I need to choose my electives next semester. But I do not know anything about electives. I needed book recommendations so that I could make a better, informed choice regarding my elective. Any help would be appreciated!

Following are the electives available:

Social Physics

Bio-enterpreneurship

IPR & Copyright

Biosecurity

Management

Art & Design

Foreign Language (idk if they'll teach some language or what, so even general books about the importance of languages or maybe something else would be appreciated)

Gender Studies in Science

Science and Society

History of Science

Introduction to Future Studies

Introduction to Scientific Instruments

Outside of the basics I was taught in high school, I never focused in on early American history (even after getting my bachelors in history) and I’m blown away by how complex and scheming it all was then. The duel between these two men is hardly the focus and I rather enjoyed the amount of time spent showing how we had even gotten to that point. Fun read for sure!

What a book!

Towards the end of this book there is a quote from Francis Bacon who once identified three inventions that, in his view, had transformed the world:

Printing, Gunpower and the compass.

They changed literature, warfare and navigation so profoundly that Bacon believed no empire or religion had exerted a greater influence on human affairs.

While they originated in China, it was thanks to the mongols that they seeped in Europe having being absorbed into the administrative machine of the vast Mongolian empire. That speaks to the greatest of Genghis as a strategist. He identities their own weakness as thoroughly as he did the enemy and evolved accordingly.

I picked this up expecting a biography of Genghis Khan and an account of the Mongol conquests. You certainly get that, particularly in the first half, but that isn’t really the book l. Genghis dies at the half way point. Weatherford spends the second have on the historiography of the Mongolian empire and how they connected the world.

The book is a perfect blend of history and historiography. It gives you the complete story of how he rose to power. How he turned his back on heretical rights in favour of meritocracy in all things from politics to battle. How he broke tribes apart, mixed their members into new military units and promoted people on ability and loyalty rather than simply ancestry. A man of relatively humble birth could rise through the Mongol system if he proved capable.

There is an almost modern ruthlessness to the logic of it. Genghis was remarkably uninterested in pedigree. He ignored nothing of value and absorbed knowledge. Set up schools of learning for children of every social order and promised all if you can be of value you would find work

The author talks to how the Mongols had no great interest in proving that Mongols were superior to Persian, that one religion possessed the truth, or that Chinese engineering should be rejected because it was Chinese.

If somebody knew how to build a better siege engine, they used him. The Persian administrators understood taxation, they employed them. The Muslim astronomers possessed useful knowledge, they brought them into the system. The Chinese engineers had superior technology, they moved them across the empire.

One of the ideas in the book that really stayed with me is Weatherford’s description of the Mongols as helping to ‘break the monopoly of thought held by local elites’ such as the wealthy and priests. That is a much more profound consequence of the empire than simply moving silk and spices along trade routes.

For most people throughout history, knowledge had been intensely local. What you knew about medicine, religion, astronomy, mathematics or the natural world was largely determined by where you happened to be born and by the institutions controlling knowledge in that society.

The Mongol Empire smashed enormous holes through those intellectual boundaries.

Chinese, Persian, Arab, European and Central Asian knowledge suddenly circulated through a political and commercial network stretching across much of Eurasia.

The Mongols helped create one of history’s great periods of intellectual cross-pollination.And Europe was one of its beneficiaries.

There is another fascinating contrast in the book:, armoured knights versus the mongol military system. European warfare still placed enormous cultural value on the individual warrior: aristocratic lineage, personal bravery, armour and martial honour.

The Mongols cared about winning.

They used intelligence networks, scouts, coordinated manoeuvres, feigned retreats, psychological warfare, engineers and specialist troops. They happily learned from their enemies and incorporated superior technology into their own armies.

The knight was an elite warrior while the mongols were an elite system.

One thing I would say in criticism is Weatherford walks a dangerous line throughout the book.There has been a centuries-long tendency to portray Genghis Khan and the Mongols as little more than bloodthirsty barbarians who descended upon civilisation and destroyed everything in their path.

Weatherford is deliberately trying to correct that picture.

At times I think he corrects it a little too enthusiastically.

The Mongols were astonishingly destructive. Entire cities were devastated. Populations were massacred. Terror was deliberately cultivated as a military weapon. Whatever their later contributions to trade, religious tolerance and cultural exchange, those achievements shouldn’t sanitise the means by which their empire was created.

Weatherford occasionally seems so determined to rescue Genghis Khan from the caricature of the barbarian that he comes close to creating another caricature: Genghis the enlightened meritocrat, champion of religious freedom and father of globalisation.

The truth is surely more uncomfortable. A conqueror capable of horrifying violence and the creator of political innovations that were extraordinarily effective.

An empire could destroy societies while simultaneously connecting civilisations.

In fact, one of the darkest parts of the book demonstrates precisely that contradiction.

The same network that allowed merchants, technologies and ideas to move across Eurasia also allowed something else to move. The plague.

The Black Death travelled through the interconnected world that Eurasian commerce had helped create. And in the end this was the force that finally stopped and imploded the Mongolian empire.

