Reddit mentions: The best presidents & head of state biographies

> you actually added nothing of fact

You've missed my point. What I'm trying to say is not about facts, but interpretation of facts. This is why Zinn said that history is a weapon. It is a story, a narrative. And narratives can be incredibly powerful in affecting how we interpret, feel about, and perceive facts and reality.

To give you and example, the standard "mainstream" narrative about the American revolution is that the colonists, unhappy about their lack of representation, democracy, etc, under the British govt, and angered by capricious and arbitrary British decisions such as the stamp act, quartering of troops in Americans' homes, etc, decided to seek independence, so they could rule over their own affairs.

A leftist narrative, while not disagreeing with the essential facts, would instead say that the root of the revolution lay in the economic conflict between British entities like the East India company, and New England merchant classes unhappy about the monopoly on trade with the far east that it enjoyed. And the desire of southern plantation classes and land speculators who desired to expand into the Ohio river valley.

So that's the sort of thing I'm talking about here. Your narrative about FDR is a quintessentially mainstream/liberal/Democratic party narrative that paints FDR and liberal politicians in the rosiest possible light. It frankly smacks of mythology and propaganda (or do I repeat myself here?).

Real leftists would instead point out that the 1930s were a period of tremendous left wing/labor militancy, with clashes between labor and police that approached the level of open battles, and that it was this, rather than liberal politicians' benevolence, or correct ideology, etc, which caused the State and capitalist classes to relent and back off from opposing working classes so much.

Even this narrative may be too rosy (in overstating the effectiveness of the left/labor). It is also possible that the main cause of American workers prosperity in the 50s and 60s was simply that all our major competitors physical plant and manufacturing capacity had been bombed flat and destroyed, not to mention tens of millions of industrial workers been removed from the labor pool. The natural consequence of this was naturally the physical plant/manufacturing of the sole untouched industrial power running at full capacity for a while, and supply and demand driving up the bargaining power of American labor for a while.

> FDR contracted polio then found what life was really about hence the blue blood was drained from his being.

Uh... no. Lol.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0899683258

> Look at the infrastructure FDRs programs

Yes but what do you think that proves? Hitler built infrastructure too. Our own banksters build infrastructure if it suits their purposes. Did FDR pay for that infrastructure himself? Was that infrastructure somehow unprofitable to Wall Street and American businesses?

> how inequality increased dramatically with the Bush tax cuts.

Actually, income inequality has been increasing from sometime in the 1970s. Started with Carter, whom some people consider our first neo-liberal president. It's increased the fastest under Obama. And while Bush's tax cuts are probably not very helpful, they probably aren't as important as Clinton era's Financial Services Modernization Act and Commodities Futures Modernization Act, which set the stage for the whole mortgage securities-CDO-CDS bubble that inflated during Clinton-Bush and exploded in 2008.

> Trickle down never worked but is a talking point that works to fool the masses.

Of course. But why focus on a small lie? Let's consider a far bigger lie - that liberalism never worked and seems only to be a talking point to fool the masses.

> facts not made up "free market" ideology.

Sure. But are you sure you understand the use to which "free market" is being used in our system?

The main reason why the peasants and the sheeple accept tremendous wealth inequality in our system is that they've been induced to believe that the super-rich got their wealth in a "free market." I.e. they earned it fair and square in a "fair" and free system by virtue of hard work, intelligence, and luck.

And you reinforce this when you run around saying "the problem is free market ideology!"

It might actually be more subversive to say "we don't have a free market economy. It's all rigged monopolies and cartels. So the rich got their wealth basically by using govt power to force everyone to give them rents! It's all property accumulated by thievery and coersion!"

> humans nature is such that people need to be led.

More than that, we ARE being led. RIGHT NOW. But by whom and to what end? What I'm telling you is, by very bad people, and to very bad ends for the vast majority of us. So perhaps you should be telling people "HEY STOP FOLLOWING THEM!" rather than this worse than useless "oh well. We NEED to be led, anyways." I mean WTF. That's not the right thing to say if, e.g. you see people being led by Hitler, you know.

> leaders that lead well is a daunting task.

Worse. Possibly it is impossible.

> "depends what the meaning of win actually means"

My point was simply, if you don't get the policies and outcomes you want, you haven't won anything. Even if you manage to convert people to "your" doctrines and ideology.

> I guess you peg me as liberal.

