Reddit mentions: The best united states biographies

>What's the difference (if any) between a comic book and a graphic novel?

Comic Book: A "book" that tells a story in comic form. Now the book part varies and can mean a number of things.

It could refer to:

Single Issue: A comic story that is smaller than a graphic novel. Typically ~32 to 48 pages. These are also called floppies and are those books that you see in a Comic Book Store.

Graphic Novel: Usually, refers to a story told in comic form which is contained in a single book. For example, Watchmen or Maus are graphic novels.

Trade Paperbacks: Also called trades are books that have collected several single issues into 1 book. For example, New52 Batman Vol 1: The Court of Owls contains Issues #1 to #7 of New52 Batman.

Trades are different from Graphic Novels in that they don't have the complete story in them. Going back to the Batman example it's only "Volume 1" of 10 Volumes.

Note The words trade and graphic novel are usually interchangeable and people aren't gonna rage at you for using one or the other but the biggest difference is if it's a self contained story in a single book then it's a graphic novel.


>What's an omnibus?

An Omnibus is a larger collection of Single Issues into a single book.

Usually a Trade collects 6 or 7 Issues of a comicbook while an Omnibus would collect ~25 to 30 Issues of a comicbook.

>In DC, what are New 52 and Rebirth (without spoiling anything plot related if that's possible)?

New 52: Was a complete reboot of the DC Universe in an attempt to attract newer readers. It was met with mostly mixed results as it made things simpler for newer readers but in some cases drastically changed elements of certain characters that people liked.

Rebirth: Directly follows the New52 era. It was a, pretty successful, attempt by DC to rectify the mistakes of the New52 and bring back elements that long time readers had missed from their favorite characters. It was basically merging the elements of the pre-New52 and New52 universe. Leaving what works and changing what didn't.

>How do New 52 and Rebirth compare? I believe New 52 is older, but is it still relatively easy to get your hands on? Is there anything even worth going for, or should I just check out Rebirth stuff?

For the most part Rebirth was more well liked by fans than New52 overall. However there are certain New52 story arcs and series that people really enjoyed as well.

For New52 I recommend the following:
Aquaman Vol 1 to Vol 6 + Vol 8 (Skip 7)
Green Arrow Vol. 4 to Vol. 6
Batman and Robin Vol. 1 to Vol. 7
The Flash Vol. 1 to Vol. 4
Batman Vol. 1 to Vol. 10
Batwoman Vol. 1 to Vol. 4
Animal Man Vol. 1 to Vol. 5
Gotham Academy Vol. 1 to Vol. 2

>Who are a few of your favorite modern writers? I see Geoff Johns name coming up on a lot of stuff, is he actually good or just popular?

Geoff Johns is liked and popular. But his claim to fame wasn't writing a groundbreaking and award winning new series. It came from being consistently good over years and years of writing comics. He's reliable and knows what the majority of readers want.

For other writers I'd say that /u/holymoloid provided a really good list.

>My favorite characters are Batman, Flash, and Green Lantern. If you could only have one book or arc for each, what would you get?

Over at /r/DCcomics they have a wiki with a bunch of helpful suggestions I'd reccomend reading that.

But for a quick summary:

Green Lantern: Geoff Johns is the main guy to go to for Green Lantern. He worked on the book for ~9 years and built the foundation for the modern mythos.

The Flash: Mark Waid's run is considered the best read that first. Geoff Johns' run is considered the 2nd best, it follows Waid's run.

Batman: Start with Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's run from the New52. It's in the suggestion list I gave you above. (Vol 1 to Vol 10 of the New52)

Note: I am not an engineer, but I do have some suggestions of things you may like.

Books:

• Failure Is Not An Option by Gene Krantz: Great book about the beginnings of the NASA program, Gemini, Mercury, Apollo, and later. Gene Krantz was a flight director and worked as a test pilot for a long time, and his stories are gripping. Beyond engineering and space, it's a pretty insightful book on leadership in high-stress team situations.
  
  
• Kelly: More Than My Share by Clarence "Kelly" Johnson: This is on my shelf but I haven't read it yet. Kelly Johnson was a pioneer in the world of flight, leading the design and construction of some of the most advanced planes ever built, like the U2 and the SR-71. Kelly's impact on the business of aerospace and project management is immense, definitely a good guy to learn about. Plus he designed the P38 Lightning, without a doubt the most beautiful plane ever built ;)
  
  
• Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of my Years at Lockheed by Ben Rich: A fantastic look at the inside of Lockheed Martin's advanced projects division, the Skunk Works. Ben Rich succeeded Kelly Johnson at Lockheed, so this one is going to overlap with the book above quite a bit. I loved the pace of this one, and it covered a lot more than just the F-117, as the cover would suggest - cool info on the SR-71, U2, F104, the D21 supersonic drone, and stealth technology in general. Beyond that, it provides an inside look at the intricacies of DoD contract negotiation, security/clearance issues, and advanced projects. Awesome book, highly recommend.
  
  
• Elon Musk's Bio by Ashley Vance: A detailed history of all things Musk, I recommend it for the details about SpaceX and the goal to make humans a multi-planetary species. Musk and his (now massive) team are doing it: thinking big, getting their hands dirty, and building/launching/occasionally blowing up cool stuff.
  
  Videos/Games/Blogs/Podcasts:
  
  
• Selenian Boondocks: general space blog, lots of robotics and some space policy
  
  
• Gravity Loss: another space blog, lots about future launch systems
  
  
• The Age of Aerospace: Boeing made a cool series of videos last year for their 100th birthday. Great look at the history of an aerospace mainstay, though it seems a bit self-aggrandizing at times.
  
  
• If you want to kill a ton of time on the computer while mastering the basics of orbital mechanics by launching small green men into space, Kerbal Space Program is for you. Check out /r/kerbalspaceprogram if your interested.
  
  
• Subreddits like /r/spacex, /r/blueorigin, and /r/ula are worth following for space news.
  

Because he was the perfect blend of the idealist and the realist. He never compromised when he knew he was right, but he always acted in a way that would actually have a positive end effect. He had a way of understanding the whole of the situation, and doing what was best in the moment to achieve his goals. He was a great leader and one of the most underrated writers of all time. He treated everyone with an incredible amount of respect and patience.

When one of his generals decided to turn back after winning a massive battle, (a massive mistake considering had they kept attacking the confederates while they were retreating the Union could have conceivably ended the war years earlier than it eventually did end,) he wrote that general an incredibly vicious letter. He tore into him. After contemplating the letter for a while, he decided not to send it. It would only shatter moral.

He was a great speaker, he had a talent for explaining complex issues in incredibly clear and even funny ways. When asked why he didn't immediately fire the aforementioned general he responded "It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river." That's a small example, but Lincoln was full of chestnuts like that. I aspire to be as clear, direct and interesting of a communicator as he was.

The Gettysburgh address is his most famous speech, and rightfully so, but I've always found his conclusion to his first inaugural address to be his most satisfying piece of writing.

> I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

To summarize:
1.) Had moral and stuck to them
2.) Acted in ways that would realistically accomplish his goals. A political genius.
3.) An everflowing fountain of respect and human decency.
4.) A masterful writer and a severely underrated communicator and comedian.

>Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.

Team of Rivals is a wonderful book about the man, and I highly recommend that everyone and their dog should read it.

Oh, and by the way, he was an INTP.

So my guess is that it's less of a physical appearance matter and more of a personality/attitude thing. Such as the beach for example, instead of asking who wants to go to the beach, make it more definite. You're going to the beach, who wants to come along? You need to give off the air that while you would like everyone's company, you don't need it. THEY'RE the ones who should feel privileged to be around you, not the other way around. As for the getting things example, I assume you always go up and get it? It's one thing to be the helpful guy people appreciate, another to be the carpet they walk on. If they ask you to get something, give them a little crap for asking, then another time ask them to make it up to you. Perhaps "Alright fine I'll get the beer, but you owe me pizza later" And actually get them to get the pizza.

As for the body, it sounds like you lack some confidence due to being skinny. While skinny men can be Alpha and imposing, perhaps you should work out more so YOU feel imposing.

But basically what it boils down to is that it feels like you don't have the most confidence and get dejected when people don't go with you to the point of being a bit submissive. Fake it till you've got it, just pretend that you're confident and things should be the way they are, and eventually it'll actually work out that way. Read some of the links on here, plus I highly recommend looking at The Art of Manliness for more ideas. Most important is to just go out and try things out, reading can only take you so far, and failing is not failure, it's a learning experience.

Also here's some advice I gave earlier which might help:

>For your hair post in /r/malehairadvice for a style that fits you, they're going to want full body pics with outfit. As for fashion, post in /r/malefashionadvice for some help based on your figure and body stature. If you truly want a progression to give you some guidance, consdier The Art of Manliness' 30 Days to a Better Man (also just a damn good manly blog.

>If you want to change how you look physically, hit the gym, use /r/Fitness to help develop a routine. With a diet and regular exercise within a year you'll look completely different.

>Now we've hit the physical attributes of being more manly, for the more mental ones that's harder. They will develop as you come to appreciate your body more, but it's a mindset more than anything. If you pretend confidence long enough you have it eventually. When someone tells you you're like an annoying little brother, ask why, figure out what personality traits these are and change them. I highly recommend finding some inspirational figure to model your life on, for me personally it's Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris's biographical trilogy is FANTASTIC. At least read the first book, Roosevelt had to overcome much greater hurdles than you, you can do the same. Don't be afraid to ask questions and figure out why people think you are the way you are, just be sure to change it. If you need motivation, /r/GetMotivated is there for you. Further let this move into other areas of your life, work hard and play hard.

>I'm going to strongly encourage you to read some articles on Art of Manliness, it's not 100% perfect, but a great site for men.

>Edit: Oh and I know it's too late for you to do this now, but one of the most attractive qualities I've been told by women is that I'm an Eagle Scout. Reasoning behind this is that it says that I embody certain aspects, namely the Scout Law and Scout Oath (as well as the Slogan and Motto). You can still live up to these ideals without being an Eagle Scout, just start now, they really are very manly.

> Is it also not possible that the guy that has lived relatively frugally

It is possible, but he has objectively not done this, unless you're talking relative to other billionaires, even then there are far more frugal billionaires with 1/100th the public image he sells to
try to distance himself & his fund from the typical fund image (John Cauldwell, Azim Premji, a lot of the european dynastic old money as a few examples. For first generation, look at almost any of the Danish/Skandi billionaires)

If you have multiple private jets for the exclusive use of you & your family and own multiple properties, each worth millions of dollars - you're not frugal.

> is donating 99.9% of his fortune to charity when he dies

Is donating the massively tax deferred portion of his net worth to a privately run organisation that his family will be involved in running for decades to come, after already having set up all of his direct descendants as billionaires.

> calls out tax laws that are b.s. but personally benefit him is just that simple guy?

"don't hate the player, hate the game" with regard to tax law when you're the 3rd richest person on the planet, best mates with the 2nd richest person on the planet & literally have the money & power to CHANGE the game is not a valid argument. He talks a big game about tax reform, but does not work to actually do anything about it. Hell, his donations swing heavily toward republicans who are AGAINST tax reform. He's done very well thanks to them too:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/24/17048378/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-tax-cuts


A big chunk of Berkshire Hathaway's success is built on not paying tax, they've got $86,000,000,000+ in deferred taxes thanks to exploiting a loop hole where they don't have to pay tax while working on acquiring a company... So they just make sure they are always acquiring.

Imagine if you could defer paying tax forever with the argument that you're still busy buying shares or ETFs.. Given what subreddit we're on, it would be pretty appealing.

Then as previously mentioned in that linked article, the party you donate to comes along & cuts the tax rate, so now you owe billions less than you previously did - woohoo!

> His image may marginally help him

Buffett is selling what is essentially the antithesis of this subreddit. High fee managed funds that exploit tax rules for massive profitability to become personally one of the richest people on the planet. He's the anti-Bogle, yet this subreddit & a lot of FI/RE types love him, because of that image & brand.

Buffett is Berkshire, the reason why so many people & institutional funds are happy to pour money into Berkshire stock is because of the image. It hasn't helped him a little bit, it's helped him immensely.

> To me he seems to genuinely want what's best for the country/world.

To me he seems like another John D. Rockerfeller. A titan of industry who wants to be the richest so he can control where the money ends up. Win the game, then give most of it away. If you haven't read it yet, grab yourself a copy of https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303

The similarities are incredible.

I've just finished The Windup Girl, which I had been putting off for some time. It was, quite simply, the most astounding and breath-taking science fiction book I've ever read. I loved it.

However, my problem is that I buy books compulsively. Mostly hard copies, but recently I bought a Kindle and buy the odd e-book or two. I have literally hundreds of books on my "to read" list.

One near the top is A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel. I recently read her phenomenal Wolf Hall and was blown away by her skills as a story teller. I'm a bit of an armchair historian, and I'm particularly interested in the French Revolution (amongst other things), so I'm very excited by the prospects this book holds. If it's anything like Wolf Hall then I'm in for a very particular treat.

Also near the top lies Quantum - Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality, Manjit Kumar's much lauded recent history of the emergence of quantum mechanics. I very much enjoyed other tangentially related books on this topic, including the wonderful The Making of the Atomic Bomb and The Fly in the Cathedral, so this should be good fun and educational to boot.

Having read and loved Everitt's biography of Cicero, I'm very much looking forward to his biographies of Augustus and Hadrian.

I'm listening to an audio-book version of The Count of Monte Cristo on my iPod, which I find rather enjoyable. I've only got through the first half dozen chapters and it's already taken a few hours, so this looks to be a nice, long-term and periodic treat for when I have time alone in the car.

Cronin's The Passage keeps piquing my interest, but I was foolish enough to buy it in that lamentable format, the much cursed "trade paperback", so the thing is a behemoth. The size puts me off. I wish I had waited for a regular paper-back edition. As it is, it sits there on my bookshelf, flanked by the collected works of Alan Furst (what a wonderfully evocative writer of WWII espionage!!) and a bunch of much recommended, but as yet unread, fantasy including The Darkness that Comes Before by Bakker, The Name of the Wind by Rothfuss and Physiognomy by Ford.

Books I have ordered and am eagerly awaiting, and which shall go straight to the top of the TBR list (no doubt to be replaced by next month's purchases) include Orlando Figes's highly regarded history of The Crimean War, Rosen's history of steam The Most Powerful Idea in the World and Stacy Schiff's contentious biography of Cleopatra.

A bit of a mixed bunch, all up, I'd say.

This is quite the under-taking, so I'll just list the presidents from which I am familiar with the historical literature. In order to guarantee that you get an analytically thorough understanding of each president, I'll avoid "pop" histories (thus, nothing by David McCullough) in favor of more analytically driven, yet still well written, histories. I will still incorporate some books from non-academic publishers, however. First off, the best place to start would probably be the University of Kansas's American Presidency Series (note that this is different from the American Presidents Series, which is done from NY Times books. Always be sure to check the publisher). This series is great for getting a good understanding of what historians in general have written about each respective president; however, the series only focuses on the presidency, which is more constrained than what you're looking for. I'll just go in sequential order based on when the individual was president.

• George Washington
  
  Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow. (Do not buy this book off the internet. I've seen the hardcover version of this book in the overstock sections of Barnes and Nobles, Wal Marts, and even Albertsons for $6. Don't become reticent about it because it's in the cheapy bin at Wal Mart. Chernow is one of the best biographers of early American history and the book won a Pulitzer.
  
  His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph Ellis
  
  
• John Adams
  
  John Adams: A Life by John Ferling
  
  
• Thomas Jefferson
  
  Thomas Jefferson by R.B. Bernstein
  
  Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham
  
  
• James Madison
  
  James Madison: A Biography by Ralph Ketcham
  
  The Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison and the Founding of the American Republic by Lance Banning
  
  
• James Monroe
  
  James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity by Harry Ammon
  
  
• John Quincy Adams
  
  Paul Nagel's John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, A Private Life
  
  For an in depth look at his time as Secretary of State, check out John Quincy Adams: Policymaker for the Union by James E. Lewis, Jr.
  
  
• Andrew Jackson
  
  Robert Remini's 3-volume biography is still the most comprehensive on Andrew Jackson. Vol. I is Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767-1821; Vol. II is Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822-1833; Vol. III is Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845.
  
  Old Hickory's War: Andrew Jackson and the Quest for Empire by David and Jeanne Heidler is also worth reading.
  
  
• Theodore Roosevelt
  
  Edmund Morris's 3-volume biography. Vol. I, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt; Vol. II, Theodore Rex;, Vol. III, Colonel Roosevelt
  
  
• Harry Truman
  
  Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman by Alonzo Hamby
  
  
• John F. Kennedy
  
  The aforementioned American Presidency Series book, The Presidency of John F. Kennedy, revised edition by James Giglio.
  
  An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek
  
  
• Lyndon Johnson
  
  Robert Caro's multi-volume biography (still unfinished). Vol. I, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power; Vol. II, Means of Ascent; Vol. III, Master of the Senate; Vol. IV, The Passage of Power; Vol. V is yet to be published.
  
  For a one volume account, LBJ: Architect of Ambition by Randall Woods is also good.
  
  
• Richard Nixon
  
  Strangely, there still isn't a definitive book on Nixon's presidency. For a good understanding of his presidency, you need to get into more specific areas, like Nixon and foreign affairs, Nixon and the civil rights movement, or even biographies of Nixon's closest advisers within his administration. The best account of Nixon himself would by the American Presidency Series's entry by Melvin Small, The Presidency of Richard Nixon. Equally important when attempting to understand Nixon's presidency is the life and thought of Henry Kissinger. The single best biography of Kissinger is Jeremi Suri's Henry Kissinger and the American Century.
  
  
• Gerald Ford
  
  Really the only substantive book on Gerald Ford comes from the American Presidency Series. It's The Presidency of Gerald R. Ford, revised ed by John Greene.
  
  
• Jimmy Carter
  
  The more substantive books on Carter are going to be too dry reading than what you're asking for. A readable, and analytically thorough, biography of Carter's presidency is The Presidency of James Earl Carter, Jr., revised and updated edition by Burton Ira Kaufman. For Carter's (much more effective) time post-presidency, check out Douglas Brinkley's The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Quest for Global Peace. For the Carter presidency's foreign policy, still the best account is Morality, Reason, and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years by Gaddis Smith.
  
  
• Ronald Reagan
  
  It's hard to find a good, unbiased biography of Reagan. By far the best biography comes from the journalist Lou Cannon in his book, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.
  
  Sean Wilentz's The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 is also good, but the author becomes more clearly biased as the history gets closer to the present. Still, despite the author's biases it is a great book that is analytically sharp and incredibly well written.
  
  Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s by Gil Troy offers a solid, more positive assessment of Reagan than most historians provide.
  
  
• George H.W. Bush
  
  The American Presidency Series's entry by John Greene, The Presidency of George Bush
  
  
• Bill Clinton
  
  Historians are just now starting to dig into the Clinton presidency. The best account of the Clinton presidency, like Reagan's presidency, comes from a journalist: John Harris's The Survior: Bill Clinton in the White House
  
  There are also a ton of books on the George W. Bush presidency, many of them good, many of them bad. While I'm not a big fan of this sub-reddit's 20 years prior rule, I will respect it. If you want some suggestions on George W. Bush, just PM me.
  
  Edit: I realized I completely left out John Quincy Adams so I added him in.
  Edit #2: I also linked my suggestions to their respective Amazon page.

It sounds like you're off to a good start. You sound pretty close to the right height/weight ratio, so it'll probably be pretty hard to see any big weight changes even with a lot of effort. I had a lot of good luck on a bicycle, largely because running would tear my body up, so good luck to you.

There's some good (and conflicting) advice in this thread already, but working out with friends can help you stay at it. In a similar vein, I started playing pick-up basketball at a park a couple nights a week, made some friends there, and my team of 5 would expect me to be out there so we'd have a full team on those nights. That way I'd be sure to be out there since I knew if I wasn't they'd be upset. It really helped on nights where I could have easily packed it in and stayed home, any almost never did I regret actually going. Another thing you can do is train for an event with someone; maybe a mini-triathlon, half-marathon, century bicycle race.

But I actually came to answer your audiobook question. I had some good luck with This American Life (you can get all of the MP3s for free) for awhile but burned out on it a bit. Then I made myself a musical bike helmet and I'm in freakin' heaven with that thing; it's the perfect amount of split attentions for me. I like fitness cycling to adventure/survival non-fiction, I could manage to push myself since the characters had it so much worse. How can you refuse to go balls out for another 3 minute interval when you're listening to a story where someone's starving to death?

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing was my favorite of that genre, had a brilliant reader.

I also liked Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.

And out of that genre, I've recently listened to Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain and Moneyball by Michael Lewis and I can't stop talking about either of them.

Good luck and keep at it. I got a lot of silver-bullet advice from a lot of well-meaning friends, but what really helped was finding stuff that worked for me and then ignoring them. I'm down about 50lbs over the 16 months or so.

I just finished http://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Nikola-Biography-Genius-Citadel/dp/0806519606

This is not a great biography. But the subject is so fascinating that it largely covers the significant flaws.

First the flaws:

The author is an unabashed fan of Tesla and clearly has an agenda to make sure that the reader recognizes Tesla above Edison and Marconi and the other giants of the age. For instance, he denigrates Edison as using the brute force of a massive volume of experiments to come to what works while Tesla would think it through and do the math and find what would work and then test it to confirm. The author celebrates Tesla as superior to Edison because of this difference--Edison is the plodding, dirty, workbench-chained technician--Tesla is the brilliant scientist with pencil and paper and thoughts soaring above. There might be some truth to this contrast, but it is made in an extreme sense and seems unnecessarily judgmental towards Edison. And so forth throughout the book.

A second flaw is that the author is so insistent in trying to prove Tesla's scientific priority over those that follows that he spends hundreds of pages going through technical aspects of patent applications and the inner-working of the various devices. This might be interesting to an electrical engineer, but to the lay reader it is tedious. I just about laid the book down once or twice. But there were enough brilliant insights to keep going.

A few interesting anecdotes:

Once Tesla nearly destroyed his lab building on Houston St. in NYC with one of his oscillators. Shortly afterwards he clamped one to a skyscraper under construction and nearly caused it to collapse, turning it off and slipping it into his pocket and slipping away in the confusion of men thinking an earthquake had struck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla's_... (the book does not calim the oscillator cause an earthquake, but that the effect of the oscillator connected to a building's support structure was like an earthquake an could tumble a buildng within minutes. Amazing if true (and it sounds true to this non-scientiest--resonence of marching on bridges and all that).

Tesla was backed at different times by both John Jacob Astor (the richest man in the world) and JP Morgan (the most powerful financier in the world). He failed to deliver both times, taking the money which was earmarked for one purpose and diverting it to another purpose. When he ran out of money to complete the non-disclosed purpose and came back begging for more money, he was rebuffed. If he had done what he told the two men he was going to do with the money (in both cases creating a product that could be taken to market) instead of burning through it on scientific research without an end, he would have been a very very wealthy man and who knows what he could have accomplished. As it was, he never was able to raise money after betraying JPMorgan and was unable to do much significant work after that time.

Tesla was constantly a deadbeat borrower, evicted from many hotels for unpaid bills, and constantly begging others for funding during the last half of his life. It is sad to read, really.

Tesla was a lifelong celibate, almost certainly homosexual, but never practicing. A man of amazing self-discipline and focus.

His consuming dream was to provide free electric powerful to the world. It is unlikely that there is merit to this scheme or it would have been implemented somewhere at some time (same with his death ray concept which he claimed to have build a prototype).

It seems the longer he lived, the crazier he became. For instance, he was fanatically committed to pigeons--paying people to feed them when he didn't have enough money to pay his rent. He loved pigeons more than anything for his last few decades. One favorite visited him, he claimed, and communicated to him it was dying and Tesla saw light shooting out of its eyes, telling Tesla that his work was also done. Very odd. He also had to circle the block of his hotel six times before he would enter each night. He wouldn't shake hands due to germs. Typical obsessive-compulsive behavior stuff. Sad.

Bottom line on the man: Tesla was brilliant and we owe him much for our modern world is built on his inventions--everything that runs on electricity is a grandchild of Tesla. Tesla invented: AC current, florescent light, X-Ray machines, radio broadcast (the US Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that Tesla's patents were violated by Marconi), remote control of boats/airplanes/etc, the electric motor, robotics (and the entire concept of a robot), the laser, wireless communication. That is quite a list. His name deserves to be immortal.

Bottom line on the book: Tesla is still awaiting the biography he deserves. But this one is worth picking up while we wait.

To add:

• Childhood(1858-1869) Being a terrible asthmatic and having 'nervous cholera' didn't stop this moose calf. He decided that the aliments of his body would have to kill him to stop him. He also started "Roosevelt's Museum of Natural History" as a child after buying a dead seal's head at a market on Manhattan. His zoological studies continued into adulthood too. Also, when on trips in Africa and the Middle East he brought his own embalming, taxidermy, and mercury supplies to add to his museum.
  
  
• Thesis (1880-1883) "The Naval War of 1812" was published after Teddy left Harvard and is considered the precursor to the modern doctoral thesis. Yes, he invented the doctoral thesis, christ, what a jerk!
  
  
• Dueling (1886) The de facto leader of Medora was Marquis de Mores. Seeing as T.R. was in his town ranching, he invited him on over. One thing lead to another and blammo, duel time. Now the Marquis was a dead shot and had killed many men. T.R. wisely apologized and went back to his cabin. Yes, it's not the most badass, but the man knew when he was beat. And that takes balls too.
  
  
• Treaty of Portsmouth (1904 -1905) Teddy manages to get a peace treaty signed between the Russians and the Japanese. This sort-of ushers in the Japanese as a world power akin to Great Britain, Germany and France. T.R. gets a Nobel Peace Prize for this.
  
  
• Bull Moose Party(1912) He splits the GOP and form his own party. Yes, he is so badass, no amount of political bitching will stop the guy. The party machinery is broken and corrupt? Screw it, lets make a new one in 7 weeks and have a convention in the exact same spot.
  
  
• WWI (1917) Roosevelt volunteers to lead an infantry division into the trenches at 59 years old. Wilson turns him down.
  
  
• Scouting (1918) Scout Julian Salomon once said, "The two things that gave Scouting great impetus and made it very popular were the uniform and Teddy Roosevelt's jingoism." Thats right you Eagle redditors, you got the Bull Moose to thank.
  
  Want more?
  YOU SHOULD ALL READ THIS: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. It's like 3 bucks used right now. Better yet, got to your Library and check it out. I am not kidding when I say it made me love biographies. Morris makes his early life read like a fiction novel. You also learn a LOT about publishing, party politics, and post civil war America. It is one of the best book I have ever read. Heck, PM me and I can help you get a book.
  

For fiction, I recently finished A Gentleman in Moscow and while some would consider the story slow going, I found the language used to tell it enjoyable enough to see it all the way through.

If you're into biographies, I'm just now finishing Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow, the guy whose Hamilton Bio inspired the play. Sometimes I think he tries to undersell Washington's involvement with slavery, but that's just my bias and I think on the whole he does a fair job of it. Edmund Morris' three book set on Teddy Roosevelt was what got me reading biographies to begin with, and ironically enough I found it from a reddit comment years ago, haha.

For a lighter read on a really interesting true story, I'd recommend "Stranger in the Woods," by Michael Finkel--especially if you're an outdoorsy type.

Oh! And if you're into productivity definitely pick up Deep Work by Cal Newport. Changed the way I structure my time, and since I started changing my schedule my efficiency has skyrocketed.

I don't know if you're the sci-fi/fantasy type, but anything by Steven Brust, especially To Reign in Hell is both snappy, smart, and fun to read.

