With the Adepts: An Adventure Among the Rosicrucians by Franz Hartmann
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
Man-Eater: The Terrifying True Story of Cannibal Killer Katherine Knight by Ryan Green
The Labor Wars: From the Molly Maguires to the Sit Downs by Sidney LensIn the second half of 1971 President Richard M. Nixon took two steps which represented back-handed admissions that Pax Americana on the international scene and the synthetic prosperity at home might be in serious trouble. ...
The New Economic Policy, proclaimed at approximately the same time as the announcements regarding China, reflected an international trade and money crisis, and probably forecast the end of the international Pax Americana. ...
Against this background President Nixon elaborated a much tighter control of business and labor than Washington had exercised since the Second World War. It was not, as many believed, a carbon copy of what happened during World War II. It began, first of all, with a freeze of all wages and almost all prices. For ninety days all raises were prohibited, even those provided for in previously negotiated union contracts, the first time any practice of this sort has ever occurred. In effect, collective bargaining agreements were abrogated. And though the period of the freeze was short, it was a major extension of presidential power. Future Presidents doubtless will use it as a precedent for executive reversal of labor-management relations on a broader front.
True Hallucinations: The Talking Book by Terence McKenna
The Yage Letters by William S. Burroughs
The Gentlemen Conspirators: The Story of the Price-Fixers in the Electrical Industry by John G. Fuller
[N] o matter what General Electric's past [has] been in regard
to the observance of the antitrust laws, "our record for the past
decade and more indicates that the managers of the General
Electric Company are making earnest and successful efforts to
comply not only with the letter, but also with the spirit of the
antitrust laws.
As long ago as 1946 . . . the company embarked upon
an educational program, a program which has been continued to
date with undiminished vigor, designed to sharpen the sensitivity and awareness of all our people to the role and importance
of the antitrust laws."
Now technology throws a curve. And the curve is that we live so long, that we figure out what a scam this is. We figure out what what were supposed to work for isn't worth having, we figure out that our politicians are buffoons, we figure out that professional scientist are reputation building grab tailing weasels. We discover that all organizations are corrupted by ambition.
...the boys in the training school at GE were taught that "you can always get anybody to do what you wish," and furnished them with the principle, "never say anything controversial." ... you were supposed to spend a lot of time thinking of what other people thought of you, rather than expressing your won convictions. You accepted what you were told, and you learned to worship the "one-over-one" hierarchy system, where contacting anyone beyond your immediate boss was gross heresy."
...
The intellectual comedy arises from the drive which causes the organization man to try top impress others, to conform to the pattern, top achieve status symbols, to be anything but his own spontaneous self.
Dr. Gardner C. Means ... asks the question, "Just what is private about an enterprise that organizes a quarter of a million workers into a great productive unit using the capital of more than a quarter of a million stockholders and serving millions of ultimate customers? Is it any more private than, say, the government of New York State?"
The stiffening of the penalties for the violation of present antitrust laws.
The requiring of public justification for price increases on the part of the concentrated industries.
The equitable divestiture of corporations which have become so powerful that they threaten to eliminate free competition.
I Am Who I Pretend to Be by Gallagher
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier
Nigger by Dick GregoryYou didn't die a slave for nothing, Momma. You brought us up. You and all those Negro mothers who gave their kids the strength to go on, to take that thimble to the well while the whites were taking buckets. Those of us who weren't destroyed got stronger, got calluses on our souls. And now we're ready to change a system, a system where a white man can destroy a black man with a single word. Nigger.
Badass: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live by Ben Thompson
Kissinger on Kissinger: Reflections on Diplomacy, Grand Strategy, and Leadership by Winston Lord
But as a general proposition, by the time you know all the facts, it is too late to affect them.
He [Nixon] had one maxim that I often cite, which is you pay the same price for doing something halfway as for doing it completely. So you might as well do it completely . It characterizes many of his decisions.
You have to remember that this was a period of frenetic leaking.
Climate Change: Evidence and Causes: Set of 5 Booklets by National Academy of Sciences
How do scientists know that recent
climate change is largely caused by
human activities?
Scientists know that recent climate change is largely caused by human activities from an
understanding of basic physics, comparing observations with models, and fingerprinting
the detailed patterns of climate change caused by different human and natural influences.
If the world is warming, why are some
winters and summers still very cold?
Global warming is a long-term trend, but that does not mean that every year will be
warmer than the previous one. Day to day and year to year changes in weather patterns
will continue to produce some unusually cold days and nights, and winters and summers,
even as the climate warms.
Christmas in Purgatory: A Photographic Essay on Mental Retardation by Burton Blatt
This classic photo essay of legally sanctioned human abuse in state institutions
was written and photographed (1965) long before the current right-to-treatment
lawsuits on behalf of institutionalized people.
[...]
As Camus once wrote:
"Perhaps we cannot stop the world from being one in which children are tortured,
but we can reduce the number of children tortured."
1959: The Year Everything Changed by Fred Kaplan
A History of the English Church and People by Bede
Chapter 30
WHEN these messengers had departed, St Gregory sent after them a letter which is worth recording, in which he plainly showed his eager interest in the salvation of our race. This is what he wrote:
To my most beloved son, Abbot Mellitus, Gregory, servant of the servants of God.
Since the departure of our companions and yourself I have felt much anxiety because we have not happened to hear how your journey has prospered. However, when Almighty God has brought you to our most reverend brother Bishop Augustine, tell him what I have decided after long deliberation about the English people, namely that the idol temples of that race should by no means be destroyed, but only the idols in them. Take holy water and sprinkle it in these shrines, build altars and place relics in them. For if the shrines are well built, it is essential that they should be changed from the worship of devils to the service of the true God. When this people see that their shrines are not destroyed they will be able to banish error from their hearts and be more ready to come to the places they are familiar with, but now recognizing and worshipping the true God. And because they are in the habit of slaughtering much cattle as sacrifices to devils, some solemnity ought to be given them in exchange for this. So on the day of the dedication or the festivals of the holy martyrs, whose relics are deposited there, let them make themselves huts from the branches of trees around the churches which have been converted out of shrines, and let them celebrate the solemnity with religious feasts.
The Mind by Richard Restak
Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson
One of the pillars of big bang cosmology is the prediction that in every region of the cosmos, no less than about ten percent of all atoms are helium, manufactured in that percentage across the well-mixed primeval fireball that was the birth of our universe. Since the thermonuclear fusion of hydrogen within stars gives you helium, some regions of the cosmos could easily accumulate more than their ten percent share of helium, but, as predicted, no one has ever found a region of the galaxy with less.
Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben Macintyre