Yes. You think and interpret things like one.

> Actually I consider myself a cooperative anarchist. See Emma Goldman.

No. Actually, you're a liberal. Because you think like one.

But don't feel too bad. I think liberalism was invented precisely to defang mislead and confuse leftists like you. So it's only natural it's so effective on you.

No anarchist would lionize FDR and the Democratic party of the 1930s so. Instead, they would credit labor and leftist militancy. Direct action. Threats of open revolt and revolution.
No anarchist would defend political authority like the Federal govt, or defend the necessity of leadership.

> Your jousting would be more valuable to me if you insert some fact

Most valuable thing I can do for you is recommend you go read some Zinn, and understand what he meant by "history is a weapon", and to point you to /r/anarchism. They're good ppl over there, they will set you on the correct path. Right now you're not an anarchist, more like a liberal democrat sheeple.

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't a main premise of the movie that it is OK to judge someone's character based on the people in their lives and where they have drawn inspiration from at one point or another?

If you were to accept all of these judgments of Obama based on his relationship with the memory of his father, and the people that he has known throughout his life, wouldn't you also need to accept that Paul Ryan is a wealth-worshipping atheist who believes that selfishness is a virtue and that working towards one's own self-interest is the highest work one can do, as Ayn Rand espoused? He has certainly talked extensively in the past about how much of an influence she had on him.

IIRC, Ryan has since claimed that he has changed his views, and has moved away from the ideas of Ayn Rand, since they do not align with his Catholic values. To believe this, you must accept that people change.

This movie is based all around a book that Obama wrote 17 years ago. Sure, D'Souza uses Obama's own words to build his case, but doesn't it seem odd that he would completely leave out Obama's more recent book, The Audacity of Hope, written in 2006? Isn't it possible that this new book might shed some light on how the man's feelings and views have evolved over those 11 years?

I have known some bad people in my life. Does that make me a bad person? My brother, when going through adolescense, got mixed up with skinheads and neo-Nazis; yet, he is one of the most caring and tolerant people I know. That was simply a phase. People change.

It does not seem very fair to cherry-pick a man's past to build a narrative about him. Why not just ask the man himself? Or explore answers to these questions by discussing his more recent book. The tagline for the movie is "Love him or hate him, you don't know him", but it does not really seem like D'Souza has tried very hard to get to know him.

I do not personally know the President. But I also do not think that it is fair to judge someone entirely on who they have known throughout their life. Confucius suggested that we ought to only hang out with our betters, so that we can become better ourselves. I would suggest that it can be just as beneficial to spend time with people who are not our betters, since we can learn lessons from them as well, even if only in the form of negative examples.

Whatever Obama's father was like or who he has known in his life, I think the most important judgements of him should come from judging his actions, the policies he has tried to put in place, the things he has said most recently, as they reflect, either directly or indirectly through subtext, his current thoughts and ideals. I have not seen him enact or attempt to enact anything that is as radical and extreme as some make him out to be.

Judge the man on what he does, not on who he has known, that's all I'm suggesting.

Also, I wonder if more or less people would see this movie if it shared the title of the book that it was based on, "The Roots of Obama's Rage", with the awesome evil red Obama head on the cover, haha.

http://www.amazon.com/Roots-Obamas-Rage-Dinesh-DSouza/dp/1596986255

Walter Jon Williams is quite an underrated author, IMO.

I love Voice Of The Whirlwind, which is kinda William Gibson, but in some ways (not all) better IMO.

Metropolitan has a very original setting - Williams says that it's not really sci-fi, but then it's not really fantasy, either. It's just a totally awesome piece of imagining, and a good story and characters to boot.

Angel Station is a first-contact tale and I really like the way he has created an alien life that is properly alien and different to us. Not only that but he spends time exploring that difference - it's not just an aside amongst many other aliens seen in passing, but it's important to the interaction with the humans and to the story.

What's great about Williams' work is that its really diverse, so if you don't like these books, you may very well like some of his other stuff - don't let a bad experience put you off him. I really want the guy to break out and be really successful.

Hitler's party was named the "National Socialists." Their policies had little to do with socialism. The main feature of the Nazis was an authoritarian dictatorship. Like the "socialists" in the "United Soviet Socialist Republic" (USSR), or the Kim family's "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" the name has virtually nothing to do with how the country is/was run or its economic system.