And if you want dry, but grammatically sound textbooks on psychology and personality theory, let me know 'cause I've been required to read tons as of late, lol.

Sorry for the delay in the response, if you give me a genre or area of interest I could probably be more help. I love to read, and I read a bunch of different things, but this is what I've most recently finished.

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

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

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

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

Not defending vandalism, but to be fair, Lincoln was a tyrant who caused the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

>Most Americans consider Abraham Lincoln to be the greatest president in history. His legend as the Great Emancipator has grown to mythic proportions as hundreds of books, a national holiday, and a monument in Washington, D.C., extol his heroism and martyrdom. But what if most everything you knew about Lincoln were false? What if, instead of an American hero who sought to free the slaves, Lincoln were in fact a calculating politician who waged the bloodiest war in american history in order to build an empire that rivaled Great Britain's? In The Real Lincoln, author Thomas J. DiLorenzo uncovers a side of Lincoln not told in many history books and overshadowed by the immense Lincoln legend.

I know you Americans love your mythical heroes, so let the downvotes commence...

Anything by Alan Moore. Promethea is a personal fave, but might not be the best place to start. Top Ten is also very good if cop drama overlaid with some super-hero stuff sounds appealing. Watchman is a cornerstone of the form, but you will definitely appreciate it more if/when you have a fair bit of 'capes & tights' superhero work under your belt.

Blankets is just stunning. I've bought it 3 times already and have the new hardcover edition on perorder.

Stardust is another great one by Neil Gaiman. It's also unique in that if you enjoy the story you can experience it in 3 different, but all very good, forms. The original comic, the prose novel, and the film all work quite well and give a nice window into what bits a pieces work better in each form.

Of course no comic list is complete without Maus and Understanding Comics.

I taught high school English for five years, and had my fill of the classics. I find I can't really get into that stuff anymore, although it certainly helps when I watch Jeopardy! I remain a big Hemingway and Steinbeck fan....

I've found as I grow older I am more drawn to non-fiction, with Bruce Springsteen's [Born to Run] (https://www.amazon.com/Born-Run-Bruce-Springsteen/dp/1501141511) and a great Teddy Roosevelt [biography] (https://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Rex-Edmund-Morris/dp/0812966007/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1497020483&sr=1-1&keywords=theodore+rex) by Edmund Morris being the last two books I've read. As far as fiction is concerned lately - dunno, but I'm always a sucker for whatever John Grisham is cooking.

I was a big Shannara series geek when I was a kid; my singular, lone experience with the fantasy genre. [The Sword of Shannara] (https://www.amazon.com/Sword-Shannara-Terry-Brooks/dp/0345314255/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1497020523&sr=1-2&keywords=Sword+of+shannara) was the very first "big" book I ever read, back in 7th grade. About fifteen years ago I got to meet the author, Terry Brooks, and had the distinct pleasure to say to him "The Sword of Shannara was the first book I ever read." Wow. What a nice moment that was. (He graciously thanked me and told me that he hears that a lot.)

Specific, timely recommendation - if you haven't read recently-deceased sportswriter Frank Deford's ["Alex: The Life of a Child,"] (https://www.amazon.com/Alex-Life-Child-Frank-Deford/dp/1558535527) please consider moving it up your list. It's his account of his young daughter's well-fought, yet losing battle with Cystic Fibrosis. I was so moved by this book that I taught it for a few years to my students. Gripping and moving and very readable, it was always a highlight of the school year. DeFord's recent passing brought the book back to me, and I enjoyed reading multiple articles/columns by writers and colleagues discussing the impact that little book had on them as well. It's nice to think that DeFord is now finally reunited with his daughter.

Last thing: Need a great go-to resource for book choices? For many years I've relied on [NPR's must-read list] (http://www.npr.org/books/), and it's always been a home run for me. My wife knows that if she wants to buy me a book, all she has to do is go to that website and pick from the top. I like it better than the NYTimes list, as the summaries are often accompanied by the radio reviews played on NPR.

Random selection of some of my favorites to help you expand your horizons:

The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan is a great introduction to scientific skepticism.

Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris is a succinct refutation of Christianity as it's generally practiced in the US employing crystal-clear logic.

Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor by Anthony Everitt is the best biography of one of the most interesting men in history, in my personal opinion.

Travels with Herodotus by Ryszard Kapuscinski is a jaw-dropping book on history, journalism, travel, contemporary events, philosophy.

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson is a great tome about... everything. Physics, history, biology, art... Plus he's funny as hell. (Check out his In a Sunburned Country for a side-splitting account of his trip to Australia).

The Annotated Mona Lisa by Carol Strickland is a thorough primer on art history. Get it before going to any major museum (Met, Louvre, Tate Modern, Prado, etc).

Not the Impossible Faith by Richard Carrier is a detailed refutation of the whole 'Christianity could not have survived the early years if it weren't for god's providence' argument.

Six Easy Pieces by Richard Feynman are six of the easier chapters from his '63 Lectures on Physics delivered at CalTech. If you like it and really want to be mind-fucked with science, his QED is a great book on quantum electrodynamics direct from the master.

Lucy's Legacy by Donald Johanson will give you a really great understanding of our family history (homo, australopithecus, ardipithecus, etc). Equally good are Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade and Mapping Human History by Steve Olson, though I personally enjoyed Before the Dawn slightly more.

Memory and the Mediterranean by Fernand Braudel gives you context for all the Bible stories by detailing contemporaneous events from the Levant, Italy, Greece, Egypt, etc.

After the Prophet by Lesley Hazleton is an awesome read if you don't know much about Islam and its early history.

Happy reading!

edit: Also, check out the Reasonable Doubts podcast.

My non-fiction pick -

1. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York - Robert A. Caro
   
   
2. 9/10
   
   
3. Biography, History of New York, Political Intrigue
   
   
4. This is one of the best biographies I've ever read. Full Stop. Caro is a master writer, and an incredibly detailed researcher who must have spent a good portion of his life putting together a picture of one of the most influential men in the history of New York City. The book is huge, at almost 1400 pages and it will take you a while to get through it, but it is absolutely worth it. It's the tale of a man who, with no conventional source of power (personal wealth, elected office, corporate sponsorship, etc.) was able to run roughshod over not only the citizens of New York, but also Presidents, Governors, Mayors, Bankers, and Industrialists. This is the closest you'll get to a real life House of Cards. The Power Broker is a master class in the use of power, and the political realities facing American democratic institutions.
   
   
5. Amazon
   
   
6. If you like this, you might check out Caro's sprawling books on LBJ.
   
   My Fiction Pick. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to give two different recommendations, but tough titties, because this novel is one of the best I've ever read.
   
   
7. The Big Rock Candy Mountain - Wallace Stegner
   
8. 10/10
   
9. 20th Century American Fiction, The Great American Novel, Seriously Read IT!
   
10. I had no idea who Wallace Stegner was when I started this book. I thought my days of discovering 'the greats' were long over. I spent 2 years in a graduate english lit program and never heard his name mentioned once. I was never assigned this book in high school. And I can't for the life of me figure out how this guy has been so overlooked.
    The novel follows the Mason family as they travel the country trying to find their particular place in the world. I won't say more than that. If you liked The Grapes of Wrath, or East of Eden, you should check this book out.
    It is absolutely the best book I've read in the last year, and immediately threw my "top ten list" into question.
    
11. Amazon
    
12. If you like this one you might check out Richard Russo's Empire Falls.

This might be a strange recommendation, but I'd recommend he read Biographies. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is a great book which chronicles the life of this amazing figure. The sheer amount of mental strength and determination this guy had was crazy. There is also the book "Be My Guest" written by Conrad Hilton. You get to read about how this man started with nothing in a dead town and was able to create the largest hotel chain in the world. I love self help books, but at the end of the day they give you a tool without an application. That's why personally I enjoy reading Biographies since you get to see how the application of the tools makes all the difference. So tell him to pick out one of his idols. Doesn't matter if he loves sports, politics, movies, have him pick out one idol and read the biography of what it took to get that person to the top.

Where does toll money go after being collected by various bridge and tunnel ''Authorities''?
The MTA is not a .gov, but one of those Federal Reserve style quasi private agencies. http://web.mta.info/mta/investor/ .... EDIT--> This one is very very juicy as regards the clear separation of state and MTA: http://web.mta.info/mta/investor/pdf/stateservice.pdf
They are separate entities for sure.
In revealing how Moses did it--how he developed his public authorities into a political machine that was virtually a fourth branch of government, one that could bring to their knees Governors and Mayors (from La Guardia to Lindsay) by mobilizing banks, contractors, labor unions, insurance firms, even the press and the Church, into an irresistible economic force--Robert Caro reveals how power works in all the cities of the United States. Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He personally conceived and completed public works costing 27 billion dollars--the greatest builder America (and probably the world) has ever known. Without ever having been elected to office, he dominated the men who were--even his most bitter enemy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, could not control him--until he finally encountered, in Nelson Rockefeller, the only man whose power (and ruthlessness in wielding it) equalled his own.
The editorial reviews on that link should be noted.
"Surely the greatest book ever written about a city." --David Halberstam
"Caro has written one of the finest, best-researched and most analytically informative descriptions of our political and governmental processes to appear in a generation." --Nicholas Von Hoffman, The Washington Post
"Caro's achievement is staggering. The most unlikely subjects--banking, ward politics, construction, traffic management, state financing, insurance companies, labor unions, bridge building--become alive and contemporary. It is cheap at the price and too short by half. A milestone in literary and publishing history." --Donald R. Morris, Houston Post

"The most absorbing, detailed, instructive, provocative book ever published about the making and raping of modern New York City and environs and the man who did it, about the hidden plumbing of New York City and State politics over the last half-century, ... A monumental work, a political biography and political history of the first magnitude." --Eliot Fremont-Smith, New York
"One of the most exciting, un-put-downable books I have ever read. This is definitive biography, urban history, and investigative journalism. This is a study of the corruption which power exerts on those who wield it ..." --Daniel Berger, Baltimore Evening Sun
"In the future, the scholar who writes the history of American cities in the twentieth century will doubtless begin with this extraordinary effort." --Richard C. Wade, The New York Times Book Review
One of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes.
Where exactly does the money go?
Anyone with a short and casual answer is deeply deeply deluded.
What is the MTA?

First and foremost, 48 Laws of Power. It will show you 100+ ways other people have tried and where they failed and succeeded. It's a great introduction. Get this first.

A lot for these are free on gutenberg.org

Meditations - On being ethical and virtuous in a position of power.


33 strategies of war - A great companion to the 48 laws.

Art of war - Ancient Chinese text on war and power. All but covered in 48 laws.

Hagakure - Japanese text on war and power. All but covered in 48 laws.

On war - Military strategy from Napoleonic era. All but covered in 48 laws.

Rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Amazing book.

Seeking Wisdom from Darwin to Munger - Abstract thought models and logic patterns of highly successful people.

The Obstacle is the Way - Not labeled a book on power, more like thriving during struggle, which is important to a leader.

Machiavelli: The Prince - Pretty much the opposite of meditations. All but covered in 48 laws.


Also, here's a good TED talk on why power/civics is important to study: http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_liu_why_ordinary_people_need_to_understand_power?language=en


If you've gone over these and want something more specialized, I can probably help.

Are you planning on taking us over with force or charm?

First is Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. It's a big book, but the way he frames the historical setting and the motives and characterization of Hamilton and those around him make the book hard to put down. He shows Hamilton to be both brilliant and overly passionate, capable of love of country and family political ruthless and egoist that led to his downfall. Though I had a leaning before towards Hamilton from his position as the US' first Sect. of the Treasury, Chernow's book solidified him as my favorite Founding Father/Constitutional Framer (before it was cool).

Second is The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. Morris' writing is good, but what really makes the book awesome is Roosevelt himself as he overcomes his early childhood weakness to make himself a physical and political force of nature as a young man. Whether it's his two week adventure to capture boat thieves through icy rivers and snow storms, his incredible knowledge that crafted a Navy guide that would be used by the US Navy for decades, to his philosophy on masculinity, Morris' book on Roosevelt's life is a manifesto of not accepting what life gives you, but getting what you want out of it.

TR was an amazing man. Other factoids:

• A true polymath, he was a solider, author, historian, hunter and naturalist. Even during his presidency, the Smithonian would sent samples of flora to him for identification.
  
• Believed to have a photographic memory.
  
• Runner-up Harvard boxing champion
  
• Could read a book & dictate two letters (using two secretaries) at the same time.
  
• Skinny-dipped in the Potomac... in winter.
  
• In real life, Nelson Mandel didn't give Pienaar Invictus for inspiration. Rather he gave him TR's "The Man in the Arena." (A truly great speech, IMHO.)
  
• First American to win a Nobel.
  
• Saw to the competition of the Panama Canal.
  
  In other words, he was a lot like Chuck Norris. Only for reals.
  
  If you can set yourself for long reads, the Edmund Morris TR trilogy is well worth it:
  
  
• The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
  
• Theodore Rex
  
• Colonel Roosevelt
  
  Here he is on The Daily Show (the author, not TR):
  
  http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-december-9-2010/edmund-morris
  

What is your particular interest? I can offer you some general suggestions, but if you are interested in a certain era or neighborhood or person I can point you in that direction too.

For a succinct history going up until the 2000s, look to The Restless City. If you are more interested in power politics of the 20th Century, The Power Broker is the definitive source (boo Robert Moses). Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning is a great look at the city in 1977, a tumultuous time both politically and socially.

Much of the history of the city after the mid-19th Century centers around the development of railroads, elevated trains and the subway system. 722 Miles and A Century of Subways are both excellent books about the growth and evolution of the transit network. I picked up Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America for the 100th Anniversary of the Terminal, and it was an informative and lively read.

The standard textbook history right now appears to be The Romans: From Village to Empire.

Klaus Bringmann's A History of the Roman Republic also still seems to be the standard introduction to that period (i.e. the time period of Imperator).

If you want to read about the end of the Roman Republic and Caesar/Augustus, it's hard to turn down Caesar: Life of a Colossus which is great for the general reader, alongside his Augustus: First Emperor of Rome.

