/lit/ - Literature

No. Self-guidance is best, anyway.

"United States: Essays 1952-1992"

"Lies My Teacher Told Me"

"Cracks in the Constitution"

"Who Rules America Now?"

Vidal, Loewen, Lundberg, and Domhoff make up for much of the education you are missing, with all due self awareness of the manía americana being demonstrated. Your mileage may vary, nationality depending. Tangentially, while despair in the era of Trump is understandable, these specific titles will help. Ironic as may be, for those celebrating their new age of Trump triumphant, ditto.

will durant or the oxford complete shakespeare

great thread idea btw

>>14401

>>14401

a great redpill on the history of the united states is howard zinn: people's history.

some of the other conspiracy books can also be good for a conservative christian education

For anyone with a serious interest in literature, I'd strongly suggest Harold Bloom's The Western Canon - and reading as you go as many of the books he's discussing as you can. This project took me two years and changed my life.

Also throughly agree with the recommendation on Vidal's "United States: Essays 1952-1992" which won the National Book Award for 1993 I think. Bought it when it came out and have read and reread parts many times. Wonderful and highly worthwhile volume, almost another complete education in itself!

>>14404

then again, a good person wouldn't recommend a young reader to just have jewish authors on his shelf

thats how u become a zogbot

Quran

>>14408

interesting. I heard austrian economics was better.

>>14407

that's a good book to have on the shelf for when the fbi comes knocking on your door

>>14399

Sand County Almanac was the most important thing I read at that age. I still reread it almost annually. Pairs well with Walden.

>>14399

Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War.

>>14436

Python and existentialism deserve special places in hell.

>>14457

What do you recommend instead?

>>14476

APL and the Monadology, as well as the Principles of Nature and Grace.

>>14476

Python is not so unbearable that it's worth learning something new only to get rid of it. Existentialism claims that someone wants purpose or happiness; it provides a solution to an imaginary problem.

>>14480

>Existentialism claims that someone wants purpose or happiness

that's not exactly far fetched

>>14489

I understand being tired of things that exist, but not wanting those that don't.

Anything by HP Lovecraft

Parasite Eve

Dracula

Moby Dick

>>14401

Had a gander at the websit of "Who rules America Now?", and the people who run that website are almost pathetically deluded. Anti-corporate progressives are insane, corporate monopolists are by far the greatest assets of the progressive, most modern progressives were literally converted to progressivism due to their exposure to corporate propaganda.

But curious, precisely what cause is there for despair to anti-corporatists in the "Age of Trump"? In embracing protectionism, cutting immigration, and laying the groundwork for action against monopolies like amazon, Trump has proven to be by far the most anti-corporate president since the nineteenth century at least, corporate dominance in America (and by extension the entire Western world) is poised to recede for the first time in a hundred years.

If you rue the loss of the awaited brown hordes more than enjoy the gain of the American worker, sorry to tell you but you're just a bog standard neoliberal, not an anti-corporatist or localist.

You've also done him no favours recommending the trite "Progressive Lies I'd Like to Tell You" by Loewen, who is, unsurprisingly, another sociologist. If you're still reading kid, be sure to avoid the work of people who come from useless and backward fields of work like sociology, because when the entire premise of your career is garbage, surprise, you can't help but produce yet more garbage.

>>14402

Seconded for the complete shakespeare

>>14399

Any of the classics, Plato's republic, and most of all the Bible, cover to cover. There is no work of greater profundity, greater simplicity of message and beauty of form.

>>14505

Before the First World War, across the Gilded Age as it was to be called, the United States managed something like fifteen to eighteen percent of the world's total economic activity. Not bad for a single nation holding about six percent of the world's population. Despite rising wages and better standards of living, the social, structural, and economic inequalities manifest were both immense and well documented.

After the Second World War, the United States found itself managing about half of all the economic activity on Earth. What came before this counted as nothing when compared to the gains being made by post-war Americans as a whole. There was much talk of America becoming a classless society, a great flattening of the spectrum into an expanding middle class. Such an idea made sense to people who saw nothing else to compare themselves to in scale, except each other. Myopia makes not a trend, the world moves on, and some odd law of regression to the mean reasserted itself. Today, that means a nation with four and a half percent of the world's population, representing a touch more than fifteen percent of Earth's economy. The gilding remains, as well as much gnashing of the teeth with all the attendant blame games and entertaining cultural wars.

Dohmhoff's contention—whatever else we may have been in the more distant past—is that modern America (the Gilded Age, and beyond) has always been a profoundly class based society. Much of the frustration regular folk experience in trying to make changes is rooted in a blindness to how coherent, organized, and effective the ruling class is. However, his scholarly observations contain two gigantic omissions which you might otherwise expect to be there. These would be obvious had you read the book.