When they first came to power, the Nazis did some quasi-socialist policies of helping the working class. This solidified their political power and mandate. This was however not real socialism, because it was not built on helping all people, just "the right" people. It was a classic divide and conquer combined with demagoguery against Jews, Roma, Homosexuals, etc. Power was concentrated at the top, particularly in a single leader, (der Führer - literally "the leader"), which is diametrically opposed to what socialism is. The Nazis could only extract more and more wealth by continually doing more dividing internally, and eventually only by attacking and overthrowing other countries and extracting their wealth, both materially and by enslaving the captured civilian populations.

The few big German (not to mention internationally, including US) companies who sided with the Nazis early on made a lot of money, as well as the leaders of the party becoming enormously wealthy, by killing, enslaving and stealing. That is also not socialism. It is fascism.

It should also be noted that soon after coming to power, all higher Nazi party members who were interested in socialism were purged from the party (some arrested and imprisoned) and socialist groups in Germany were targeted and eliminated. I'm not an expert on the USSR, but I believe this is similar to what happened there once the Bolsheviks consolidated power.

In Germany, all of this was lead by a bitter, failed painter and WWI corporal from Austria named Adolf. He learned in the early 1900s in Vienna how well anti-semitism can be used to rile people up and turn their economic frustration on minorities, rather than the powerful who control things. Hitler took the lessons of Vienna Mayor Luegner and expanded on them. Trump uses the same playbook, but fortunately, the more modern world still has a few checks on his power.

I wouldn't say Hitler was an unprecedented evil only because the validity of our written history gets very sketchy before the 1900s (and it is pretty sketchy in parts since then as well!), but he was a very, very bad person. Socialism just means society controls the means and distribution of production. There are no pure socialist countries, but almost every country has socialist policies (like the fire department, schools, roads, etc.). The happiest (according to their populations) countries have social democracies, which just means that the public has the most say in how their taxes are spent - and they choose to spread the wealth around to the vast majority of the public. This is different than in the US, where the vast majority of tax money is spent on a few lucky winners.

If you want the really best understanding of Hitler, I recommend the two-volume biography from Ian Kershaw:

Volume I

Volume II

Very long, but super informative. I think that clarifies quite well.

[edit] typo

>Honestly, I felt that she was trying to thread the needle between sounding like she supported populist positions while not actually supporting them.

And I thought she was doing the opposite; trying hard not to sound like she supported populist ideas while actually supporting them. I mean, she wrote the book It Takes a Village, and she was the one who was working on universal healthcare when her husband was in office.


>Unfortunately, this really wasn't enough to assuage the progressives of the party who felt that this really was their moment and felt that they had been cheated in the primary.

It was mostly young people who felt cheated because they literally can't remember when Hillary was vilified for pushing populist ideas, while the older generations and establishment of course didn't back the guy who advertised that he was a socialist because they knew that was a bad plan in the general election.

>...the President is mostly about setting policy. Even if a President cannot get his/her policy enacted, the office itself provides a powerful bully pulpit to drive national policy.

Agreed, but having knowledge of the process and realistic goals is also key.

I also agree that Trump may be good long term, but only if Dems can get behind a single candidate who is more moderate; it isn't about the enthusiasm of the base but instead about generating enthusiasm among people who didn't bother to vote before and people who care about their own job more than anything else.

Also, if Hillary had won, the Republicans would have just dug in deeper as the party of obstruction; at least now they are on display as having no unified plan and cultivating the support of deplorables.

I haven't cracked them yet, but there are a few multi-volume biographies that get high marks (and since you say "the bigger the better..." :))

• Edmund Morris's trilogy on Teddy Roosevelt
  
• Manchester's The Last Lion series on Churchill
  
• Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson
  
  I also just had a friend send me Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton which seems like an interesting read.
  
  None of these are explicitly reformed, so I apologize if that's what you're looking for. But these are all acclaimed reads about men with a remarkable impact on history, which is worth attention anyway in my opinion :)

Big Bill of Chicago is basically a companion volume to Lords of the Levee -- by the same authors and covering the period under mayor Big Bill Thompson. Also rollicking good fun.

For more recent history, see Boss by Mike Royko -- an eviscerating portrait of the Richard Daley administration.

All three of these books, you'll note, are the works of journalists rather than academic historians, which means they're captivating and engaging stories by people who write with a joy and a sharpness you don't typically find among more academic works.