He also writes pretty solid books on other major Roman figures, such as In the Name of Rome: The Men who won the Roman Empire.

If you want to get a pretty good introduction to Roman History, but more of what life was like for the average citizen, SPQR by Mary Beard is actually a good choice.

Older, but still solid, is Peter Garnsey's The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture which covers a lot of things Beard doesn't.

For the Roman army, Adrian Goldsworthy's The Complete Roman Army is a solid introduction.

However you'll want to break that down into several books if you want to go deeper:

Roman Military Equipment by MC Bishop and JCN Coulston

The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second Centuries AD by Graham Webster

A Companion to the Roman Army by Paul Erdkamp

For the collapse of the Western Roman Empire I'd recommend both Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians combined with the more scholarly Guy Halsall's Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West.

For the forgotten half of Roman History, often mistakenly called the "Byzantine Empire," it's hard to cover with just one book, but Warren Treadgold's A History of the Byzantine State and Society has become the standard reading. John Haldon's The Empire that would not Die covers the critical transition during the Islamic conquests thoroughly.

Of course I have to include books on the two IMO most overrated battles in Roman history on this list since that's what people love:

The Battle of the Teutoberg Wald: Rome's Greatest Defeat by Adrian Murdoch

The Battle of Cannae: Cannae: Hannibal's Greatest Victory is sort of the single book to read if you can only pick one. However, The Ghosts of Cannae is also good. But if you actually want to go really in depth, you need Gregory Daly's dry-as-the-Atacama book Cannae: The Experience of Battle in the Second Punic War. When I say dry as the Atacama, I mean it, but it's also extraordinarily detailed.

I'd complement this with Goldsworthy's The Punic Wars.

For other interesting topics:

The Emergence of the Bubonic Plague: Justinian's Flea and Plague and the End of Antiquity.

Hadrian's Wall: Hadrian's Wall by Adrian Goldsworthy

Roman Architecture: Roman Architecture by Frank Sear (definitely a bit more scholarly but you can probably handle it)

I may post more in addendum to this list with further comments but I think I'm reaching the character count.

I'm reading Elon Musk's biography right now and think it might be helpful if you're talking about career success. The dude seems like a jerk but has an incredible work ethic and drive to succeed.

You can say pretty much the same exact thing about Augustus' biography.

Outliers really helped me a lot, because it made me realize talent wasn't nearly important as skill/effort. You put in the time and effort and you will develop your skills.

If you're an introvert like me these books helped me "fake it till I make it" or just want to be more socially capable: Charisma Myth, anything by Leil Lowndes, Make People Like You in 90 Seconds. Not a book but the Ted Talk about body language by Amy Cuddy

A book on leadership I always hear good things about but haven't read yet is Start With Why.

Sup homie,

Now firstly before I get into the actual books I am going to recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast - He's effectively doing audiobooks via podcast these days (I'm actually re-listening to "Prophets of Doom" at the moment, it's about 4 hours 30 minutes of excellent storytelling of historical events) - Really, really recommend that. (you can also buy all the old episodes).


Now onto the History Nonfiction books themselves:



Michael Pollan - The Botany of Desire - While somewhat more of an analysis of how plants have become and evolved according to human cultivation the book does an excellent job of historically breaking down each major event and process involved.



John H. Mayer - Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign - Title says it all. Pirates. Open seas. History. Strong recommend.



Alfred Lansing - Endurance - Shackleton's Incredible Voyage - If you love an amazing story of stoicism, heroism, and amazing leadership then anything about Shackleton should be on your list. This epic tale follows Sir Ernest Shackleton's voyage on the Endurance with the aim to cross the Antarctic - which failed. What happened next throughout the following months is an monument to the incredible spirit of a man, his crew, and the desire to get everyone home.

If you need more try looking into the below:

Niall Ferguson - The War of the World

William L. Shirer The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich A History of Nazi Germany

Andrew Roberts - The Storm of War

Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, and Steel

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

This is my favorite:

https://www.amazon.com/Founding-Brothers-Revolutionary-Joseph-Ellis/dp/0375705244

Another, very predictable one!

https://www.amazon.com/1776-David-McCullough/dp/0743226712/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=Z1QBK7D5EDQXNGWDEABX

This one was surprisingly good, but I read it a long time ago:

https://www.amazon.com/Redcoats-Rebels-American-Revolution-Through/dp/0393322939/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524103441&sr=1-1&keywords=redcoats+%26+rebels+the+american+revolution+through+british+eyes

Basically a kids book but I LOVED it!

https://www.amazon.com/Ordinary-Courage-Revolutionary-Adventures-Joseph/dp/1444351354/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524103555&sr=1-3&keywords=plumb+martin

This too! (Actually embarrassing, but again, a GREAT read! Probably totally supports your point as this list grows!)

https://www.amazon.com/Yankee-Doodle-Boy-Adventures-Revolution/dp/082341180X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524103555&sr=1-4&keywords=plumb+martin

https://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Revolutionary-Began-Landmark-Books/dp/0375822003/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524103676&sr=1-3&keywords=liberty%21

Here's one I started and never finished but was looking very interesting:

https://www.amazon.com/Radicalism-American-Revolution-Gordon-Wood/dp/0679736883/ref=sr_1_17?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1524103778&sr=1-17&keywords=history+of+the+american+revolution

Depends on what you're asking about specifically.

The comic book series? Movie?

• Before Watchmen: A lot of people shit on it just because it's not the original 12-issue series. I see a lot of complaining to the extent that it's just 'not as good' but no solid reasoning as to why. I have every issue. I haven't read any of them yet (except about 4-5 pages of the first Moloch, and I liked it). I should get to them at some point so I can offer a solid opinion on them, but as of right now I'd say 'well, it's more of those characters doing things before the events outlined in the main series.'
  
  
• V For Vendetta: Another Alan Moore project, so the writing is similar/familiar. Also became a film, as you may know.
  
  
• From Hell: Another Alan Moore project. Featuring an investigator hunting down Jack The Ripper. Was also a decent film.
  
  
• Sleeper: It's a grown-up approach to superheroes, much like Watchmen.
  
  
• The Dark Knight Returns: Agreed to be a lot like Watchmen in a lot of respects.
  
  Most of this is also included in this article on io9.
  
  Looking at the comments, someone suggests Maus, and, really, that's not a good suggestion in relation to Watchmen. I'd highly recommend reading Maus but not because it has anything to do with Watchmen. It's an illustrated retelling of Art Spiegelman's father's memories of surviving the Holocaust, peppered with Art's problems in dealing with his father. It's a very good series. I even recommended it to my mother. She loved it. You can get both volumes in one book.
  
  EDIT: Here's another article suggesting similar comics.

• "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" (Jack Weatherford) is my all-time and all-categories favourite. Temudjin is a turbo ENTJ, the books reads like a thrilling novel and provide great insights at every page, and there is wisdom in every episode of the Khan's life and even after his life (the chapters of how and why the Mongol empires collapses are a serious lesson to be considered at all times). This book just has everything in it: a catching history, a great writing, emotions, lessons for life, insights of a great man who happens to have been "like us" and even if it's quite long, you dread for the end to happen every page you turn, and that is a feeling I rarely had.

• "How to Make Millions Without a Degree" (Simon Dolan) is the best fuel for my confirmation biases. Basically an anthem to self-made people and believing in yourself. Dolan is a funny guy and his motorsport career is more than acknowledgeable. Another proof that when there is a will, there is a way, inspiring guy and inspiring book. Only book so far I bought twice (physically and on Kindle).

• "To Hell and Back" (Niki Lauda) is my model for being bold and having balls, which I cruelly lack work toward developping. Lauda is the definition of boldness. The guy is crazy and the book relates a very unique story of a career. If you enjoy everything with an engine, it's a must-read. For all others, it's a lesson on boldness.

• "The Power of Habits" (Charles Duhigg) made a lasting impact on my life. I believe it's the best "neurosciences for everybody" book ever. It crunches a ton of important concepts and informations about our brains into the "simple" idea of habits.

• "Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think" (Brian Wansink) is actually a scam. Wansink was dismissed from his university for falsifying researchs and his "food psychology" thing was recently debunked for having little or no academic basis. This book is full of these made up stuff, most information it contains are probably wrong or manipulated. But... it works. It worked for me. It triggered little changes in my relationship to food (mostly about quantity and not tricking myself into eating stuff I'll regret later) and I can see my fat diminishing from these newly formed habits. So I don't know, this scam book was the one that made me end up bad habits with food when some more academic works didn't help a lot. I'll let that to your own judgement.

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

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

Dune by Frank Herbert.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. You have probably read it, but if you haven't, it's superbly funny sci-fi comedy.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. A book that I re-read once every few years, and every time I find something new in it.

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. A gripping, heartbreaking non-fiction book about police detectives. It inspired the acclaimed TV series "Homicide: Life on the Street." Simon would go on to create "The Wire."

The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy. Noir-ish procedural crime fiction. If you enjoy "Homicide," you may well like this.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, "a philosophical novel about two men, two women, a dog and their lives in the Prague Spring of the Czechoslovak Communist period in 1968," according to Wikipedia. One of my favorite books.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. Detective novel meets sci-fi in one mind-bending existential work. If you watch "Fringe," well, this book is Fringe-y... and more.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. Time travel. Victorian England. A tea cozy mystery of sorts.

Graphic novels! Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman. Love And Rockets by The Hernandez brothers. The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki. Elektra: Assassin by Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz. And of course, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. To discover yet more great comic books, check out the Comics College series.

Slightly outside your request but Titan, the Life of John D. Rockefeller is excellent. It's a fascinating rags to riches epic that also tells the story of the industrial revolution and how it changed the US economy. Wonderful book.

> Tesla was not a poor overlooked genius in his life.

And yet for many people (myself included) it may literally be the band Tesla, or something like the Oatmeal comic that may introduce them to the topic.

And I had numerous classes in science and engineering that certainly should have touched on his work but didn't. In fact the other week I took a tour of a museum where I needed to fill in much needed information that was otherwise a one-sided Edison homage.

But I would encourage, like you, for other people to go out and read what they can on the topic. Books like:

• Man out of Time
  
• The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla
  
• Empires of Light
  
  And while you bring up Wozniak, you grossly exaggerate what The Oatmeal did to the point of being comical, but you know I'd almost like to read a treatment of him by The Oatmeal because Jobs will far outshadow him and I'm willing to bet he'll probably suffer the same fate in a few decades. Just the story of Breakout reminds me of a similar Edison/Tesla dichotomy
  
  And that perhaps is the reason people may tip the pendulum a little too far in the other direction. It just so happens that sometimes Cracked or The Oatmeal may actually introduce people to things that neither conventional media nor our "Texas approved" school books may cover adequately.
  
  Don't knock The Oatmeal for making a reasonable attempt to shed some light in a comical way on a topic that deserves attention. Unless you are willing to give it a rebuttal point for point and then have the author respond to it as he did Forbes as cited below.
  
  For those interested in a follow up by The Oatmeal, here it is:
  
  http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response
  
  I agree with you in spirit, but I think your line of thinking still helps perpetuate the original problem. We need to actually stop turning people like Edison, Jobs and Gates into deities in the first place and then perhaps the folklore about others who make substantial contributions that many people have little knowledge of wouldn't have to fight so hard to rise to the surface.

Sure! I'm really glad you asked, I don't get enough people asking :D

Much of what I wrote was from Adrian Goldsworthy's Caesar: Life of a Colossus, seeing as that's the only source I have on hand (and on my kindle, which is on my phone <.<) at the moment. However, I DO (obviously) have the Internet as well, which is WONDERFUL for grabbing stuff from Plutarch (Search for p481 for the quote I used from him!), and even the excerpt that I snagged from Caesar's Gallic Wars is there :D

Hope that helps!

Neat question. The two obvious big names from Urban Planning are Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. They epitomize Modernist planning and Post-Modern planning, respectively.

Robert Moses was one of the most important non-elected officials in the 20th Century, with the most popular account being Robert Caro's massive biography, The Power Broker. He was a fantastically smart legal wiz who came to power in the 1920s in New York and was the standard-bearer for sweeping top-down government approaches to development. He used his knowledge and authority to gain more and more power, creating some of the first modern highways in bridges all over New York City and state that helped influence the Interstate Highway Act and the urban car-centric model.

He can be viewed as quite a villain these days (think the unbridled power of Mr. Burns on the Simpsons), especially as academic planners now generally recognize the huge negative impacts that Modernist American planning had. There was massive economic and social displacement where things like the Cross Bronx Expressway ripped working-class immigrant neighborhoods in half, allowing commerce to escape urban centers and help create mid-century ghettoization. In short, the modernist approach can be seen as paternalistic at best and willfully concentrating power at the expense of the masses at worst. That said, depression-Era New York had huge problems (dilapidated housing and political corruption, to name two) that Moses' public works projects helped alleviate, and he was one of the country's most powerful advocates for public parks even in the face of massive growth and sprawl.

Moses sat on countless commissions and authorities for decades, his power only finally waning in the 1960s as the top-down modernist approach of (Post) World War II America faced its loudest criticisms with the related Civil Rights, Hippie, Environmentalist, Anti-Vietnam movements: Americans were finally scrutinizing the "Build Build Build Cars Cars Cars Roads Roads Roads" model that had driven cities for decades, which brings us to Jane Jacobs.

Jacobs (who got herself a Google Doodle last week for her 100th birthday), was a Greenwich Village liberal and fierce critic of the Moses-type technocratic planning. She was a community organizer who helped stop Moses as he tried to push through plans for highways in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. For those unfamiliar, these are two of the economic and social cores of New York City - she argued that roads are supposed to serve us, not destroy our important urban spaces.

If you ask a city planner what sole city planning book to read (myself included), the overwhelming favorite will be Jacobs' 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the most important critique of modernist planning to date. Instead of sprawling highways and engineering projects, Jacobs saw the healthiest urban spaces as walkable, intimate, friendly and inviting and on a human-scale. She advocated for small city blocks, much wider sidewalks and mixed-use spaces instead of the classic Sim City "Residential/Commercial/Industrial" segregated zoning.

