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What'cha Reading?

Tellenbach

in dreamland
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The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and more Prosperous America. An instruction manual on selling commonsense ideas to the stupid people. Lots of interesting information nuggets.
 

Olm the Water King

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added to reading list:

Viewpoints Special Edition: The Islamization of Pakistan, 1979-2009 by the Middle East Instititue, Washington D.C.

The year 1979 was among the most tumultuous, and important, in the history of the modern Middle East. The Middle East Institute is marking the 30th anniversary of these events in 2009 by launching a year-long special series of our acclaimed publication, Viewpoints, which offers perspectives on these events and the influence that they continue to exert on the region today. Each special issue of Viewpoints will combine the diverse commentaries of policymakers and scholars from around the world with a robust complement of statistics, maps, and bibliographic information in order to encourage and facilitate further research. Each special issue will be available, free of charge, on our website, Welcome to the Middle East Institute | Middle East Institute.

The Iranian Revolution at 30 by MEI

This publication marks the 30th anniversary of Iranian Revolution with a special issue combining commentaries of policymakers and scholars. It examines the situation inside Iran, including the situation of women and minorities, educational and cultural policies, economic and environmental issues as well as Iranian politics. The authors further address the regional and international context.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 1979-2009 by MEI

This publication sheds light on some of the important developments in Saudi Arabia's domestic and external affairs from 1979 to 2009. Twenty-one essays cover a broad range of topics, including the development of Saudi civil society, Wahhabism and questions of gender equality that sometimes affect Saudi-American relations.

Afghanistan, 1979-2009 by MEI

This volume contains 53 essays that revisit the history of Afghanistan from 1979 to 2009. The essays examine 1) the country's complex social, political and economic dynamics; 2) the fluid interplay between domestic and external actors; and 3) both the missed opportunities and opportunism that have been responsible for Afghanistan's misfortunes over the years.

The Legacy of Camp David: 1979- 2009 by MEI

This special issue report brings together scholarship on the Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979. Addressing a variety of policy and analytical viewpoints on the peace and its legacy 30 years later, the contributors shed light on the peace process itself, its foundations, aftermath and significance in the broader Middle Eastern strategic landscape.

warming up with these:

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt–Israel_Peace_Treaty

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_U.S._embassy_burning_in_Islamabad

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Afghan_War
 

Flâneuse

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Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe
I'm not a believer in biocentrism quite yet, but it's an interesting theory to ponder.
 

Olm the Water King

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also added to list:

Post-Communist Nostalgia, edited by Maria Todorova and Zsuzsa Gille

chapters look pretty interesting

Introduction: From Utopia to Propaganda and Back (Maria Todorova)

PART I: RUPTURE AND THE ECONOMIES OF NOSTALGIA

1.From Algos to Autonomos: Nostalgic Eastern Europe as Postimperial Mania (Dominic Boyer)

2.Strange Bedfellows: Socialist Nostalgia and Neoliberalism in Bulgaria (Gerald W. Creed)

3.Today's Unseen Enthusiasm: Communist Nostalgia for Communism in the Socialist Humanist Brigadier Movement (Cristofer Scarboro)

4.Nostalgia for the JNA? Remembering the Army in the Former Yugoslavia (Tanja Petrović)

5.Dignity in Transition: History, Teachers, and the Nation-State in Post-1989 Bulgaria (Tim Pilbrow)

6.Invisible-Inaudible: Albanian Memories of Socialism after the War in Kosovo (Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers)

7."Let's all freeze up until 2100 or so": Nostalgic Directions in Post-Communist Romania (Oana Popescu-Sandu)

PART II: NOSTALGIC REALMS IN WORD, SOUND, AND SCREEN

8.Sonic Nostalgia: Music, Memory, and Mythology in Bulgaria, 1990-2005 (Donna A. Buchanan)

9."Ceausescu Hasn't Died": Irony as Countermemory in Post-Socialist Romania (Diana Georgescu)

10.Good Bye, Lenin! Aufwiedersehen GDR: On the Social Life of Socialism (Daphne Berdahl)

1."But it's ours": Nostalgia and the Politics of Authenticity in Post-Socialist Hungary (Maya Nadkarni)

12.Looking Back to the Bright Future: Aleksandr Melikhov's Red Zion (Harriet Murav)

13.Dwelling on the Ruins of Socialist Yugoslavia: Being Bosnian by Remembering Tito (Fedja Burić)

14.The Velvet Prison in Hindsight: Artistic Discourse in Hungary in the 1990s (Anna Szemere)

15.Vacant History, Empty Screens: Post-Communist German Films of the 1990s (Anke Pinkert)
 

Lark

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Jun 21, 2009
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At the minute I've almost read half of a book I started this morning called And Man Created God by Robert Banks, its really a very good book, although I think its appeal is mainly because the author seems to have had a very similar experience with religious studies to me and turned it into a book.
 