>the people who run that website are almost pathetically deluded.

Most likely. I hold no interest in some one off website over the original source material. I won't even bother to look at it. Based off of your commentary I suspect they are doing two stupid things:

1. They are waving Domhoff's book about as a demonstration of "ALL THAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICA!"

2. They contend their website holds "THE ANSWER TO ALL THAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICA!"

All well and good. Except, Domhoff's somewhat dry analysis of the nature of the ruling class's existence doesn't include either two suggestions. His book is not a manifesto. He is completely neutral no matter one's stance on the political spectrum. By taking a step back and looking up, he does show how profound the institutional inertia will be for those trying to effect some change. In this, he is useful to us all.

As I recall, Loewen's work has a progressivist tone to it. Taking issue with that is fine if that's how you roll. However, attacking Loewen's style fails to address his primary thesis: history is not hagiography, which is largely how modern textbooks on the subject are presented. History as hagiography is not just wrong, it's disgusting.

>>14399

Read Das Kapital

If you are planning on going to college then its best to know thy enemy.

The likelihood that people you will meet at college are socialist is ridiculously high and half of them have never read the book their political ideology is based on. If you read it and understand it you can pick their arguments apart from day one. I wish I had read it before I went to Uni.

And if you think "I'm not gonna be doing politics so it's none of my concern" you are wrong, everyone and their gay best friend has a political opinion at college/uni and you'll be damned lucky if they don't share it with you.

So learn what they are going to say before they even say it and shut them down, maybe you can make a difference

unless you are a socialist in which case go fuck yourself

some book posted in the far future where things are cool and good

>>14399

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

Trust me.

Madame Bovary

women are whores and liars that will spend every shekel you earn.

learn this now.

>>14399

It's obvious most people would respond with something aligned with reality… or how reality is not what the narrative is when you are young and hence how you think the world to work so you don't wake when it really hurts you later in life. Others in this thread have done this and it's typically something counter mainstream at the moment (including anything classical or before WW2). I however will lend you two hands through my own projection. I wish I had read more math and physics…I mean since that time I have but I wish I'd actually indulged more in the abstract reality of it when younger. I also wish I'd simply read more National Geographic before it turned into a woke POS so I could see more of the world through those pages pure of drivel.

>>14399

If you haven't read the Dune series you're fucked.

>>14399

Try Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, especially if you're an anxious person. Wish I'd read it as an angsty teen.

>>16578

>-oomer

>wojak

Back to cuckchan with you, phlegm.

>>16636

Sadly doomer got started here. Think emo cunts but trying to act smart and not wear the makeup.

>>16578

>The Call of Cthulhu

>The Decline of the West

Despite the emo-esque doomer shit the list seems a little interesting.

>Ayn Rand

Anthem: short dose

Fountainhead: long dose

Atlas Shrugged: overly long dose

One flew over the Cuckoos nest

Foundation Trilogy

meh that's it i don't want to get overly long.

>>14399

More Kipling.

>>16643

Rand was important landmark of the noosphere, so maybe for historical context. But other than this… unless you want edgy "lone wolf" philosophy, reading Taleb is infinitely more useful. And quite interesting.

>>14412

Moldbug gives some good explanations on economics. And a few other things. Sometimes he goes into flights of fancy, though. That's why I'd recommend Skin in the Game before reading Moldbug.

>>16644

That post was meant for the high school dropout thread i think it makes more sense as a rec there. I figured he'd see it either way.

Lowen's "Betrayal of the Body" could have saved me years of suffering.

Wish I had read through the New Testament and the works of Plato around that age, as well. More to the point, I wish I'd just zeroed in on the subject that I excelled at more than others did, to the exclusion of all others (for the time), majored in it, and then never had to work an unskilled position or live in a moldy apartment for even a day. Being in my early 30's, I could have excelled in my field by now to where a career change would have meant a lateral move, and not starting over on the bottom rung.

You might want to take Cal Newport's first or second book with you to college and live by it until you're through it.

I also recommend the book by Harold Bloom - "The Western Canon" since it is a 1994 book about western literature written by one of the best critics. In the edition, the author defends the concept of the Western canon by discussing 26 mostly English language writers whom he sees as central to the canon. I found on the EssayReviewExpert site a review about the EduBirdie service on which I found an essay for my literature homework in which Harold admires Shakespeare as a personality inauguration. I recommend https://essayreviewexpert.com/review/edubirdie/ to discover on the expert review service how helpful EduBirdie is and, therefore, find more essays and books for your college years because I am a student and I get a lot of help and college materials, essays.