While there has since been plenty of critique of Jacobs' post-modern model, today's planning leans much closer to Jacobs' vision (at least in academic settings): Planners are more focused than ever on the post-modern walkability, mixed-use, high-density, equal-access, participatory planning model. Although this seems like a healthier place for planning than the Moses model of old, the academic ideals clash with the huge legacy of the Modernist planning approach (We can't just up and rebuild cities every time a theory changes, after all), along with the neoliberal financialization and privatization of so many of our spaces over the last few decades, so it's still as muddy as ever.

Anyway, that's a slight oversimplification of some of the history, but Moses and Jacobs were certainly the biggest avatars of the Modernist and Post-Modernist planning movements and have been as influential in the field of planning as anybody.

I don't read a lot of action-y graphic novels, so I can't really help you with finding more stuff like Watchmen, Wanted, etc. (However, you have to promise me you'll read Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.)

But I can recommend more laid-back graphic novels if you're ever in the mood for something different! Give American Born Chinese, Anya's Ghost, or Daytripper a shot sometime.

Persepolis and Maus are also graphic novel must reads, no matter what genre you usually favor. And Scott Pilgrim was super popular recently, with great cause.

And, if you're willing to settle down for a long haul and read your comics backwards, I really can't recommend Fullmetal Alchemist enough. 27 volumes, but it's the best action series I've ever read and one of my all-time favorites of any sort of media. Check out a stack of it from the library and you'll fly right through it. That's what I did one afternoon, and my time has never been better spent.

Edit: More suggestions, typos.

> Russia won the Space Race.

Won the first round, until the mid-60s. Then Korolev died, Khrushchev was ousted, and their space program lost all its initial tremendous energy.

Meanwhile JFK was delivering the "by the end of this decade" speech, the American giant was waking from its slumber and starting to flex its muscles. And then Armstrong set foot on the Moon, and America won round 2.

I speak as a former Eastern Bloc kid.

> Change my mind

Eh, you're not entirely wrong, and not entirely right either. The whole affair is pretty complex. They definitely won the first 10 years.

I recommend these books:

https://www.amazon.com/Korolev-Masterminded-Soviet-Drive-America/dp/0471327212/

https://www.amazon.com/Von-Braun-Dreamer-Space-Engineer/dp/0307389375/

Well, regarding your question about why more men didn't die, Cavalry is the arm of the Army that would pursue and actually inflict the majority of casualties on a retreating Army. Caesar's Cavalry was totally blown out and tired, so they couldn't actually chase very far. When an Army is totally defeated, they tend to scatter. Especially in this case, because Pompeius literally left the battlefield when he saw his army start to falter, gathered some things up, and fled. Caesar ordered his men to continue to push until they seized the camp of the Pompeians by night, which meant that the retreating army had nowhere to hide and regroup. This wasn't always the case, and it all totally depends on circumstances. For instance, at Canae, the entire Roman forces save some people that were able to escape, were massacred in the Carthaginian double envelopment. It was the perfect battle, the one every commander dreams of, because trapping the entire enemy army on the inside of your own for a slaughter is incredibly difficult and rare. In the case of Pharsalus, the Pompeian Army had plenty of time to retreat before Caesar could cut them off, therefore they just ran and ran.


The only thing Caesar could do was to take the camp. You can't pursue thousands of stragglers or you will throw your own army into disarray when it comes to command and control. He didn't know Pompey had fled yet, and his troops needed to eat. Badly. Basically, once Caesar did that, Pompey's Army practically disintegrated or joined him. Politics plays a huge part in this, because Caesar wanted to shed as little Roman blood as possible, so he spared every last troop that he could, and spared every Roman senator he defeated the first time. So minimizing casualties was actually a political tool in that entire war, as well as in that battle. Even if the Cavalry could chase the retreating Pompeians down, I don't think Caesar would have let the dogs loose, unless it was for the purpose of capture. Propaganda was a tool that Caesar used daily, and what better way to sell yourself as the good guy in the conflict than to end it as bloodlessly as possible and spare everybody you defeated? He had to convince people that he was not going to be the next Sulla, or Marius.



As for reading, there are a ton of books. You can get some basic ones for general tactics, but if you want in-depth study, you basically need specialized books.



http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Medieval-Warfare-Military-History/dp/0895292629
This is one of the first that I bought. It goes over the basic timeline, and outlines the battles. It also has maps of the battles that will help piece it together with the text.


For Caesar, Goldsworthy's book is the best I've read. http://www.amazon.com/Caesar-Life-Colossus-Adrian-Goldsworthy/dp/0300126891/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427748435&sr=1-3&keywords=adrian+goldsworthy



I would honestly recommend just rolling over to Half Price Books and finding the Military History section. Or Ancient History. Look for books that are a bit more specialized, unless you just want a basic introduction to it all from a book that spans a long timeline. I would recommend more, but all my books are in storage at the moment because I'm in a bit of a weird living situation after moving states. If you find some good stuff, and burn through them, feel free to message me again a few months down the road and I should be able to access my books easily at that point and give you some recommendations.

• David Christian’s A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia is a good general overview
  
  
• René Grousset’s The Empire of the Steppes is a bit outdated, but perhaps more readable—more in the style of Gibbon
  
  
• John E. Hill’s Through the Jade Gate to Rome is a fantastic translation and analysis of late Han Dynasty reports on ancient Central Asia
  
  
• Jack Weatherford’s Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World is a great history of the early Mongol Empire
  
  
• Hans-Joachim Klimkeit’s Gnosis on the Silk Road is a fascinating collection of Persian, Sogdian, and Uighur Manichaean sources
  
  
• The Palgrave Concise Historical Atlas of Central Asia is disappointingly sparse, and a bit odd in its coverage and terminology, but it’s still the best I’ve been able to find in the style of Colin McEvedy’s Western Civ atlases

For American History I recommend The Oxford History of The United States, which includes Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause, Wood's Empire of Liberty and about ten others. I would also recommend select biographies of the founding fathers:

• The First American by H.W. Brands
  
• Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie
  
• John Adams by David McCullough
  
• 1776 by David McCullough
  
• His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis
  
• American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph J. Ellis
  
• Lafayette by Harlow G. Unger
  
• Lion of Liberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation by Harlow G. Unger
  
• Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis
  
  For Science History refer to my WIP History of Science Reading List

Thank you so much! I am pretty envious that you get to take an entire course on this period. I just get so excited learning about it.

There is the parish library right across the street from my house, but I never use it for some reason. I have three short books I want to read, and then I am going to read all of the books you listed. I can't wait to read about Theodore Roosevelt. Regardless of if you agree with his politics, he is just a fascinating guy.

I had never heard of settlement houses during the era, but I will definitely be researching that.

Here are the links to the Theodore Roosevelt biographical trilogy, just so everyone can find them easily:

Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3

This may be a little more specific of a book question, but are there any books that explain the Progressive Era's impact on the rest of the world? Can youalso give me the definitive beginning and end of the Progressive Era (according to your course)? I seem to get a lot of differing years. There may not be an exact beginning and end but I might as well ask; it is AskHistorians anyway. Does it include or exclude WWI?

If she likes politics, a good presidential biography, such as Truman by McCullough, Team of Rivals by Goodwin, The General by Fenby or Edmund Morris' the Rise of Theodore Roosevelt are classic choices. Biographies are good choices, as they're like novels and are easy to read, whilst being intellectually stimulating.

Probably the most influential urban planning book ever was written as a response to trends in 1960s development: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. Along the same lines, the Pulitizer Prize winning The Power Broker by Robert Caro is the definitive biography of Jacobs-nemesis Robert Moses who was super important in the planning decisions made in New York City in the 50s and 60s.

Witold Rybczynski's Makeshift Metropolis includes a pretty good summary of urban planning throughout the 20th century in America, which is helpful for putting trends from the 1960s into context.

I don't have a specific book to recommend here, but also look into the design of Brasilia, since it was by far the biggest and most complete project designed on the sort of modernist principles that dominated the 50s and 60s urban planning scene. It's obviously not an American city, but many of the planners and architects who worked on it worked on American projects as well, and the ideas that influenced it were very important in American thinking on urban design also.

These are all sort of general interest recommendations, though. Sorry if you were looking for something more technical.

Below are the novice books I usually recommend to people. Personally I haven't read through Rothbard's MES yet. I had wanted to read Mises Human Action first. The book is brilliant but too wordy. I downloaded all the audio files at mises.org so I just listen to the audiobook when I road trip long distances now. MES is also available for audiobook for free at mises.org so if it helps listen to the chapters as you're reading it.

_____

Please read these books in this order, each are available for free in pdf or eBook, just right click and save:

• Frederic Bastiat’s The Law
  
• Henry Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson
  
• Frederic Bastiat’s That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen
  
• Bob Murphy’s Lessons for the Young Economist
  
• Murray Rothbard’s For a New Liberty
  
• Murray Rothbard’s What Has Government Done to Our Money?
  
• Murray Rothabrd’s Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure
  
• Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Truth About Robber Barons- article
  
• Walter Block’s Defending The Undefendable
  
  Once you’re done with those, I’d suggest purchasing the following books:
  
  
• Tom Wood’s Meltdown
  
• Burt Folsom Jr.’s New Deal or Raw Deal
  
• Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln
  
  Afterwards, if you have any questions about monopolies, consider the resources in this thread. Enjoy! If you need further reading suggestions let me know.
  

Clearly we don’t see eye to eye.

Here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0743270754/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519088748&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=a+team+of+rivals+book&dpPl=1&dpID=51bpOR8qigL&ref=plSrch

One of my favorite books about him. It’s excellently sourced at the end of the book. It’s not whitewash, it’s factually accurate. He was an amazing guy. I’m pretty sure it will change your tune about his motivations and beliefs.

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

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

No Picnic on Mount Kenya

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Collapse

The Closing of the Western Mind

What is the What

A Long Way Gone

Alliance of Enemies

The Lucifer Effect

The World Without Us

What the Dog Saw

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

One Down, One Dead

Lust for Life

Lost in Shangri-La

Endurance

True Story

Havana Nocturne

If you're solely interested in the Presidential History, Theodore Rex is an excellent biography on Theodore Roosevelt's Presidential years. I would strongly encourage reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Colonel Roosevelt, his before and after years respectively, as they are equally excellent.

I see a lot of great books already listed. I'll offer a few lesser-known books that haven't been mentioned yet.

Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe series is brilliant for general readers of almost any age.

I see William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich has been mentioned, but I find his book on France - The Collapse of the Third Republic - equally compelling.

For those who love Barb Tuchmann's Guns of August,
Dreadnought by Robert Massie and The Lions of July by William Jannen are excellent additions in covering the lead up to WWI.

For Roman History, I'd recommend Adrian Goldsworthy's Caesar: Life of a Colossus and Anthony Everitt's Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

Correct. He also made it a point to donate at least 10% of every dollar he made from youth and made good on it. He is one of the fathers of modern philanthropy.

He was a ruthless businessman, BUT prior to taking out/absorbing a competitor he would meet with them, offer them fair value for their business or stock in Standard Oil, and would go as far as to simply open his company's book for them so they can see the futility of competition. Very interesting life. If anyone wants to learn more about him, they should really read Chernow's "Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller" Excellent book.

https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303

I like this biography of Genghis Khan. It's maybe not exactly what you were looking for, but I thought it was pretty cool to read about the truly breathtaking extent of he and his sons' conquests and the complete obscurity from which he and the Mongols emerged.

I'm tired of all the Tesla worship memes that are devoid of any critical thinking. Oooh, Edison stole everything Tesla ever did, blah blah blah. The full story is a bit more complex than that, as was his life. He was a complicated guy. He was brilliant, no doubt. But he was also a crackpot and made a lot of crackpot claims he couldn't back up. He was very generous when George Westinghouse had financial troubles. His OCD compelled him to calculate the volume of his soup before he could eat it. His best friend was a pigeon.

To appreciate the man fully in all his complexity, you have to accept all of those truths.

I highly recommend Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney. It's a good read.

It's this one. To be honest, it's not that great of a book. It's not very well-written, and its explanations of the actual space and engineering aspects go beyond ELI5 into like ELI3 territory. It's a great book for the jokes and anecdotes about the astronauts' lives, not so much for the actual history.

I'd instead recommend Failure is not an Option by flight director Gene Kranz. Amazing book, that.

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

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

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

I will always be an FDR fanatic but I agree that Teddy was a walking tall tale. If you like Teddy Roosevelt I strongly suggest that you read Theodore Rex. A great look into his presidential achievements. (https://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Rex-Edmund-Morris/dp/0812966007).

100% agree. Read https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303 and then tell me you wouldn't want that lifestyle...

The guy semi-retired in his early 50's to play golf and live a life of luxury in his various manor homes. He lived until 97, money seems to have done a great job of keeping him alive.


Medicine is bad? Chicago university wouldn't exist without him and his huge bankroll, His money was almost singlehandedly responsible for curing ringworm in destitute southerners (and curing other illnesses and maladies) too. A huuuuge amount of modern medicine is thanks to John D & his willingness to fund medical research.

I mean sure he couldn't play angry birds... But the guy was rich enough to have stables built in Manhattan so he could race the worlds finest horses with his brother through central park. Toward his later years he was able to afford the worlds best cars in the world and professional drivers to take him for drives. Sure, they weren't as quick as a modern sports car, but i doubt he really cared.. Reliability? He could buy 100 of them, no problem.

The impact John D and even his son, John D Jr had on areas such as medicine and the arts is mind boggling. The New York MoMA nor the Cloisters would exist without them. (Jr and his wife co-founded the MoMA, donated the land & an incredible amount of art work to it. HE DIDN'T EVEN LIKE MODERN ART, HE HATED IT.) John D Jr gave more money to medical research and charity than he gave to his own damn family.

The amount of charitable giving they did (most of it anonymous) is insane. They bought entire forests to save them, donated huge chunks of land to be national parks, etc.