Not a history, but Devil in the White City is an excellent novel set in Chicago at the time of the World's Fair.

As for histories, Distant Corners and Soccer in a Football World constitute the definitive history of the sport in North America.

If you're really interested, this book tells you exactly that! https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Scent-Inside-Perfume-Industry/dp/0805080376

I listened to it on Audible (warning: the long chemical names and ingredients lists don't translate well to audio book format, but it's only an occasional distraction and not a huge deal to the overall story/message), and it really opened my eyes to the whole industry. I'd listen to it on my commute and stopped by a Macy's perfume counter a few times on my way home so I could compare perfumes with the descriptions and inside scoop on how they were created and marketed.

Really, many of the elaborate descriptions are marketing BS that even the perfume industry people don't read. Some of the best-selling perfumes are some of the blandest. When one thing sells well everyone starts copying it. BUT there are many different "classes" of scent that are easy to differentiate. If you know what you're looking even the worst noses can start to pick up differences within those classes.

After a smelling a few perfumes in a row though, yeah, it all smells like perfume :-p But it's definitely an interesting industry!

I think it's probably pretty fair. If you're interested in memoirs and autobiographies, by the way, you really should check out Grant's memoirs, they're fantastic, one of the best things ever written about the Civil War. Grant's a really interesting figure.

Non-Fiction:

Alexander, I did not read this one, but I did enjoy his chapter on Alexander in the same author's book, The Great Captains.

The Mask of Command, while not only about Alexander, it's hard to go wrong with Kegan.

If you're interested in some historical fiction, try Steven Pressfield's The Virtues of War.

I really love Teddy Roosevelt, and if you do to may I recommend this book - its the journal of John Burroughs, Roosevelt's guide during a trip Yellowstone WHILE he was president. The man really did just fuckin love nature, he would sprint away from Burroughs to like go chase down a herd of elk. Absolutely incredible.

in part perhaps... but probably more motivated by the commercial desire to drum up interest in the book "Clinton, Inc." to be released shortly

There is a GREAT audiobook version and it is available now. It listens like a radioplay with various voice actors reading the part including a great Trump impersonator named John Di Domenico. Aaron and I read the narration parts between quotes. https://amzn.to/334qd6o

> I guess some people would rather pay to defend our country than pay into the ponzi scheme that is Social Security?

If Social Security is a ponzi scheme then Defense is an even more egregious scam: we take your money and don't pay you back anything, but blow it on useless hardware no one wanted. At least SS pays us back in benefits. Defense is a black hole of cash. In the next decade SS benefits will directly contribute to the well being of millions of Americans. Can we say the same of defense, on a dollar for dollar basis? What's the logical argument?

I mentioned social programs as a whole. I want to hear a logical argument of why throwing more money at the F-35 bondoogle is more valuable than the kind of socialized healthcare system endorsed by the likes of Fredrich Hayek.

> Because they want to follow the rule of law? And people who are here illegally are breaking the law?

Congress can make law. My question stands: what is logical about alienating even the legal hispanic vote with a bill that'll go nowhere? I'm not pulling strawmen here.

> I guess they have a right to an opinion? There's circumstantial evidence there (I realize evidence does not equal proof). I don't share the belief, but 30% isn't a sweeping majority. If they do, so what? If he is a Muslim, so what? People have weirder beliefs than that.

You're undermining your case that conservative beliefs and arguments are based in logic.

Perhaps you should list some issues where you think conservatives are making the logical argument, contra liberals.

>> Is there a logical refutation of climate change that climate scientist conspire to overlook?

> Agree and disagree.

This doesn't follow. You might feel the issue is up in the air but conservatives as a whole don't. I expected an argument about how climate scientists were systematically wrong, or engaged in malicious conspiracy. The politicians elected by conservatives seem to have no compunction about insinuating the presence of a hoax. What's the logic?

> Because these men are entertainers. They don't speak for me.

But they speak for conservatives and reflect their sentiments back at them. You'll have a hard time convincing me that these major media personalities, including the radio and news programs with the highest rating, are the equivalent of Jerry Seinfeld for their mostly conservative audiences. Do you deny that watching and listening to these figures will give me a sense of the pulse of conservatives today? If not them, who?

> Should I really trot out the thought that Maddow speaks on your behalf 100%? I'd bet she doesn't.

