Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow. Long book, very entertaining and informative. Will help out some of todays issues into perspective. you will be a better American after reading it.
Does nobody read literature here? Every time this thread comes up the replies give a depressing picture of one of those houses you sometimes find yourself in where you're looking for the bookcases and there are none. Or there's one and it's mostly full of trinkets, videos/DVDs, and a sorry little collection: one on Formula 1, a biography of a sportsman/manager, one on home preserving/canning, one on the history of the SAS and one self-development manual. Philistines.
Discrimination and Disparities challenges idea that different economic outcomes can be explained by any one factor, be it discrimination, exploitation, or genetics.
fiction: vonnegut, pynchon, delillo, easton ellis (who i feel is misunderstood as a satirist), bryson, borges, gibson, stephenson, cusk.
hunter thompson, this era begs for equivalent satire.
i will sometimes get 2-3 history books about a particular country, maybe not even the same time period, and cycle through each a chapter at a time. you will learn a lot about a place.
Try The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. It's a kind of world tour thought experiment about what would happen to the natural and human made world if all people suddenly disappeared.
I find it incredibly relaxing during stressful times because you get to imagine no people!
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The Stench of Honolulu by Jack Handey. Not a single serious sentence in the book, and there's no deeper meaning or veiled "point" to the story, just nonstop hilarity from the guy who used to write the "Deep Thoughts" on old SNL. I probably re-read it once a year. If you need to escape anything, be it politics or anything else, that's a great choice.