The United Nations? The land the headquarters is built on in Manhattan - Jr donated that.

Versailles in France? Jr was posthumously awarded France's highest honor, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur for contributing huge sums of money (with no requirement for any recognition, public attention, etc.. If anything he worked incredibly hard to HIDE his involvement) to the repair efforts because he thought it was an important building for the French people.

These are people who on multiple occasions would pay double or triple the asking price of famous art works to the ire of their friends and colleagues who wanted to acquire them, because while others in their social circle wanted to horde them in their private collections, they wanted to buy them so they could be donated and on show for all of the public, not just the rich elite.

If I could have my life today, or be transferred to John D or John D Jr's era and have 1/10th the impact on humanity that they had, its a total no brainer. Yes, John D committed some unsavoury (monopolistic) business practices... So did everyone else in that era. He was a devout baptist who practiced philosophy and frugality (he was far, far less spendy than anyone remotely comparable) from his youth as a broke assistant bookkeeper to his dying days as a titan of industry.

• A Concise Guide to Macroeconomics - As concise as it promises & super accessible, I can't imagine a better primer to macro. this is required reading at HBS (where the author teaches)
  
  
• The Productivity Project - I'm working thru this now in audio book form. The guy took a year off after college to experiment w/ diff't productivity systems. it's a nice overview of lots of different productivity gurus/techniques
  
  
• Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller - the perfect read for the aspiring tycoon about the greatest CEO of them all, the man for whom anti-trust laws were first written.
  
  
• House of Morgan - or for the financially inclined, the original rainmaker, James Pierpont Morgan. My favorite part of this one is that it's actually a pretty thorough history of investment banking from 1900 - ~1990.
  
  But really, I think 'just relax' is best here, so:
  
  
• Diversify your interests
  
• Read some books you've always wanted to that have no obvious connections to self-improvement
  
• learn to code, build something dope, then start a company (okay, not 'relaxing,' but still great)
  
• whittle something (maybe also start a company with that, somehow)
  
• date someone out of your league
  
• volunteer somewhere unglamorous doing something hard & thankless
  
  etc etc etc
  

Some of the good Rome books I've read over the years:

In the Name of Rome by Adrian Goldsworthy

Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy

The Complete Roman Army by Adrian Goldsworthy

Rubicon: the Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland

A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome by Alberto Angela

Now, as someone lucky enough to have lived 6 weeks in Rome, the best prep is to somehow get yourself to La Città Eterna and visit where it all went down. The Palatine Hill and the Appian Way are places with less tourists and allow you to contemplate the power and splendor of Rome.

In any redditors want some fresh inspiration I definitely recommend reading "Failure Is Not an Option" by Gene Kranz to see probably the greatest engineering perspective of the start of the US space program.

> But the way he talks about how Monopolies come and go is sort of the proof that they aren't really problems.

From the video, Standard Oil, American Tobacco, and Microsoft are all examples of competition and innovation stifling companies that resulted in government anti-trust action. Since the 1980s, US anti-trust law has loosened to mean only companies that destroy consumer surplus via artificially high prices. One of the interesting debates of the past couple years has been whether zero-cost monopolies Facebook and Google are stifling innovation. The EU has produced court rulings within that past year that indicate they believe the answer is yes. See this most recent stratechery post for some analysis.

If you're interested in the formation of the modern corporation, and the evolution of the railroad/commodity collusion and legislative bribery that allowed oil and steel magnates to become the world's richest people, I'd recommend Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr..

hmmmm... well, not much that Ive read fall under that price range. Do you like in the USA, can you use Amazon?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0786884517/ref=mp_s_a_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1495585796&sr=8-6&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=pirate+biography&dpPl=1&dpID=51-foWCviEL&ref=plSrch

That one is 9-10 dollars, the story of Captain Kidd. If you dont mind used editions some of the stuff by Robert K Massie is under 5 dollars for print.

Dreadnought is about Britain and Germany gearing up do WW1

Peter the Great was one of the most famous Tsars of Russia

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/ol/0345298063/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=all

Ghenghis Khan and The Making of The Modern world was fascinating

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/ol/0609809644/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=all

The republic of Pirates was pretty interesting too

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/ol/015603462X/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=all

i linked to used books, so be aware of that - i buy almost all of my books used in "good" or "great" condition and have no complaints so far.

Genghis practiced a meritocracy form of government which means that Genghis chose those to be in positions of power based on merit not blood or obligation. The main body of this government was the Kurultai a council of Mongol chiefs headed by Genghis himself. All people within the Empire had to adhere the Yasa which were the laws of the Mongols that Genghis had modified and enforced in the Empire. The citizens of the Mongol Empire were free to practice any religion that they pleased, which helped people accept his rule more rapidly. The infrastructure of the Empire was amazing, it was an infrastructure that may have inadvertently triggered the Italian Renaissance because of the spread of knowledge and technology throughout Asia and Europe. Word traveled quickly thanks to the Yam, genghis' horse driven messenger. Traders of the Silk Road were protected and allowed to travel easily from country to country (though the golden age of the Silk Road would not come to pass until the rule of Kublai Khan). Genghis had an almost laissez faire approach to ruling he knew that if he tried to change too much in the lands that he conquered he would have constantly had to keep ruled lands in check. There's was no need for this of course, genghis launched many of his territories forward economically and even those whose economy was crippled because of them, i.e. Baghdad, were still pacified completely thanks to the military genius of Genghis Khan.

Edit for clarification: The Yasa was not created by Genghis only modified. I was referring to Genghis' war with the Caliph not Hulagu Khan's sacking of Baghdad, should have made that more clear. And I know it's only a theory but in my opinion the spread of technology because of the expansion of the Mongol Empire was one of the causes of the Italians Renaissance due to the combination of Asian and European influence that helped start the Renaissance.

For more information please refer to this book.

I don't really know what you mean by "jingoistic emancipation circlejerk" and I have to be honest that the particular phrasing you chose for that sort of sets me on edge (it's like asking for an FDR bio without the "jingoistic Pearl Harbor circlejerk", in that it was a crucial and formative moment of his presidency), but nonetheless, my two favorite Lincoln books are Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years and Team of Rivals. The former is much more of a straight up bio, but the latter provides a lot of fascinating context and also includes a good retelling of my favorite Lincoln story, about the barn fire and his son's horse.

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Goodwin.

Interpreting a part of Lincoln's greatness as being the ability to understand and mediate cooperation amongst different-minded people, the books is pretty relevant to today's partisan politics.

Plus, Doris Goodwin is the funny sweet lady Jon Stewart often has on his show for things related to American history. She's also a fantastic historian to boot.

http://www.amazon.com/Team-Rivals-Political-Abraham-Lincoln/dp/0743270754/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291129846&sr=8-1

I read two history books this year that were excellently written and very-well researched. One is "Augustus: The life of Rome's First Emperor" by Anthony Everitt and The First Crusade: A New History: The Roots of Conflict between Christianity and Islam. Both great books and they'll keep you engaged the whole time. I truly recommend them.

Uhm... Where have you read that? Strictly speaking, Caesar was a war criminal in more than one aspect, but I can't recall ever reading about him doing that. Crassus did, however.

Caesar is remembered today in large parts because of Shakespeare, who took a liking to him. But more to the point, because he was an outstanding general, a decent politician and a major figure in the turbulent years of 1st century BCE Rome. I wouldn't say that he's one of the only rulers who is remembered either, but he's without doubt one of the most well-known.

If you're interested in learning more about the man I'd suggest you pick up Adrian Goldsworthy's Caesar: Life of a Colossus, as well as a have a read through of Caesar's own De Bello Gallico, available online.

Biographies are super interesting in general. I've read Steve Jobs and Elon Musk's, currently in the process of reading Rockefeller.

Speaking of, that would be my recommendation : [Titan: The Life of John D. Rockfeller.](https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303/ref=sr_1_1? ie=UTF8&qid=1527576392&sr=8-1&keywords=titan&dpID=51puoryvTiL&preST=_SY344_BO1,204,203,200QL70&dpSrc=srch) What better way to learn about empires than to read about the richest man since the invention of capitalism that had a monopoly on the oil industry, which would put him at a 400 billion dollar USD net worth today.

Marine Sniper Charles Henderson (bio of Carlos Hathcock)- http://www.amazon.com/Marine-Sniper-93-Confirmed-Kills/dp/0425103552

Hathcock's story of his time as a sniper in Vietnam is legendary. Best part of the story is when the NVA send their best sniper to 1v1 Hathcock in the jungle, both snipers had awesome names (the Cobra v the white feather).

Seconding the Theodore Roosevelt Trilogy by Edmund Morris. I know they're long but I promise you if you pick it up you'll fly through them. He had a fascinating life and Morris is such a good writer it never really gets dull.

I have a couple of books about big game hunters on my list, but I have not read either of these yet:

• Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett, memoirs of a big game hunter in India in the early 20th century.
  
  
• The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant, about hunting a killer tiger in remote Russia.
  
  As for explorers, the best non-fiction I've read about explorers are The Lost City of Z by David Grann, about Percy Fawcett's attempts to find Eldorado in the jungles of South America, and Endurance by Alfred Lansing, about Shackleton's survival after his doomed polar expedition.
  
  It occurs to me that none of these are set in Africa. Hope that's not a deal-breaker.
  
  I'll also recommend my favorite memoir of all time, Papa Hemingway by A.E. Hotchner. It's about his time spent traveling with Ernest Hemingway, who was something of a hunter and adventurer, and recounts a lot of very exciting trips to exotic locales in which manly deeds were done.

I also think there's some kind of bond that the First Families share, despite political differences. They go through an experience that almost no one can possibly relate to, other than other First Families.

One of the more fascinating books I've read was called the President's Club and it's how past Presidents kind of serve as someone a current President can bounce ideas off of, even when they're the different party. This didn't always exist, I think around the Eisenhower/Truman era is when it started, but it was a really interesting read.

It makes sense how Bill Clinton and HW Bush have worked together so much on things like aid relief.

I did a search for the term books in this sub and compiled this list from the dozens of previous answers:

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


A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.


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


Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

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


Foundations of Astrophysics by Barbara Ryden and Bradley Peterson.


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


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


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


Space Shuttle: The History of Developing the Space Transportation System by Dennis Jenkins.


Wings in Orbit: Scientific and Engineering Legacies of the Space Shuttle, 1971-2010 by Chapline, Hale, Lane, and Lula.


No Downlink: A Dramatic Narrative About the Challenger Accident and Our Time by Claus Jensen.


Voices from the Moon: Apollo Astronauts Describe Their Lunar Experiences by Andrew Chaikin.


A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin.


Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA by Amy Teitel.


Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module by Thomas Kelly.


The Scientific Exploration of Venus by Fredric Taylor.


The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe.


Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her by Rowland White and Richard Truly.


An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Bradley Carroll and Dale Ostlie.


Rockets, Missiles, and Men in Space by Willy Ley.


Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Clark.


A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.


Russia in Space by Anatoly Zak.


Rain Of Iron And Ice: The Very Real Threat Of Comet And Asteroid Bombardment by John Lewis.


Mining the Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets by John Lewis.


Asteroid Mining: Wealth for the New Space Economy by John Lewis.


Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris.


The Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe Report by Timothy Ferris.


Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandries by Neil deGrasse Tyson.


Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson.


Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon by Craig Nelson.


The Martian by Andy Weir.


Packing for Mars:The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach.


The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution by Frank White.


Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler.


The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne.


Entering Space: An Astronaut’s Oddyssey by Joseph Allen.


International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems by Hopkins, Hopkins, and Isakowitz.


The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene.


How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space by Janna Levin.


This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age by William Burrows.


The Last Man on the Moon by Eugene Cernan.


Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond by Gene Kranz.


Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.

The end

Another source along the same lines:

"Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" by Jack Weatherford is a wonderful history book for light and fun reading. It has tons of great reviews and is available for audio book as well.

Amazon link

A potpourri of questions.

• What are your favorite books or reading material for getting your mind right? FWIW these are three of my favorites:
  
  • Man's Search for Meaning
    
  • Endurance
    
  • Unbroken
    
• What did you learn during the big events you wished you knew beforehand?
  
• What's your favorite little hack or trick?
  
• If selection is a 10. How would you rate HCL? Heavy?
  
• My favorite question: Why do you do it?
  
  

Hmmm... fiction? Non-fiction? First-person meaning told through a first-person narrative style, or just generally following a single person fighting for survival?

Fiction-wise, I'm a fan of To The White Sea by James Dickey. I've also always heard universally good things about the young adult novel Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, but have yet to read it myself.

In the realm of non-fiction, Touching The Void is a pretty incredible story, and was made into a stellar documentary film. Also, anything about the Shackleton expedition to Antarctica is worth checking out, so there you've got Endurance by Alfred Lansing, as well as Shackleton's own account, South: The Endurance Expedition.

It might not be so much a book on conspiracies but if you wanna know how true power functions behind the scenes I can think of no better book than

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

greatest biography ever written imo

Not OP but you should totally read Robert Caro's The Power Broker. It's a ~1,500 page tome but it's a fantastic breakdown of the history of Moses specifically, and Jacobs as well.

Then follow it up with Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities for the counter argument. After that you can decide if you want to get into City Planning as a career. Lots of politics unfortunately...

Clearly this right-wing libertarian dude doesn't have to commute through Penn Station.

He's just wrong. Honestly, if there was a reasonable argument against historical preservation, it is not present in this blog post. Does he really think that Grand Central would still be standing if it didn't have landmark status? GCT was bought for a measly $80 million in 2006 because it's worth nothing to real estate developers as a train station (contrast that with the tiny footprint of 432 Park Ave. which has >$1B in value), but it has an incalculable benefit to New Yorkers.
He doesn't even make the case that landmarks increase rent prices (which could be worth discussing). He just wants to build things faster and without obstruction. Which is EXACTLY how they built things between the 1920's and the 1960's.

