History

I was watching a History Channel special about the Incas and the historians said "they believed x, y, and z, and their lives revolved around the worship of their gods". But I thought, surely, that’s a huge generalization. Just because the archaeological evidence suggests the existence of a religious life does not mean that all, most, or even many of them believed those things.

If future historians looked back at the profusion of churches in the US, they might just say, "the people of the 21st century America worshiped the god of Christianity, and their lives were spent appeasing him." Of course, now there are libraries of books written by freethinkers, as well as diaries, blogs, what have you, recording our whole range of religious life.

The reason I ask is that I picked up Christopher Hitchens’ "A Portable Atheist" and read the passage by Lucretius (~50 BC). I was amazed by how enlightened he was. It made me think that rational disbelief has ALWAYS been around, just suppressed by power-hungry religious organizations.
I recommend that all atheist/agnostic/freethinkers pick up one of these:

1) Christopher Hitchens - "The Portable Atheist"
2) S.T. Joshi - "Atheism: A Reader"

They’re basically the same book, so you only need to read one.

"It made me think that rational disbelief has ALWAYS been around, just suppressed by power-hungry religious organizations."
Exactly…

“Eons ago, some bored little guys were sitting around the campfire one night after the womenfolk and chillen had gone to bed, passing the cone.
One fella suggested the stars MUST belong to a VERY large creature up in the sky.
THAT is when the first scammer realised he had the ultimate scam.
THAT is when scamming the gullible began.
The rest, as they say in the classics, is history.”
~

Koki Kameda is fresh from his upset victory of the heavily favored Daisuke Naito. Kameda is undefeated and Pongsaklek Wonjongkam is often considered to be one of the top 20 best fighter of the 21st century. Pongsaklek Wonjongkam is written and the history books and have a potential to be a Hall of Famer.

I have been waiting for this fight and I have always been a fan of Pongsaklek Wonjongkam. I think Wonjongkam will knock out current no.1 rank Flyweight Koki Kameda. It’s time for Wonjongkam to retake his no.1 position back. Wonjongkam is currently ranked no.2 best flyweight by Ring Magazine.

http://philboxing.com/news/story-33566.html
@ Neneng, the fight is in Japan.

This will be a pretty good fight, as both Kameda and Wonjongkam are counter punchers. However, Pongsaklek is a much superior boxer, using his southpaw stance and defensive movements to confuse opponents. While he lacks one-punch KO pop, he has punishing power in his decent straight left hand. Pongsaklek also has fast hands, and while he’s been in a lot of fights, he hasn’t really began showing his age all that much. He has a good chin and mixes in some decent footwork.

As for Kameda, he is the best boxer to come out of the highly controversial Kameda Boxing Family. He has power in either hand, but is a very patient fighter, and is more of a counter puncher. Check his fight with former champion Daisuke Naito - He was countering Naito all fight long with good left hand shots and the occasional right hooks. He has a good chin, and while he doesn’t move around as much as one would like, he is very effective at blocking punches with his gloves.

That being said, Kameda’s had only 22 fights in his professional career, compared to 78 fights for Wonjongkam. I look at Kameda to be handily out-boxed as a result, as Wonjongkam’s movement, counter punching, slipping, and combination punching will give Kameda problems. Kameda will make things in interesting if he can somehow get inside on Wonjongkam, but I don’t see that happening.

By the way, because Kameda and Wonjongkam are ranked number 1 and 2 respectively by the Ring, that means that this fight is for the lineal Flyweight championship of the World, the legitimate, universally recognized, undisputed championship. The winner wins the Ring Belt and takes the honor of the world’s best Flyweight, and I feel it will be Pongsaklek. Thanks for sharing this!

I have like two months off from school and would like to study world history. Any recommendation please.

That depends on what your interests are. For a broad overview, try the "Don’t Know Much About History" series.

For a fictional account, try "Codex 362" by a Portuguese author who’s name escapes me. It runs along the lines of "The DaVinci Code;" only it explores the circumstances of Columbus’ discovery of the New World.

Do we know everything there is to know about our universe? Should we close the books and our minds along with it? Are we gonna be Aztecs, until the Spaniards show up and then everyone’s gonna act surprised.

Why are humans always carrying themselves as if we know everything? I hope you don’t think that nothing unexpected will happen in human history, because it will, people are always wrong, I’m not saying I know exactly what it is, but it’s gonna happen, and I just know this 21st-century thinking is wrong. Mark my words, the Spaniards are coming!

Good point. Hawking says we should not "shout out" to the Universe, because there is a bad history for civilizations that come into contact with more advanced civilizations. We would probably be decimated.

That aside, closing one’s mind is equal to stagnation, like putrid, stagnant water. One should keep learning and growing.

