Anybody read a good book lately?

[Diomedes]

Six months of that! I'm going to reread some older Terry Pratchett books to remember what good writing looks like until I can find something decent to read.

Middlemarch is pretty good.  By the time you've finished it, all the damage from the Shadowrun series will have been repaired.

I'm reading Native Son right now.  At the pace I read, this will take months but I am a warrior, I will not quit.  Anyway...I have the ugly sensation that something bad is about to happen to/because of Bigger. 

[General_Failure]

I read five of The Witcher books that have been translated from Polish to English. They weren't completely terrible, but I might as well have read A Song of Ice and Fire for as political, rapey, murdery, and incestuous it got. When I say rapey, I mean it got super rapey. If the narrator is talking about one of the female main characters, someone's gonna want to rape her.

I was expecting a boring story about a guy killing monsters and sometimes banging hot sorceresses, and there wasn't a whole lot of that compared to everything else. It beats the garbage I was reading, but not by enough.

[ice grillin you]

reading james mcphersons civil war book....unbelievably good....long tho...im on like page 300 and secession only just started

[Diomedes]

I'm in the Civil War right now too (though not that book)...Lincoln was just elected, secessions about to start ticking off before he's even inaugurated.

If there's one thing I'm taking from this little excursion into history, it's that the arguments I've heard all my life about the war not being just about slavery, or about slavery being only a secondary reason, are full and total bullshtein.  The Civil War was fought over slavery. 

[Rome]

Ask any Republican and he'd tell you you're full of shtein.  They freed the slaves, after all, so they would know.

[Diomedes]

Yeah, he'd also tell me that voter fraud is rampant, that climate change is a vast liberal conspiracy, and that George W. Bush served honorably.

[ice grillin you]

If there's one thing I'm taking from this little excursion into history, it's that the arguments I've heard all my life about the war not being just about slavery, or about slavery being only a secondary reason, are full and total bullshtein.  The Civil War was fought over slavery.

110%...states rights tho....yeah the right of the southern states to have slavery...

shtein the south tried to invade and/or buy cuba so they could turn it into a slave state...and of course what really sparked the initial rage among the south was the fugitive slave law and the refusal of the federal government to allow the western territories to be slave states...its was ALL about slavery

[Geowhizzer]

The slavery issue reared its ugly head from the very beginnings of the nation.  Thomas Jefferson originally put the following into the Declaration of Independence:

he [King George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

(Never mind the fact that Jefferson owned several hundred slaves himself.)

This wording was attacked by the southern states, and was deleted by the Congress during deliberation.

Then, of course, there is the infamous Three-Fifths Compromise in the Constitution.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

Again, this wording was put into the Constitution to secure southern buy-in to the new Constitution.  The Constitution also said that the African slave trade would continue unimpeded for at least 20 years: 

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

Some say that this clause was designed with the assumption that the southern population would grow much faster than in the north, and that supporters of the slave trade would easily be able to block any movement to ban it.  Which, without the Industrial Revolution, may have happened that way, but it turned out to be a rather large miscalculation.

Slavery wasn't the only issue.  The Nullification Crisis of 1832 was centered around the other main difference between the North and South:  The North supported protective tariffs for their growing industry, while the South suffered economic hardship from their need to import many of the products being taxed.  Of course, that also became something of a personal pissing match between Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun, both southerners.

Slavery was, however, the primary issue, particularly as the South began to see the exploding population in the North as more of a threat.   Igy's comment about the South wanting to annex Cuba is absolutely true, and for the expressed purpose of adding a future slave state).  It was also a motivation for the Mexican-American War, which was far more popular in the South than in the North.  In fact, many historians believe that the final break between North and South started with the proposal of the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery in all territory acquired in the Mexican War.  Many Southern leaders had dreams to annexing the entire Mexican nation.  Others had designs on Central America for the same purpose.

If you look at the standard American History curriculum, a large percentage of the class is how the U.S. tried to deal with the question of slavery.

