What are some books you'd recommend to your 20-year old self?
- Thread starter Apex
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just thought of something on lies my teacher told me, when hes talking about woodrow wilson and helen keller, how we shouldnt whitewash people like basically maybe im reading it wrong but he implies socialism is a negative and they hid it to protect hellen kellers image, but i dont know if i agree, i think they hide the fact that a ton of people that are now heros were socialists, mlk jr for example, its because theyve erased the socialist history of this country completly, even the fact we dont celebrate mayday but it started here but thats when the world celebrates it. thats one reason i like peoples history, yes its dudes opinion but more so it gives you the socialist perspective that is completly missing from the textbooks. i mean you mentioned it mainstream narrative. where as lies is trying to make an overall point and uses certain instances in history but its not really a complete retelling, though the reconstruction stuff is great and much better than anything in peoples history. but both two of my favorites, but what is your opinion on that? did they hide helen keller or someone like mlk jr being a socialist to protect them or more so to erase any reference to socialism in America so people just assume its this foreign thing here and we have no history of it and its evil ?This was a positive thread so I didn't want to hate...but one list in particular had me going
Another book in this thread (not from that terrible list) seriously had, "Highly recommended by prison inmates and celebrities" in the lead paragraph of its summary.
Lies My Teacher Told Me is the truth.
I really wanted to get into People's History cause it was recommended to me a bunch...but when I finally got into reading it I was disappointed. It's a good counterbalance to the bullshyt mainstream history, but he fills it with a lot of his own biases and doesn't use as many primary sources so it's hard to figure out what's the truth and what's just his gloss on shyt. The kinda book where if you're primed to like it you'll eat it up, if you're primed to be skeptical you'll throw it away. I like the idea but wish he would have written it in a way that it can be used better to counter the dominant narrative and not just preach to the choir.
Damn man that a refreshing comment to reply to. Nice thoughts.
I completely agree that Lies My Teacher Told Me ain't a complete history. It's not even really trying to be a history even though it gives some really dope history in the process and taught me a lot of shyt I think about to this day. But it's more trying to teach you how history books shape and distort history, the ways they fukk it up, and is using various episodes from history to make the point. It's telling you to begin questioning where you get your information and look for better sources.
So far as the socialism stuff I don't think that Louwen was actually saying that socialism is a bad thing. He was more pointing out how history books hid the socialism in the lives of historical heroes because it was a taboo subject. He was commenting on other people's opinions more than his own opinion. My guess is that he has a nuanced opinion on it - that if we really understood why Hellen Keller moved towards socialism, we'd see that the whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" narrative is bullshyt and that she framed her life around exposing that falsehood, yet we've failed to give her credit for the message that SHE wanted to spread and make up this false bullshyt message instead.
I think history books hide the socialism in America's history because they only know how to tell shyt as black and white. USSR was socialist, therefore socialism is BAD, therefore if you say that someone good like Hellen Keller or MLK Jr. was a socialist then your message suddenly got all complicated. It's partly driven by the anti-socialist agenda, but even more driven by the fact that so many people don't know how to deal with nuance or complexity, they think that high school kids should only be taught the most simplistic version of events possible and anything that could force them to think or form their own opinions is dangerous.
p.s. - randomly browsing Louwen's site and the hate-comments repeatedly accuse him of being a Marxist. So at least he's got that going for him.
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Kilgore Trout
Banned
Domingo Halliburton
Handmade in USA
Das Kapital by Lenin
Domingo Halliburton
Handmade in USA
Written by James Louwen, the same dude who wrote Lies My Teacher Told Me
mbewane
Knicks: 93 til infinity
None. I'd actually tell my 20 year-old self to get out more and "live" more.