Yep. Btw these are two great books that talk about how the physical structure of cities, a.k.a. urban planning, has brought about the changes that we see in OP's picture, and that we can pretty much blame one person for making cities super car-centric: Robert Moses.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York https://www.amazon.com/dp/0394720245/

The Death and Life of Great American Cities https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HWKSBDI/

Augustus by Anthony Everrit is a great place to start for the life of Augustus.

Tom Holland's Dynasty is amazing as well and covers all of the Julio Claudian dynasty.

For original source material, Plutarch's Lives and The Lives of the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius.

It's already been mentioned here, but I'll mention it again: The History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan is an easy way to digest this stuff. The production quality in the beginning is very poor, but that gets so much better as it goes on.

He published a book last year called The Storm Before The Storm, which is about how the Republic got to the point where men like Julius Caesar were able to come onto the stage and do what they did. There are some really disturbing parallels to our own times. While it's always a bit silly to compare America to Rome, the similarities are fairly stark. The paper back comes out later this month.

Duncan is also currently producing a podcast called Revolutions, in which he does narrative histories of the English, American, French, Haitian, South American, and Mexican revolutions, as well as the French Revolution of 1830, the pan-European revolutions of 1848, and the Paris Commune. I know this is off topic, but Duncan really is amazing and I never miss a chance to plug his work.

Edit: here are the two episodes of The History of Rome that deal with Augustus's style of rule. Caesar Augustus and Reigning Supreme.

Apology accepted and upvoted. I hope you can read the constitution next time and understand the compromises on which it was based and the legacy of compromises it spawned.

I recommend checking out Founding Brothers to learn more about our constitution: http://www.amazon.com/Founding-Brothers-Revolutionary-Joseph-Ellis/dp/0375705244/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311971544&sr=8-1 There's even a chapter about The Great Compromise!

I see your 100% factual comment is being down-voted by those fans of von Braun, who don't really know much about him.

​

For those who are at least somewhat interested in what really happened, I recommend the most detailed biography of von Braun, written by the professional historian and one time chairmen of the Space History Division at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Dr. Michael J. Neufeld:

[link] von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War

​

It is written with the help from von Braun family and German archives. There is no question that von Braun was complicit in war crimes, and that this part of his biography was intentionally white-washed later by the US military, to make him more palatable for the american public as a prominent figure in the US space program.

There is also an excellent Deutsche Welle documentary: "Wernher von Braun – Rocket Man for War and Peace"

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

​

von Braun has achieved much as a brilliant manager of German and then US space programs. But in the process he unscrupulously used Nazis and then Americans as vehicles for furthering his personal interests.

​

V-2 has only become possible, because von Braun personally lobbied Hitler to give the program the highest military priority. In America, von Braun equally eagerly presented to the military brass plans to create massive orbital stations armed with nuclear weapons, in the hope that he will be put in charge of another massive project. Killing a lot of people was never a problem for von Braun.

Or you could understand the deeper context. But yea, Vietnam was a stellar moment in hour history and we handled it perfectly.

Read a book called "The Presidents Club" it is only about interpersonal relationships between current and or former presidents, and it is an amazing book.

But in that book, you basically read in LBJ and HK words that this deal was proposed by LBJ in the summer and fall prior to the election and Nixon basically worked with Kissinger to "get a better deal', which never really materialized, even after LBII.

TL:DR
This deal was on the table prior to LBII. But you are right, America was 'awesome' in Vietnam.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro

A bit more recent than the other suggestions already posted, but a riveting read (especially if you're a New Yorker).


One of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes, The Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York (city and state) and makes public what few have known: that Robert Moses was, for almost half a century, the single most powerful man of our time in New York, the shaper not only of the city's politics but of its physical structure and the problems of urban decline that plague us today.

Yeah, I was just making a stupid joke.

As for the Islamic view of Genghis Khan, it depends on perspective. Genghis Khan was tolerant of Muslims and even sought after their intellectuals. But he also destroyed their populations. A lot of the estimates of the deaths caused by Genghis Khan's conquest are exaggerated, but that doesn't really affect the perception in much of the Muslim world. There are also a lot of dubious claims as to Genghis Khan's brutality.

It's true, from any perspective, that the Mongol conquest put an end to a long period of Muslim prosperity. Since the days of Mohammed, they had seen very few serious military losses. The common belief among Muslims prior to Genghis Khan was that their prosperity and military success was undeniable proof of the validity of their beliefs. They felt that Allah had blessed them with the ability to win battles and spread their religion. So Genghis Khan turned their world upside down.

All of my understanding of Genghis Khan and Muslim history come from Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World and Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, both of which I highly recommend.

I am really enjoying the trilogy by Edmund Morris. The first one is The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. The author has a wonderful voice and really strong use of primary sources.

First I gotta say John McCain, he was actually the first political rally I ever attended in 2000 (during his early Republican Primary bid). However there was a few items that sorta pushed me to Barack Obama in the 2008 election, such as his vote against elevating MLK Day to a state holiday in Arizona (https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/apr/08/moveon/mccain-changed-position-on-mlk-day/) and the appointment of Sarah Palin as his running mate in that election cycle.

​

Additionally, I've always been a big fan of Ike Eisenhower; I think he really pushed America to continue investing in its infrastructure, and not rest on the successes America achieved in WWII.

​

And of course Lincoln is an interesting figure, sometime (sooner rather than later) I want to read the Doris Kearns Goodwin book, Team of Rivals, which was about Lincoln's cabinet. (https://www.amazon.com/Team-Rivals-Political-Abraham-Lincoln/dp/0743270754)

Thank you!

My favorite book is probably the most boring book to alot of people: The Power Broker by Robert Caro. It's all about how one man basically created the New York that we know today, and was the most powerful man in the State even though he was never elected to any position.

My favorite movie is probably Caddyshack. Because... it's Caddyshack!

Phillip P Pan's Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China

A very interesting book that helps to contextualise a lot of what is going on in China, all made accessible by Pan's excellent writing style.

Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy

A fascinating book, not just because it is written by someone as outspoken and controversial as Kissinger. The book is an eye-opening exploration into international relations processes and also shines a new light on many of the diplomatic issues that linger today.

Genghis Khan. He came from nothing, was kidnapped multiple times as a kid and promoted free religion and science. This is an EXCELLENT book.
http://www.amazon.com/Genghis-Khan-Making-Modern-World/dp/0609809644/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292968337&sr=8-1


He's often demonized because he's really the only person to push into the west from the unknown East

>What does this have to do with their content? Nothing.

On the contrary, I established that your primary source is a blog post which holds as much stature as the cartoon it and you criticize.

>There are mountains of material about this topic?

Yes there are several notable biographies on Tesla, and literally hundreds of books written about Edison, GE, the electrification war.


>Forbes dismisses 15% of the Oatmeal's piece? Really? Did you measure that number? Are you sure it wasn't 17%? Maybe 80%?

Yes, I did estimate that number. I wrote 14+15 (character/invention) claims on a discarded bank envelope that I use as a coaster. I felt the Forbes article focused on 3 invention claims, 2 character claims about Edison and 1 character claim about Tesla. I discounted the Edison claims because I'm well-read and I disagree, yielding 13.7% or if you would like to quibble 20.6%. In either case the magnitude is unimportant, because the Forbes piece does not address 17 out of 29 claims. It accepted 6 claims, the same contested. I'd love to see your estimates.

Nevertheless, I was being fairly generous in assuming the Forbes piece was correct in the statements it contested. I strongly disagree, specifically relating to the attempt to diminish Telsa's role in the development of AC.

>Don't insult me personally and pretend you're making an argument.

Given the beginnings of this thread, I'm amused by your posturing.

EDIT: I found this http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response after revisiting your article.

As for legitimate reading, start here:

http://www.amazon.com/Edison-A-Biography-Matthew-Josephson/dp/0471548065


and I very much like this one, http://www.amazon.com/Tesla-Man-Time-Margaret-Cheney/dp/0743215362

I suspect this to be true, but I want to ask anyway... did you learn the history of snipers/marksmen, etc. during your sniper training and have you heard of Carlos Hathcock - White Feather and have you read any of the books about him, such as Marine Sniper: 93 Confirmed Kills I found his story to be truly fascinating.

According to Stephen E Ambrose in Undaunted Courage, the trading of metal knives and other objects were an important way for his party to ease relations with potentially hostile natives. So attributes like speechcraft and persuasion and the merchant character class common to D&D are definitely in play here.

Edit: *grammar

Marine Sniper. This is a classic book about Carlos Hathcock, a Marine who served in Vietnam and for many years (1967 to 2002) held the world record longest confirmed sniper kill. There are several famous encounters, including a multi-day stalk through exposed terrain to kill a Vietnamese general, the time he and his spotter pinned down an entire NVA battalion, the time he was being hunted by a counter-sniper and shot the guy through his scope (probably inspiring the similar scene in Saving Private Ryan), and the record-breaking long range shot itself with a .50 cal M2 machine gun modified for single shot and using a scope mounting system of his own design.

For a more modern take, I recently read Sniper One and thought it was pretty good. It's by British Army Sgt Dan Mills, about his tour in Iraq in 2004. I thought it was interesting to see the perspective of a modern sniper in a completely different environment.

And for what I think is the best fictional book I've read about sniping, check out Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter. Don't confuse it with the movie "Shooter" staring Marky Mark; the book is actually quite good. The descriptions of long range shooting are excellent, and have matched up well to my own (admittedly limited, strictly at the shooting range) experiences.

If you're interested in Genghis Khan, you should read Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. It paints him in a different light than we are used to seeing him in. When I read this book for a college course, it was the first time I realized how amazing learning about history can be. The author even came to give a talk at my school.

Now to get my history fix, I listen to Dan Carlin - he has a Hardcore History podcast on Genghis Khan that gets mentioned on reddit when he is brought up.

And if you still can't get enough on Genghis Khan, there's a good movie available on youtube worth watching

I recommend this book, read it earlier this year and gives some really interesting insight into the relationships between presidents. A great read!
http://www.amazon.com/The-Presidents-Club-Exclusive-Fraternity/dp/1439127727

I encourage everyone to read Endurance, about his amazing trip to the Antarctic. The man was a badass like no other.

Read Diplomacy by Doctor Henry Kissinger.

Doctor Kissinger, born in a jewish family, former Secretary of State, Entrepreneur, Advisor to the current administration, Harvard Graduate, Nobel Peace Prize. He is a brilliant man.

He have blood on his hands. A lot of bloods. Rivers of blood. But he is one brillant mind. He explains the modern history of Diplomacy from the 17th century to the Fall of the USSR and how good diplomacy is purely based on power, it's psychopathic.

Read his book

• Everything you are told about Democracy is bullshit. The West is not in Ukraine to help the Ukrainians or in Afghanistan to fight terror.
  
  It will help you understand how the US elite thinks and how the world really works.

Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West

Extreme Classics: The 100 Greatest Adventure Books of All Time

The Rise of Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

Great biography that follows the life of Theodore Roosevelt from birth to becoming president. It's an incredible testimony of what will and determination can accomplish.

Easily one of our most bad-ass presidents. For those interested in learning more this is a great read

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage

>The astonishing [true] saga of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton's survival for over a year on the ice-bound Antarctic seas, as Time magazine put it, "defined heroism."

>Shackleton's mission failed, but the resulting adventure became one of the most celebrated accounts of man's survival against unbelievable odds.

There's a lot of great books on the subject. One in particular I would recommend is Gene Kranz's book "Failure is Not an Option." It's from the perspective of his seat in Mission Control, and touches on almost every aspect of early spaceflight. If you're not familiar with him, he's the white-vested Flight Control Director in the Tom Hanks Apollo 13 movie, and the inspiration for KSP's Gene Kerman in the Mission Contol building.

If you're looking for something to watch, I can't more highly recommend anything than the HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon."

2 books I've enjoyed that together give a pretty thorough view of things:

A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts - All the Apollo missions, and a source for the HBO series "From the Earth to the Moon"

Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond - A memoir that's a look at the technical stories and folks supporting the astronauts, starting at our space program's early days.

Both these books are in-depth and not over-dramatized.

If you are interested in the political views of the founders, founding brothers does a really excellent job of summing them up. Interesting to see what almost did and did not get into the constitution.

Long overdue recognition for a true genius. If you have an interest in the man who invented the AC motor and generator, radio (you thought it was Marconi, right?), remote control and so much more, you might enjoy this - http://www.amazon.com/Wizard-Nikola-Biography-Genius-Citadel/dp/0806519606

International Relations and Foreign Policy are two different things.

For a background in the former, the geopolitics Wiki is top tier (avoid the sub).

For American FP, which is the FP that matters, The Grand Chessboard provides the foundation for American Grand Strategy.

Kissinger is worth reading too, especially Diplomacy.

Other users here have mentioned Robert Kagan. I love the man, but he's more American cheerleader than FP analyst.

Good list and some new reading material for me!


Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyag covers Shackleton's 1914 Journey. I don't have anything to compare it to, nor am I a Historian expert, but I found it enjoyable and engaging.

There's a pretty good Batman trilogy: Haunted Knight, The Long Halloween, and Dark Victory. It has more of the Gotham crime families in two of them, which is interesting. Also, I liked Frank Miller's Batman: Year One a lot.

If you also like graphic novels that aren't really "comics", I recommend Asterios Polyp (a man examines his life and a failing relationship through architecture and design), Maus I and II (a story about a Jewish family in the holocaust depicted as mice) and Persepolis (a memoir of a woman who grew up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution).

And by all means, for sure, read the Sandman books.

According to several scholars, Lincoln was not the romanticized, liberty loving hero that history has tried to paint him... He sounded like trash, really.

http://www.amazon.com/Real-Lincoln-Abraham-Agenda-Unnecessary/dp/0761526463/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b

i like Ron Chernow's historical biographies.

I've read his books on John D. Rockefeller, JP Morgan, and am currently reading Hamilton.

They are well researched, and he tells a good story.

In fact, iirc, you are local-ish to me so you can borrow one of them from me if you'd like. If I can find them (having moved recently).