- Northwest Ordinance (1787) - banned slavery in territories (for now)
- Annexation of Florida (1819-1820) - Because Spain was freeing runaway slaves that converted to Catholocism when arriving in Florida.
- Missouri Compromise (1820) - Created one free state (Maine separates from Massachusetts) and one slave state (Missouri) to retain "balance" in the Senate.
- Texas Revolution (1836) - Partially because Mexico had abolished slavery in the 1820s.
- Annexation of Texas (1845) 
- Wilmot Proviso (1848) - Tried to ban slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico (New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah)
- Compromise of 1850 - Allowed California to become a free state, in return for allowing slavery in New Mexico and Arizona, and also passing a tough Fugitive Slave Act.
- Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) - Opens the two territories to the possibility of slavery, allowing a vote on the issue ("popular sovereignty")
- Bleeding Kansas (1856) - What happened when the pro- and anti- slavery forces clashed during the vote in Kansas, which predictably ended up with two contesting governments.
- Dred Scott (1857) - The Supreme Court (still dominated by Southerners) declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, and said that slaves were property protected by the Fourth Amendment, placing anti-slavery laws in the North in jeopardy.
- Harpers Ferry (1858) - John Brown dreams of starting the "great slave rebellion" and tried to capture guns in a federal arsenal in what is now West Virginia (then still part of Virginia).
- Election of 1860 - Disintegration of Democratic Party along regional lines guarantees a Lincoln victory, even though he doesn't even appear on the ballot in most Southern states.

Those are just some of the highlights off the top of my head.  Clearly slavery was a central issue, particularly as the increasing population in the North began to give them a stranglehold on both the House of Representatives and (eventually) the Presidency.  The North was also growing more anti-slavery, though not nearly as stridently as believed by the South.  In fact, most of the anti-slavery sentiment in the North was when Northerners believed their states' rights were being violated (i.e. in the Fugitive Slave Act and Dred Scot v. Sanford). 

Also remember, every one of the 13 original states had slavery in the beginning.  Pennsylvania passed the first abolition law in 1780, but it didn't complete the task of freeing all its slaves until 1840.  Ohio was the first state to be created with abolition in its constitution.   New Jersey still had a few slaves in 1860.

[PhillyPhreak54]

Geo knocks it outta the park.

Nice job

[rjs246]

I've read lots of books since the last time I posted in this thread.

[Diomedes]

Game of Thrones doesn't count, Nerd.

[rjs246]

Game of Thrones doesn't count, Nerd.

True.

A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords:
Brainless garbage. And no one gives a shtein what every single character is wearing or eating or drinking at all times. Seriously awful writing. I have enjoyed them immensely.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
A very calming read full of philosophy, pseudo-psychology and lots of inaccuracies. I enjoyed it immensely, despite the fact that it is probably all lies and misinformation about motorcycle maintenance and mental illness.

V for Vendetta:
Brilliant.

Cosmopolis:
DeLillo is great. This book was short and strange and I enjoyed it immensely.

14 installments of The Walking Dead:
Mostly brainless garbage. I enjoyed them immensely.

The Sisters Brothers:
An anti-western in the vein of McCarthy but with a sense of humor. Fantastic.

Bossypants:
I am not afraid to admit that I would do sex to Tina Fey.

The Orchard Keeper:
A bleak look into southern poverty and crime in the vein of McCarthy. Written by McCarthy.

Fight Club:
farging yes.

Downtown Owl:
I had read some of Klosterman's writing online and enjoyed it immensely. This book? Also immensely enjoyed.



Immensely.

Currently reading 2312 (Kim Stanley Robinson) and Arguably (Christopher Hitchens).

[rjs246]

Finished 2312. It was the first scifi I've read since I was a kid. The thought-experiment part of the book was fascinating. Robinson's imagining of humanity's advances and failings 300 years into the future was fascinating and really well fleshed out. Totally grounded in reality, but with quite a bit of imagination mixed in. Sadly the story itself was really thin and the main character was a whiny spoiled shtein. Totally worth reading just to experience the future through the mind of an imaginative dude.

Also just tore through The Corrections by Johnathan Franzen. This was not a fun book to read. It was the opposite of fun. It was unfun. The characters were farging intolerable. But, of course, Franzen is a superb writer so from that point of view I appreciated the book. From another, less nerdy, point of view I would rather kick myself in the beanbag than read this book again.

[phillycrew]

Finished Duty by Robert Gates.  Interesting memoir from a SecDef that spanned two presidents and served in other WH.  I thought the inside perspective on decision-making was interesting.  For you Dems, it may give another perspective on Hillary v. Biden.

Now that I have some free time I might have to look through these lists.

[hbionic]

God damn, I'm so behind in my reading.

Just finished "The Wave". IGY, I think you read it right?

This book brings you up close and personal with waves...weird, but it's almost like I have a connection with waves now...like I understand and could surf them if I wanted to. At the same time, it makes you appreciate the behemoths. She also delves into the technical parts of a wave as well as how frequent these giant waves are around the world, and makes you appreciate their power.

Anyway, great read, hard to put down, I want to kiss Laird Hamilton.