Books I brought with me for today. If there's something good at the bookstore I might go home with an extra one haha.
The Age of Extremes
Eric Hobsbawm
Exploring the Limits of Preclassical Mechanics
*Damerow/Freudenthal/McLaughlin/Renn*
#bookstodon #bookwormph "In modern society, the audience for the arts, as for hobbits and heroes, is for the historian an even more important source of evidence for cultural identity than the literary documents, artistic artifacts, or heroes themselves. The history of modern culture ought then to be as much a history of response as of challenge, an account of the reader as of the novel, of the viewer as of the film, of the spectator as of the actor."Rites of Spring
Modris Eksteins
#bookstodon #bookwormph #histodons Started reading a new book today!
The Age of Extremes
Eric Hobsbawm
I'm surprisingly reading fast these recent weeks. My TBR queue is continuously growing though, and I don't expect to clear it out until end of the year.
#bookwormph #bookstodon #histodons Just finished reading The Goldilocks Enigma. The last 2-3 chapters were a bit less science-y and more philosophical. But overall I liked the book, I think it's a good layman's intro to cosmology.
#bookstodon #bookwormph #science I hope to finish this book within the week. So far I like it, explains concepts a lot more intuitively than other similar books (e.g. Martin Rees' works). #bookstodon "So why study history? Unlike physics or economics, history is not a means for making accurate predictions. We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine."Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind
Yuval Noah Harari
#quote #history Here are two books – still among my favorites – that cover the first decade and a half of postwar world. Of course there's overlap, specifically with Dwight Eisenhower's presidency.
Embers of War, by Fredrik Logevall, explores the history of how the French control of Indochina ended, and how the United States increasingly committed itself to the war in Vietnam.
The Age of Eisenhower, by William Hitchcock, tackles the Eisenhower presidency and the major events and issues that defined it. Author argues that Eisenhower is far more consequential than his contemporaries may have imagined.
#bookstodon #bookwormph Today I finally chanced upon a cheap copy of *Joseph Conrad's* Heart of Darkness. And in fairly good condition too. Nice.
#classics #bookstodon #bookwormph "Sooner or later, all states do collapse, and ramshackle, asymmetric dynastic amalgamations are more vulnerable than cohesive nation-states. Only the 'how' and the 'when' are mysteries of the future."Vanished Kingdoms
Norman Davies
#quote #histodons Here's one book that has a lasting influence on my perspective of history.
As the cliché goes, "history is written by the victors". I've come to reject that view of history. It's all just the victors' perspective if you only read their side. But what if you can learn the other side?
Here in Vanished Kingdoms, by Norman Davies, you get to know the history of European states that have "disappeared" and no longer exist. These were the sovereign entities that existed alongside those that still exist today. But not all are fortunate enough to survive.
Very good book, I like it so much. I highly recommend it!
#bookstodon #bookwormph #histodons 
