Category: history
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American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears by Farah Stockman follows the lives of three steel plant workers at the Rexnord factory in Indianapolis and how it affected them when the plant moved production to Mexico and shut down around 2017. After having just completed The Lords of Easy Money, I was fascinated…
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The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy by Christopher Leonard goes in-depth about how one of the America’s central bank, with once having limited powers, has slowly over the decades extended their reach via monetary policies to affect pretty much everyone in the country for better or worst. It’s…
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The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination by Stuart A. Reid goes over one of the first documented evidence of an assassination attempt at the highest level of the United States government against a foreign politician during the Congo’s fight for independence in the 1960s. What a story…
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The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know by Dov Waxman aims to educate readers on one of the longest ongoing wars ever. Rather than retelling stories and interviews from both sides of the war, the book is rather much more simple in nature: answering some of the most asked questions about the war without…
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A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy by Nathan Thrall goes over a tragic bus accident in Jerusalem in which aboard were many kindergartner children. Having won the 2024 Pulitzer prize in the General Non-Fiction category, the book obviously has a lot to live up to. Although the main…
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Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford gives us a pretty thorough account of how a single Mongolian in the 12th century, seemingly with his back cornered against the wall, made a decision to strike back against a different tribe and from there on, actually made the modern world to…
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Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing retells a truly remarkable and unforgettable story about a shipwreck and their miraculous survival in the mid-1910s. I’m no stranger to shipwrecked stories and the crew’s relentless battle with nature. Having read The Wager, In the Heart of the Sea and Madhouse At the End of the Earth,…
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China After Mao: The Rise of a Superpower by Frank Dikotter gives us a step-by-step account of what happened to China after the death of Mao Zedong and, more crucially, how it is becoming the world’s leading superpower despite its never-ending clutches to communism rather than yielding to capitalism. I’m no stranger to the author,…
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Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins goes over, well, the confessions of a hit man. However, not the hit man that most are likely to envision first when they hear of that term. Yes, a hit man has a goal of taking out a selected target, usually via stealth with James Bond…
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Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe chronicles Ireland’s brutal campaign for unification that lasted three decades and is likely still felt by its people today. The conflict, dubbed The Troubles, pitted Southern Ireland, which was predominantly Protestant and aligned itself with Britain, against Northern Ireland,…
The Mindless Catalog 