Gene Kranz is the quintessential Steely-eyed Missile Man and a complete bad ass. If you get a chance, read his book "Failure is not an Option". He provides a lot of insight and back story that is rarely discussed anywhere.


Edit: If you want great info specifically about the Apollo 13 Mission, "Lost Moon" by Jim Lovell is a fantastic book.

Currently reading, and would like to finish:

1. Interaction Ritual Chains by Randal Collins
   
   Started in 2014, put down, would like to finish in 2015:
   
   
2. Aztecs by Inga Clendinnen
   
   
3. The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger
   
   Would like to re-read in 2015:
   
   
4. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
   
   
5. White Noise by Don DeLillo
   
   
6. Anathem by Neal Stephenson
   
   Would like to read in 2015:
   
   
7. The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro
   
   
8. A couple of books for /r/SF_Book_Club
   
   
9. Blindsight and Echopraxia by Peter Watts, back-to-back
   
   
10. At least one or two books on Buddhist philosophy / practice
    
    
11. At least one or two books on philosophy, either philo of mind or more cultural studies / anthro / sociology type stuff.

If you are interested in Tesla, I highly recommend reading this book. He was a fascinating character.

Okay, for sci-fi, you have to get The Culture series in. Put Player of Games face out.

I don't read a lot of space books, but Asteroid Hunter by Carrie Nugent is awesome. I mostly have recommendations for spaceflight and spaceflight history, and a lot of these come from listeners to my podcast, so all credit to them.

• Corona, America's first Satellite Program Amazon
  
• Digital Apollo MIT Books
  
• An Astronaut's Guide to Earth by Chris Hadfield (Amazon)
  
• Capture Dynamics and Chaotic Motions in Celestial Mechanics: With Applications to the Construction of Low Energy Transfers by Edward Belbruno (Amazon)
  
• Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration by Buzz Aldrin (Amazon)
  
• Red Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (Part 1 on Amazon)
  
• Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War by Michael Neufeld (Amazon)
  
• Space Shuttle by Dennis R Jenkins (Amazon)
  
• The History Of Manned Space Flight by David Baker (Amazon)
  
• Saturn by Lawrie and Godwin (Amazon)
  
• Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by Lovell (Amazon)
  
• Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control From Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond by Gene Kranz (Amazon)
  
• Space by James A Michener (Amazon)
  
• Encounter With Tiber by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes (Amazon)
  
• Ascent to Orbit: A Scientific Autobiography by Arthur C Clark (Amazon)
  
• Fundamentals of Astrodynamics by Bate and White (Amazon)
  
• Space Cadet by Robert Heinlein (Amazon)

Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Goldsworthy is the best one I've come across. Any of Goldsworthy's books on Roman history (Antony & Cleopatra, Fall of the Roman Empire, Punic Wars) are excellent.

I'm sure you've been taught a lot about them in your education, but I very much recommend Undaunted Courage by Stephen E. Ambrose to anyone interested in the whole story, including the political background of the expedition and the relationship between Jefferson and Lewis.

Half way through Undaunted Courage which is great so far. I actually bought it a couple months ago at the Fort Clatsop gift shop. It discusses alot of the leadup to the expedition and how it came about. The local history teachers that volunteered there as re-enactors recommended it

Team of Rivals is the story of Abraham Lincoln's political career, with great emphasis on the men in his cabinet and their influence on both his views and actions.
Its one of the best books I've ever read. I really cannot recommend it enough.

Please please please please read a book before asking such questions. Here: https://www.amazon.com/Team-Rivals-Political-Abraham-Lincoln/dp/0743270754

That will start to answer your questions, and it will then start make sense.

You can follow that up with: https://www.amazon.com/Path-Power-Years-Lyndon-Johnson/dp/0679729453/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523289285&sr=1-1&keywords=path+to+power

That is the first of the LBJ series and describes in detail what changed and what Southern Democrats were.

There are other books in the LBJ series which will almost fully give you understanding.

You also read this one: https://www.amazon.com/Unfinished-Life-John-Kennedy-1917-ebook/dp/B000Q67H36/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1523289385&sr=8-6&keywords=john+f+kennedy

After that you will know:

> How does this make any sense?

> We could easily solve everything with diplomacy

No, this is as far from reality as possible. Diplomacy and negotiating can only exist if there is a stick to smack some one with if they step out of line. You don't get it. It is absolutely complex, you just don't want it to be. You like your neat little narratives.

https://www.amazon.com/Diplomacy-Touchstone-Book-Henry-Kissinger/dp/0671510991

I am sure you can find a pdf of it online.

Theodore Roosevelt is an immensely complicated and impressive man. His life and character can't be written into one book, much less quotes from an email.

In addition to his "manly" and "physical" exploits, he was a scientist, who enjoyed studying and cataloging songbirds as well as warships.

Suggested reading:
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Rex

Those are a good place to start.

> I on't know about him but I personally can't commit to longer storylines because I think life is too short to stick with a single story for weeks or months, when you can come up with something new every other day.

I appreciate your honest comment, but I can't help but think that some - of - the - best - stories simply need a longer effort to be narrated, or you're stuck in a much more shallow world of storytelling

There's a lot of weird stuff I would recommend avoiding not just because it's silly, but because it's generally so vague and uninformed that it's not even very interesting.

Here are a couple books I read too long ago to remember well, but I remember liking them:

• Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time http://www.amazon.com/Tesla-Man-Time-Margaret-Cheney/dp/0743215362
  
  
• John O'Neill, Prodigal Genius http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/809995.Prodigal_Genius
  
  After reading at least one of those biographies, check out some of his writings like especially "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy" (1900) and "Capacities" by his assistant Fritz Lowenstein. If your kid gets more interested in technical things, check out T. C. Martin's book.

They totally do! It's actually very interesting. If you want to learn more read this. It's awesome.

There is absolutely no questioning Wernher von Braun's total commitment to manned space flight and the exploration of the cosmos. He was the public face of American space advocacy in the late 1950s and early 1960s (see this for example). He was absolutely instrumental in orchestrating both the Mercury-Redstone and Saturn rocket projects (Mercury was mostly a failure, leading to the infamous description of the project in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff: "Our rockets always blow up and our boys always botch it." (source)). There is likely no Apollo program and no public enthusiasm for NASA without von Braun. Period.

Yes, von Braun's legacy is a tainted one. He almost certainly knew about what was going on in the work camps at Peenemünde and elsewhere, but he also felt powerless to stop it without compromising his own safety. Many argue that von Braun valued his rocket projects over the lives of those who helped build them and perhaps there's a small degree of truth to that. The experience, and his complicity in it, haunted von Braun for the rest of his life.

For more reading on von Braun, I'd strongly recommend Michael Neufeld's Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, which very carefully explains the Faustian bargain that von Braun had to make in order to pursue his dream of space travel.

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. Its part of a three part trilogy.

Its 741 pages long and doesn't even cover his presidency. Just the time of his life up-to that point. Which is insane.

What I love about this book though is that it paints a picture of what life was like during his time better than any other book I have read. Its a real window into the transition from the late 1800s into the early 1900s.

A million times over, purchase this book. Its 10 dollars on amazon and will blow you away.

http://www.amazon.com/Theodore-Roosevelt-Modern-Library-Paperbacks/dp/0375756787

Do you like history? I read the big Lincoln book, Team of Rivals. It took forever but man was it worth it. I learned so much and the book really humanized Lincoln for me. When I finished I decided to just read it again, I enjoyed it so much.

Have you ever read Titan? It actually goes into this a bit when Standard Oil had to incorporate separately in each state. Pretty interesting stuff and a great book. Also goes into the nature of regulation the oil industry.

I will agree with that. There is a lot of redundancy involved in making multiple companies that service the same thing in each state.

I think we have to either go full socialized single payer or deregulate entirely. This halfway bastardization that we have is pretty horrible.

> He’s right: altimeters measure height above sea level, but mountains and flatlands at high elevation can be hundreds or thousands of meters above that.

Gene Kranz addresses this in his truly awesome autobiography. He talks about how the parachutes on the capsule would open automatically at a certain altitude, but if your re-entry was off course and over a mountain, you could slam into the mountain before the parachutes had a chance to deploy.

Maus is probably one of the two most celebrated works in english comics

Fullmetal Alchemist is probably the most popular modern manga series

You should read The Presidents Club by Nancy Gibbs.

It's really an incredible book and I've learned a ton about the personalities of Presidents most don't know much about, like LBJ, Hoover, Truman, Nixon.

I know growing up all I ever knew of Nixon was "I am not a crook"...that book had tons of great insight all the way up to Obama.

Hahaha, well said! Around January I got into adventure non-fic. If you're interested you might enjoy:

We Die Alone about Norwegians commandos doing batshit crazy stuff during WWII,

Farthest North about Norwegians doing batshit crazy stuff for the sake of exploration, and

Endurance about British adventurers in the Antarctic.

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World is a fascinating and relatively quick read on his life and the history of the empire he created. I highly recommend it.

I’ve read a lot of the early moments of space flight, and how they wrote all the procedures. I’m pretty sure it’s been around for ever, together with a million other scenarios.

I can highly recommend “failure is not an option” by Gene Krantz

Regarding Sino-Russian relations: they tried that, and it didn't work out. Today is no different; they are allies of convenience and nothing more. And even if they weren't, the US would certainly not be fucked.

I think the relative peace we've seen since the Cold War is almost exclusively attributable to minipolarity. Regardless of what you think of Kissinger, the argument he lays out in this boo is pretty hard to refute: more zones of power equals more conflict.

Yes, China plays an important role, but like the original prompt said: "continued US present abroad is necessary to maintain stability." I agree that China is an important conduit to nations such as North Korea (and pretty much just N. Korea...), but for whom would they be a conduit if the US packed up and left. The defining IR logic of the region is a big "influencer state" (China), surrounded be smaller powers fearful of its influence (rightly or not; this list includes S. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, Mongolia, and on and on), who then look to a bigger foreign power to counter this influence. Without this counter-balance, these many powers would inevitably wreak chaos on one another.

It might not be exactly what you are looking for but reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt certainly makes me want to get out and accomplish things in my life.

I really enjoyed Founding Brothers, by Joseph Ellis.

It's great, and a bit depressing at the same time. I couldn't help but contrast the founding fathers with the current men and women running our country. Fun fact: they sometimes called J. Madison "The Knife" for his willingness to cut deals.

I'm not sure about everyone else, but I tend to gravitate more towards biographies of politicians and presidents. They don't weigh down every page with politics but give a grasp on historical politics as well as understanding the lives of these figures in history and why they did what they did.

1-The bully pulpit is an excellent read on Teddy
https://www.amazon.com/Bully-Pulpit-Theodore-Roosevelt-Journalism/dp/141654786X

2-Team of Rivals is one of the books that made Lincoln my favorite president of all time
https://www.amazon.com/Team-Rivals-Political-Abraham-Lincoln/dp/0743270754/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1497703799&sr=8-5&keywords=abraham+lincoln

I like biographies of famous people a lot.

Augustus, by Anthony Everitt: I find Augustus fascinating because his rise to power was one of the very very few examples in history where a Trio of teenagers defeated their enemies against overwhelming odds and succeeded creating an order lasting for more than two centuries. (The Principate stopped working after Septimius Severus took power in 193AD)

FDR, by Jean Edward Smith: FDR is simply my favorite US president.

Titan, The Life of John D. Rockefeller, by Ron Chernow: Rockefeller was born in a very poor family, never had an university education, and became a billionaire by the end of 19th century. Regardless how you view him today, his rise made an excellent story.

Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson: He was a jerk, but also a genius. His love/hate relationship with Bill Gates is story for the ages. This book also shines some good insight into the tech industry. I have to say this book helped me making lots of money in stocks.

Along these lines, Apollo by Charles Murray is a spectacular and compelling account of the Apollo space program. It's not about the astronauts, but rather the men who founded NASA and built the Saturn V rocket. Failure is Not an Option by Gene Kranz, is another great book on the subject, but I haven't read that one myself yet.

I recently finished reading Caesar: Life of a Colossus, by Adrian Goldsworthy. It's a very well-written biography of Caesar. The author, Goldsworthy, has a real talent for storytelling, and this biography was always exciting. Highly recommended.

You cannot judge history through the standards we hold today. If you are going to place Genghis Khan on the mass murderer list, I hope you're putting every other major ruler who participated in any major military operation prior to 1700. Alexander The Great, Julius Caesar, New World Explorers, any ancient Chinese emperor, etc.

For those interested in a good read.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0609809644/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1465043989&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=genghis+khan

throw that POS book in the bin right now and never recommend it to anyone.


the guy who wrote it was a serious hater.


Now, this one, on the other hand ( http://www.amazon.com/Tesla-Man-Time-Margaret-Cheney/dp/0743215362/ )


Mr. Seifer also had no business devoting a whole chapter to badmouthing John Keely.


And besides, John O'Neill's Prodigal Genius and Tesla's self-written My Inventions are still much more cohesive writings on the man.


http://www.amazon.com/Prodigal-Genius-Life-Nikola-Tesla/dp/0913022403


http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=patents+lectures+articles+tesla


Also, save yourself some time and just dig into
http://www.tesla.hu/tesla/tesla.htm#Articles

&

http://tfcbooks.com/tesla/contents.htm


enjoy.

I recommend this book for anyone that doesn't know much about Tesla (or has kids that don't) Tesla: Man out of Time. Great book!

Related to US History, Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose is a great read, I would highly recommend it.

For non-fiction, try Endurance, about Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition. Absolutely true, and an amazing story.

Fair enough. I'm going to have to find my copy of Von Braun to refresh some of my knowledge. The author of this particular biography made the funding situation very much more tenuous than people here seem to believe, and also made quite the point of JFK's legacy fueling the program, hence the dramatic cuts to the space program post-Apollo. Or at least that's the impression I got; as though if Kennedy had promised Mars we might have gotten a bit further toward that end before calling it quits.

Also, I didn't intend to disparage the GOP, only to imply that they have tended to lean toward (ostensibly) fiscally conservative policies and budgeting. I appreciate the correction.