I wouldn't hesitate to say she speaks for my basic sentiments regardless of whether I specifically agree with her stances or not, and I wouldn't deny that Maddow and Chris Hayes are reasonably accurate metrics for the state of modern liberal thought. Have you ever watched? In my limited viewings and in my humble opinion they maintain greater allegiance to rational argument than today's conservatives, either judged by their base voters or the media personalities they tune into. You often see conservatives in this sub backpedal from the things Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, and Beck say (relying on the ol' "they don't speak for me") but you don't see liberals similarly dissociating themselves from Maddow and Hayes. Why do you think this is?

> Disagree. He really doesn't go around bitching about liberals the way Hannity and the others do. He's been putting himself out there - he's gone on Bill Maher's show multiple times, and for his latest movie he interviewed many of those on the left like Michael Eric Dyson, Ward Churchill, etc. to get their take and opinion on America.

"Putting himself out there" is how he gets publicity, it's no virtue. I read the first few chapters of The Roots of Obama's Rage and it's an incoherent logical mess. D'Souza attributes cherry-picked stances of Obama to the background of Obama himself, completely ignoring that Hilary Clinton or just about any Democratic administration would act in the same way. D'Souza neglects to even address this basic criticism and is ruthlessly taken apart by the kinds of conservatives who do use logic. I hear he wrote some good, thoughtful books at one point in time, so he's not an idiot. The only way to explain these blatant errors of not just logic but facts is that he's sold out to the crazies who want to hear something salacious rather than truthful. On the one hand, you claim conservatives rely on logic; on the other hand, a book this trashy makes the New York Times' bestseller list. What evidence weighs more? What am I supposed to think?

Here

Also, there was a great book written by Mara Leveritt on the case

Finally, the podcast True Crime Garage did a 3 or 4 part deep dive into this case. It was a great, and I would highly recommend listening.

Yes! I like trilogies myself, so I'd recommend Edmund's trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt, Cornelia's Inkheart, my personal favourite fictional book trilogy, and This 12 book set, just try your best and push for more reps next time

"Wall Street & FDR" by the good man Antony Sutton might interest you.

Publisher link: https://clairviewbooks.com/viewbook.php?isbn_in=9781905570713

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-FDR-Antony-Sutton/dp/0899683258

Kind Regards

> According to some site that no one's ever heard of, thats also is heavily biased.

Russ Baker (Family of Secrets) works there, and that's good enough for me.

> The point is they covered this story with the political motive of defending one of their "own"

You clearly want to believe that, but again, that doesn't make it true.

> Even IF she lied, it's irrelevant.

Yes, it's clear that you have little desire to hear the whole truth.

> There was literally no point to cover this "story" but to try to make Weiner look better.

Demand what you will, but as I read it, the point was to get to the whole truth, which is to say, the girl and her family have lied, and it looks like Weiner was catfished. Still, he only has only himself to blame.

> That's some really revisionist history.

Revisionist history is what the left has done with FDR, who was a center left elitist trust fund kid, whose family had strong ties to wall street and big banking and who himself worked on wall street as a speculator.

And lol at quoting a speech as some proof, speeches are always little more than pandering. Clinton has some tough speeches on wallstreet too. Like this one when she launched her campaign. Try reading a book on FDR's wallstreet ties, they are well documented, and the new deal was plenty friendly to big business, so much so that the ideological left in the US hated it as not going far enough during the era.
http://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-FDR-Antony-Sutton/dp/0899683258

All of this is historically absolutely true, but through the Bush and Obama administrations, we have seen a greater amount of presidential power consolidation.

This book says some good things about it

• David Herbert Donald's Lincoln is great but one of the more exhaustive & dense reads.
  
• I've heard James McPherson's book is a fantastic & more concise primer on Lincoln's life.
  
• If you're looking for an entertaining read that's not exactly a Lincoln bio, I also recommend Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation.
  

https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Tracks-Mothers-Crusade-Killers/dp/0312198418

Please read before you claim this is fake news again without anything to back up your claims. It's so childish and so harmful to unsolved cases. I'm done with this conversation because there's too much to say and too little time.

Have a good night friend.

Absolutely!

For TR, I highly recommended Edmund Morris’ Three Volume bio . The first volume, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, won a Pulitzer and is one of my all-time favorite books.

For a general social and political history of the times, check out “The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

There have been a couple of bios on Alice, but the two best that I have read were Alice by Stacey A. Cordery and Hissing Cousins
which chronicles and parallels her life and rivalry with her First Cousin, Eleanor.