The civil rights movement started right after WWII when 1 million black soldiers where discharged from the military and they had to go back to civilian life. First rate soldiers where treated like second class citizens, and they refused to let that be their reality. All these men went back home and decided if a man can’t go into a bar and drink a cold beer amongst other men, then the "STATUS QUE" had to be "CHANGED". This started out breaks of resistance all over America from these men. The one thing that service brought them was how to organize and plan. With these new tools, they would inspire other black people like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X to take up their cause. The American media blocked a lot of turmoil in the country and refused to shine light on it. The Germans reported this news all across the world (the miss treatment of black people), and America was the laughing stock of the whole world, thats when thing began to change for black people, not because white people where nice enough to give us equality.

I learned of this first hand from two grandfathers who fought in WWII. I also have read other books that talk about how black American soldiers were forced to give up their seats to German prisoners of war, simply because they were white. http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8048.html
Not to mention the Tuskegee Airmen, who had to fight discrimination to become the first black Airmen, and they escorted fighters all over Europe and never lost one. http://www.tuskegeeairmen.org/Tuskegee_Airmen_History.html

You are right when you say that this was an impetus to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, some soldiers even stayed in Europe, because of being treated equally. Those that returned, many did not get the benefits of the GI Bill like their white counterparts did.

So yes the Status Quo needed to change. But to be fair, many white Americans joined in the fight and gave up their lives as well.

how do you take notes off an AP world history text book? there are only 20 pages per chapter but it is very extensive, and i don’t know what is the main point of each paragraph…. it takes me about 4 hours to just do 1 chapter, please help me how do i take quick notes and still understand the whole thing????

course-notes.org
One of the best resources available. Has a bunch of fake quizzes, outlines, etc… for chapters in books for every AP.

I want something that is NOT politically biased.

It’s not always easy to find a history book that doesn’t have a political bias of some sort. I honestly don’t mind that as much as a revisionist history book, though.

There are some books I’ve found over the years that give a really good understanding of true American history. Two of them, Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence and Wives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, are reprints of older history books (1848, 1912 respectively). They both give a brief overview of the people who had such an impact. Wallbuilders http://wallbuilders.com/store/page1.html has these two and many more American History Books.

Another interesting look can be found in the book called Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. This is a view of America from 1831 by a Frenchman, sent here to study America.

Stephen Ambrose wrote some interesting ones, including Undaunted Courage. This book tells all about the Lewis and Clark Expedition - fascinating.

David Barton, who is as close to a walking encyclopedia of American history as you can get, has written several very interesting books. Among them are Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White, Benjamin Rush-Signer of the Declaration of Independence (he was also the father of the education system), The Bulletproof George Washington and Original Intent.

There is also a book called The Exhaustive Concordance to the Constitution of the United States which gives a detailed view of the Constitution. The Federalist Papers by John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison is also excellent.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin gives a highly entertaining view of portions of his life. Thomas Jefferson-His Life and Words edited by Nich Beilenson is good.

Miracle at Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen and Decision in Philadelphia by James Lincoln and Christopher Collier were good ones, too. The Century Book of the American Revolution by Elbridge S. Brooks (from 1897) is a fascinating read. Patrick Henry, Prophet of the Revolution by Jane Carson was another good one. All Cloudless Glory (volumes I and II) by Harrison Clarke was an interesting biography of George Washington.

The Civil War: Strange and Fascinating Facts by Burke Davis was intriguing.

There are many more that could be named, each of which give you a slice of American history. I, personally, have never found one book that has everything in it. The closest I’ve found is a book called Witness to America by Stephen Ambrose and Douglas Brinkley. This book has many eyewitness accounts to various events in history from Revolutionary times to more modern times. It’s interesting.

I hope this helps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page anything you want to know. type in a date, or a name, or a keyword. wiki is huge.

Ok, I am a Philosophy and Psychology major pretty interested in History, but I do not want to just start by reading any history text. I want to start from the oldest documents of primitive man and progress forward through time. I do not want simple books like Idiots Guide to Ancient History. I want Something detailed, through, and interesting. My focus right now would be the most antiquated form of man.

If you could just inform me of such textbooks, I would really appreciate it. However, I also do not want extremely scholarly texts; note that this is just a side project for fun.

Thanks.

You can’t go wrong with the Durant series of histories. It’s all there in exact detail.

I have a pretty short paper to write for a 20th Century US history class due next week and I’m trying to get started on research, and I’m hoping some people have ideas on books and such where I could research such a topic.

I am only given a picture of the Chrysler Building in NYC, and I have to discuss what the building tells us about America at the time it was built. I know there was a bit of a competition going on in America (and specifically NYC) on who could build the world’s tallest skyscraper, but am having a hard time finding any books, newspapers, journals and such about this… Any ideas/suggestions out there?

Go to the library and ask the reference librarian how to use the indexes to find these sources. They will be easy to find when you know how to use the indexes. This project will make it easy for you to use the library for your next assignment. You can also go to the website of the New York Times and use the free search engine on that page.