Tellenbach

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The Time of Our Lives by Peggy Noonan. I liked this more than I thought I would.

Here's a snippet about the Declaration of Independence and how Jefferson's text was edited:

"It hurt Thomas Jefferson to see these words removed from his great document. And we know something about how he viewed his life, his own essence and meaning, from the words he directed that would, a half century after 1776, be cut onto his tombstone. The first word after his name is 'Author'".
 

Yama

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I just finished reading Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild. It's about the emergence of the the first widespread social movement, which was the abolition of the slave trade in Britain in the late 1700s/early 1800s.
 

Olm the Water King

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The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing by Michael Mann

The Dark Side of Democracy | Political Sociology | Cambridge University Press

A new theory of ethnic cleansing based on the most terrible cases (colonial genocides, Armenia, the Nazi Holocaust, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, Rwanda) and cases of lesser violence (early modern Europe, contemporary India, and Indonesia). Murderous cleansing is modern, 'the dark side of democracy'. It results where the demos (democracy) is confused with the ethnos (the ethnic group). Danger arises where two rival ethno-national movements each claims 'its own' state over the same territory. Conflict escalates where either the weaker side fights because of aid from outside, or the stronger side believes it can deploy sudden, overwhelming force. Escalation is not simply the work of 'evil elites' or 'primitive peoples'. It results from complex interactions between leaders, militants, and 'core constituencies' of ethno-nationalism. Understanding this complex process helps us devise policies to avoid ethnic cleansing in the future.
 

Lark

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Jun 21, 2009
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Planning on finishing a couple of books today :)

Also, wondering, hard if I should bother finishing strange evil by gatskell or whoever it was wrote it, its an amazing piece of work for a 14yr old but I'm beginning to think its going no where and I've so much other reading to do instead.
 

XV25

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I can't be the only one that almost exclusively reads fanfiction? Like no matter how terrible I just can't get enough of the stuff. The last big boy book I read was Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik in holy shit 2012! Wow.

My friend has been trying to get me to read The Sword of Truth series but it is just. too. long. Wizard's First Rule alone is 800+ pages. There is just no way.

Rereading The Stranger by Camus. And probably Sisyphus too if I can find it again or the library has a copy.

Had to read back to this point to find a book I had even heard of, much less read. You people are into some non-pop culture things.
 

Ghost

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Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon. It's quite cool, bros. Quite cool.

I'll be able to knock it off my reading list which has been neglected for some time. This one's an audiobook version, and I'm digging the narrator, too.

In the novel, there's a mention of fish. A surname like Sturgeon makes me curious whether the author ever got self-conscious about mentioning fish. It's a kind of thing I wonder about writers. Like, if your name is Sarah and you name a character Sarah, does it mean anything? Probably not, but maybe. I mean, it'd depend on the author, so I wonder which side a given author would land on.
 

Forever

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The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And Religion by Jonathan Haidt

I'd recommend this book to everyone.
 

Smilephantomhive

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I'm reading The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More Is Getting Us Less for school.
 

Jaq

Remember, Humanity.
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The Sun Also Rises I just picked it up today from a local library.
 

Olm the Water King

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Keith Wailoo (Editor), Alondra Nelson (Editor), Catherine Lee (Editor):
Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History
 

Smilephantomhive

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Goliath by Scott Westerfeild. This series has some of the best characters!
 

D'Ascoyne

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Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon. It's quite cool, bros. Quite cool.

I'll be able to knock it off my reading list which has been neglected for some time. This one's an audiobook version, and I'm digging the narrator, too.

In the novel, there's a mention of fish. A surname like Sturgeon makes me curious whether the author ever got self-conscious about mentioning fish. It's a kind of thing I wonder about writers. Like, if your name is Sarah and you name a character Sarah, does it mean anything? Probably not, but maybe. I mean, it'd depend on the author, so I wonder which side a given author would land on.

BAHAHAHA!

:rofl1:
 
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