For FDR, my favorite single volume bio is Traitor To His Class by HW Brands. It’s been criticized in certain Right Wing circles as “too biased”, but screw those assholes.

For a generalized overview of the Roosevelt family, check out Ken Burns’ doc, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History. It’s on Netflix.

That’s just scratching the surface, but I have found that to be the most accessible and readable stuff.

Clinton was as shady as the rest. Glass-Steagall went belly up on his watch, and he and Hillary are wealthy power players who don't give a shit about anything but amassing more wealth and power.

Check out a book called The Boys on the Tracks.

As a side note, I cleaned his chimney once. This is not a euphemism.

Glad we're on the same page. Have you read Edmund Morris' trilogy on him? I really don't think I would have considered him an ass. He was a strong personality but he was an honest man who expected as much of himself as those around him.

I don't know why you are being downvoted Mr. Kedavarai. The oil trade plays at least a part in any Mideast policy. There are plenty of books detailing the Bush family's involvement in that nasty business. There are very close business alliances with the House of Saud as well as the Emirs of Qatar, the UEA and Bahrain. Those four houses of noble parasites are funding most or all of the Sunni jihadi movements in the world. So, in order to answer the question I posed above, you have to at least investigate whether influence by the GCC on powerful Washington interests is a determinant factor behind American actions

As I wrote (much too hurriedly LOL) above, the outcomes of all of America's theatres in the Endless War has been the ascendency of militant Sunni fundamentalists. When you get the same result every time, one has to at least examine whether that is not the goal. The connection that you cite between powerful Washington interests and the leadership of the GCC needs to be investigated

The Curve of Binding Energy: A Journey into the Awesome and Alarming World of Theodore B. Taylor
by John McPHee

Assassination Vacation
by Sarah Vowell

Public Therapy Buses, Information Specialty Bums, Solar Cook-A-Mats and Other Visions of the 21st Century
by Steven M. Johnson

Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date
by Robert X. Cringley

Tog on Interface
by Bruce Tognazzini

Both are EXCELLENT

• Edmund Morris's trilogy on Teddy Roosevelt
  
• Manchester's The Last Lion series on Churchill

The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972

I have not read many but Ian Kershaw's Hitler is amazing. If you're interesting in Philip K. Dick, read Divine Invasions.

Ian Kershaw is one of the world's leading experts on Adolf Hitler and his two-part biography on Adolf Hitler is great. Hitler 1889-1936 is presumably what you're looking for.

I can't believe this isn't the top comment, but if you are interested in this and the other presidential assasinations then please read Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

Allow me to recommend picking up a copy of John Keegan's The Mask of Command.

While The Bully Pulpit was already mentioned for Teddy Roosevelt, I found that one a rather repetitive bore. It is not a bad book, and I still think some folks might enjoy it, but the way the information is delivered feels tedious.

For Teddy, try instead Edmund Morris's trilogy. While still dense with material, you can pick and choose what part of his life you want to look into. I actually started with the "last" book, or the one about his days after his presidency, Colonel Roosevelt and that is ultimately what got me interested in what kind of president he was.

There's a whole chapter on the attempt to find the exact spot in the fantastic Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. Vowell also explores how the Garfield Memorial is kinda super gay. http://www.amazon.com/Assassination-Vacation-Sarah-Vowell/dp/074326004X

My username comes from around 15ish years ago when ICQ was still a thing. I wanted a name instead of just a number, so I had to figure out something quickly.

I was reading The Glory and the Dream and I had just gotten to a portion where one person was reported to answer the phone as "Hello, this is the medieval gnome speaking, how may I help you?"

I thought that was hilarious, so I went with Medieval_Gnome. That's really stinking long, so I elided to to medgno (first three letters from each of the two words). So that means that to me, it's pronounced "med-no" with "med" as in the first syllable in "Mediterranean". To others, I have no clue how it's pronounced.

tl;dr Needed a name, started with "Medieval Gnome", needed to shorten it.

I'm not using ad hominem to deflect. I've explained my position quite clearly, and your responses have demonstrated either that you can't, or more likely refuse to understand them.

If you would like to continue this conversation, I suggest you go back an reread my contributions. You don't have to agree with them, but have another go at understanding their internal logic. You might also want to consider learning a little bit more about 1930s Germany. I highly recommend Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler.

