After a recent rewatch of Wild Wild Country on Netflix, I went down a rabbit hole of reading books that cover unusual or lesser known topics – Killers of the Flower Moon and Devil in the White City were both phenomenal. Any recs? I’m open to topics beyond true crime.
by kfed865
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Braiding Sweetgrass
A Burning
The Round House (or anything else by Louise Erdrich)
“Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” by David Blight. This is a serious book. It explores how the myth of the “noble” struggle of the South was promoted to gloss over the horrors of slavery. You still hear this crap today: “The South was fighting for states’ rights”, blah blah. It considers how the reunion between the North and South was done at the expense of rights for African-Americans. It is one of the most important books on American history, IMHO.
Nickel Boys, Devil in the Grove, Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Sixties
Johnny got his gun by Dalton Trumbo
Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell
*Blood Brothers* by Elias Chacour was a look at the Palestine-Israel issue from the view of a Palestinian and was really interesting.
But generally speaking, I don’t know that any particular book “should” be taught… just that students should be encouraged to read a lot, and books that cover a variety of perspectives.
The Warmth of Other Suns
1.Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change
2.Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
3.Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee
Seth Speaks
*Invisible Man* by Ralph Ellison.
When I read it, I decided to add it to my 12th grade English curriculum.
Stoner – Williams
1491 by Charles Mann
My Friendly Witch Hentai Haram 16.
Not sure if this is what you mean, but The People’s History of the United States.
“Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” (2007 edition) by James W. Loewen
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. Though only college level could probably handle it.
All Souls Rising, by Madison Smartt Bell;
Citizen, by Claudia Rankine.
The Way We Never Were by Stephanie Coontz about how our vision of the nuclear family of the 1950s and earlier is not what most people experienced at the time and how treating it like a golden age is a harmful mirage.
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. I highly recommend the German 2022 movie of the novel.
Books on how the mass media twist things and select on what they report. Two that alerted me to the issue: the Glasgow University Media Group’s *Bad News* (about British newspaper and TV reporting on the Miners’ Strike of the 1980s and backing the Thatcher regime) and Dorfman and Mattelart’s *How to Read Donald Duck* (about the way Disney comics propagandized for US imperialism). Textbooks on bullshit detection.
Books about emotional intelligence, e.g. *The Chimp Paradox*
The power is within you – Louise Hay
The color of Law
Atomic Habits which I’m reading currently.
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore.
American Sirens. It’s about the small group of low budget, minimal training, brave men who worked their asses off to revolutionize emergency medicine and basically invent the modern paramedic, to then get 0 credit.
«А зори здесь тихие…» written by Boris Vasilyev. I read it when I was around 13 years old, and it was the story that made me realize just how horrible the war is. I see many people struggle with understanding that somehow, and I wish more people read something devastating about the war to see how much it costs people.
Under the banner of heaven
Martian by Andy Weir
The 1619 Project (ironic?)
Natives by Akala! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natives:_Race_and_Class_in_the_Ruins_of_Empire
Esp for the UK. My fav from 2019.
“Manufacturing Consent” has had a profound impact on the way I read and consider the wording of any news article or clip. The way an audience can be swayed through semantics is astonishing. This should be included in the curriculum for seniors in high school. If you have never read it, I highly recommend it.
Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius.
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell.
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari