7 posts tagged with History and nonfiction.
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Book: "Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America," by Ijeoma Oluo

"I am not arguing that every white man is mediocre. I do not believe that nay race or gender is predisposed to mediocrity. What I'm saying is that white male mediocrity is a baseline, the dominant narrative, and that everything in our society is centered around preserving white male power regardless of white male skill or talent."
posted by The corpse in the library on Dec 1, 2020 - 5 comments

Book: The Botanist and the Vintner

In the mid-1860s, grapevines in southeastern France inexplicably began to wither and die. Jules-Émile Planchon, a botanist from Montpellier, was sent to investigate. He discovered that the vine roots were covered in microscopic yellow insects. What they were and where they had come from was a mystery. The infestation advanced with the relentlessness of an invading army and within a few years had spread across Europe, from Portugal to the Crimea. The wine industry was on the brink of disaster. The French government offered a prize of three hundred thousand gold francs for a remedy. Planchon believed he had the answer and set out to prove it. Gripping and intoxicating, The Botanist and the Vintner brings to life one of the most significant, though little-known, events in the history of wine.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Jan 19, 2020 - 3 comments

Book: The Little Ice Age

The Little Ice Age tells the fascinating story of the turbulent, unpredictable, and often very cold years of modern European history. Using sources ranging from the dates of long-ago wine harvests and the business records of medieval monasteries to modern chemical analysis of ice cores, renowned archaeologist Brian Fagan reveals how a 500-year cold snap began in the fourteenth century. As Fagan shows, the increasingly cold and stormy weather dramatically altered fishing and farming practices, and it shaped familiar events, from Norse exploration to the settlement of North America, from the French Revolution to the Irish potato famine to the Industrial Revolution. Now updated with a new preface discussing the latest historical climate research, The Little Ice Age offers deeply important context for understanding today's age of global warming. As the Little Ice Age shows, climate change does not come in gentle, easy stages, and its influence on human life is profound.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Jan 3, 2020 - 5 comments

Book: The Unwomanly Face of War

Alexievich chronicles the experiences of the Soviet women who fought on the front lines, on the home front, and in the occupied territories. These women—more than a million in total—were nurses and doctors, pilots, tank drivers, machine-gunners, and snipers. They battled alongside men, and yet, after the victory, their efforts and sacrifices were forgotten. Alexievich traveled thousands of miles and visited more than a hundred towns to record these women’s stories. Together, this symphony of voices reveals a different aspect of the war—the everyday details of life in combat left out of the official histories. [more inside]
posted by mixedmetaphors on Mar 16, 2019 - 2 comments

Book: Stamped from the Beginning

Ibram X. Kendi argues in Stamped from the Beginning, racist ideas in this country have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit. [more inside]
posted by soplerfo on Mar 22, 2017 - 1 comment

Interest in a nonfiction #resistance club?

I am toying with this idea, in part because of chainsofreedom's new fictional "in these trying times" club and Miko's excellent recent ask. Except these days, most of what I read is nonfiction. Anyone up for a nonfiction #resisting club tackling useful works to know about? I'm thinking a mix of history, maybe some political thought, maybe some sociology kinds of things. Suggestions inside the cut. [more inside]
posted by sciatrix on Feb 7, 2017 - 14 comments

Movie: The Big Short

The story of the 2007-2008 credit and housing bubble collapse, seen through the eyes of a handful of misfit financial investors who predicted it would happen. Based on the book by Michael Lewis.
posted by zarq on Dec 28, 2015 - 42 comments

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