> my argument was that he's nothing like Hitler because he isn't attempting genocide.

You won't find a single mention of genocide in all the hundreds of pages of that first volume of Kershaw. You may find that surprising, since you seem to believe that the only thing Hitler ever did was kill Jews.

> the University I'm attending, which happens I be one of the top 30 in the world...

Hilarious. I myself attended one of the top 5 Universities. Does that make my arguments six times better than yours?

From the ancient and classical ages through the early middle ages, rulers often justified their claims to the throne by their ability to lead men in combat, and had to place themselves at the forefront of battles in order to maintain the respect of their subordinates. Later, as armies grew larger and battles became both more dangerous and more confused (gunsmoke, noise, etc), commanders would have to hang back and direct rather than lead outright. The late, great John Keegan's book The Mask of Command tells the tale of this transition, from Alexander to Hitler.

And as to why they didn't all get killed immediately, I would imagine that part of the reason is the historic practice of capturing enemy nobility for ransom. Also, a leader suck as Alexander the Great, even when leading his army from the front, would be attacking opposing knights on horseback, not the mass of footsoldiers that comprised the majority of both armies. That's where the glory and honor was.

Sarah Vowell's book "Assassination Vacation" discusses this:

"Robert Todd Lincoln, a.k.a. Jinxy McDeath, was present, or nearly so, at three assassinations–his father's, Garfield's, and McKinley's."

In the audiobook version, Robert Todd Lincoln's voice is provided by our favorite tall, red-headed talk show host.

Book recommendation: I highly recommend the biographic trilogy of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. Trust me once you start you will not want to do anything but read until all three books are done.

First book is called The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

I learned it from Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. McKinley, before he was shot, visited Honeymoon Bridge over the Niagara but made sure to only cross halfway so as to not go into canada.

If you like history, buy this and this

When I saw he hired Geithner, I hoped it was a "keep your friends close, your enemies closer" move to finally reign in Wall St. Turns out, Obama's just as much in bed with the Goldmans of this world as the Bush Dynasty.

Theodore Roosevelt trilogy by Edmund Morris. Teddy was a fuckin badass.

Or too much Sarah Vowell. :-)

No problem at all. It's a two part biography, this is the first part, and the second part is called "Nemesis". https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0140133631/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile

Hope you enjoy it.

I actually learned this today too, in a completely unrelated manner. I just started reading Assassination Vacation

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0312198418/ref=tmm_fbs_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

He also joined a sex commune but nobody would have sex with him and was nicknamed "Charles GetOut".
Assassination Vacation

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312198418?tag=duckduckgo-lm-20

TIL, it is a trilogy
"colonel Roosevelt" is the 3rd part
http://www.amazon.com/Edmund-Morriss-Theodore-Roosevelt-Trilogy/dp/0812958632/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1292697539&sr=8-4

So is this the next evolution of Hillary's It Take's A Village?

The Mask of Command was a book that I read. Other books on the CMC's reading list dealt with leadership, though not as exclusively as that one. I did the Marine Corps Institute courses up to 8xxx series on leadership. I don't know what else would be relevant specifically to your studies.

This may the pivitol attempt - the movie 'Obama's America: 2016' based on the best-seller 'The Roots of Obama's Rage'. Has anyone seen this, or comment or provide unbiased fact-checking on this?

Concepts of courage on the battlefield change with the technology and its use in warfare. John Keegan has written two books that touch on this - The Face of Battle and The Mask of Command

Assassination Vacations
https://www.amazon.com/Assassination-Vacation-Sarah-Vowell/dp/074326004X

The Boys on the Tracks: Death, Denial, and a Mother's Crusade to Bring Her Son's Killers to Justice
https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Tracks-Mothers-Crusade-Killers/dp/0312198418 this book is excellent and there were more than two boys murdered.

I have read all three of Edmund Morris's biographies on TR, totaling over 2000 pages of Teddy Roosevelt's life. I also teach history. I doubt you can say the same. Here, do some reading before you embarrass yourself anymore.


https://www.amazon.com/Edmund-Morriss-Theodore-Roosevelt-Trilogy/dp/0812958632/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=RQ7AY9KEE1QXMDC17X0R

If you think TR is one of the worst presidents in US history, you have a lot to learn, and quite frankly, are delusional.

The Boys on the Tracks: Death, Denial, and a Mother's Crusade to Bring Her Son's Killers to Justice