve up of Poland and the Baltic states, given half a chance.

Being too young to have experienced this first-hand, but just young enough to feel the effects of it on my life (my mother, who lived through the 80's, banned me from playing D&D because of this sentiment), Of Dice and Men helped me understand why that all came about.

Tl;dr of which: someone didn't like D&D and lied profusely about it in an era before fact-checking was so easy.

PS The book is great for other things, like understanding the origins of the game.

my fav

http://www.amazon.com/Secret-History-World-Mark-Booth/dp/1590201620

[my favorite history book] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0062700367?pc_redir=1397832010&robot_redir=1)

>A Mongolic Language that came with the Golden Horde into Eastern Europe and has been there since

That would be incredible. Their literature would be insane!

>A descendant of Ancient Macedonian spoken in the Hindu Kush or thereabouts, because of Alexander the Great

I actually thought about this when reading "Empires of the Word" by Ostler!