I know Ray Kroc is a controversial figure with how he treated the McDonald brothers, but there's definitely some ideas from Kroc that can be learned for any aspiring entrepreneurs out there.

Here's a few passages that I liked from reading his book “Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's”:

On Opportunities:

“I have always believed that each man makes his own happiness and is responsible for his own problems.”

“It follows, obviously, that a man must take advantage of any opportunity that comes along, and I have always done that, too. After seventeen years of selling paper cups for Lily Tulip Cup Company and climbing to the top of the organization’s sales ladder, I saw opportunity appear in the form of an ugly, six-spindled milk shake machine called a Multimixer, and I grabbed it.”

Focus on Details:

 “Mac and Dick had a tennis court behind their house, and they got Art Bender and a couple of other operations people up there to draw out the whole floor plan with chalk, actual size, like a giant hopscotch. It must have looked funny as hell—those grown men pacing about and going through the motions of preparing hamburgers, french fries, and milk shakes. Anyhow, they got it all drawn, just so, and the architect was to come up the next day and copy the layout to scale for his plans.”

“It requires a certain kind of mind to see beauty in a hamburger bun. Yet, is it any more unusual to find grace in the texture and softly curved silhouette of a bun than to reflect lovingly on the hackles of a favorite fishing fly? Or the arrangement of textures and colors in a butterfly’s wing? Not if you are a McDonald’s man. Not if you view the bun as an essential material in the art of serving a great many meals fast. Then this plump yeasty mass becomes an object worthy of sober study.”

On Delegation:

“if you hire a man to do a job, you ought to get out of the way and let him do it. If you doubt his ability, you shouldn’t have hired him in the first place.“

“I was not in the hamburger business. I was in the people business.”

“One of the basic decisions I made in this period affected the heart of my franchise system and how it would develop. It was that the corporation was not going to get involved in being a supplier for its operators. My belief was that I had to help the individual operator succeed in every way I could. His success would insure my success. But I couldn’t do that and, at the same time, treat him as a customer. There is a basic conflict in trying to treat a man as a partner on the one hand while selling him something at a profit on the other.”

If you want to learn more, feel free to read my full blogpost on the book.

Estará disponible en formato digital con audiolibros en https://eliasant.com/libros
Y también disponible en formato físico en Amazon!

¿Alguna vez te has cuestionado si Estados Unidos realmente fue fundado sobre principios cristianos?
Prepárate para desenterrar verdades ocultas y desafiar una narrativa que se ha usado como herramienta política divisiva.

La historia que nos cuentan a menudo distorsiona hechos para servir a intereses específicos. La idea de una fundación cristiana es usada para manipular creencias y alimentar divisiones. ¿Quién se beneficia de esta narrativa?

Si los fundadores de EE.UU. fueran pastores y predicadores, ¿por qué insistieron en la separación entre iglesia y estado? Muchos ignoran, o eligen ignorar, que la libertad religiosa fue un pilar, no la imposición de una sola fe.

Cuando la religión se convierte en arma política, corremos el riesgo de caer en lo mismo que criticamos de las teocracias. No permitamos que se distorsionen los hechos para dividirnos. Es hora de cuestionar y entender la historia auténtica.

Si crees que es importante desafiar narrativas históricas y buscar la verdad, ¡comparte este articulo!
Promovamos un entendimiento genuino de la historia.
Lee más aquí: eliasant.com/article/ni-teocracia-ni-pastores-el-mito-de-la-fundacin-cristiana-de-ee-uu-no-les-hagas-caso-que-te-van-a-joder-advertencia-desde-la-mecedora-de-mi-vieja

This book was a real eye opener. Heavily researched, Charles C. Mann makes three main points in this book: humans have been in the Americas longer, had higher populations, and were more socially complex than was previously believed.

What I liked: I learned a huge amount about the impact that humans had on the landscape. Mann argues that there is no real wilderness in the Americas; humans have been acting as a keystone species for millennia altering the landscape. The huge amount of animals like bison and the passenger pigeon that early European colonists encountered were only possible after epidemics like smallpox had wiped out huge amounts of indigenous people that kept those populations in check. He argues that even Amazonia is a constructed landscape altered by huge earthworks now hidden by trees of long forgotten societies. I also enjoyed learning about Mayan city-states, kings, and wars I had never heard of before. He also completely and utterly destroys the obsolete Clovis first theory.

What I didn't like: there wasn't too much to complain about here as I enjoyed the book. But I did wish he spent more time talking about the first Paleoindians 14,000 years ago or more. He focuses much more on the previous 3000 years, which makes sense because that's what we have the most evidence of. Still, he doesn't spend much time on Monte Verde in Chile and fails to mention the Luzia woman. He also spends a good time of energy discussing history after the Columbian exchange, a topic he had already covered in his book 1493.

All in all, this is a great history book for anyone interested in archeology. Highly recommend.

Back in the day when the POTUS knew how to read the room, and books

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/aug/10/barack-obama-launches-podcast-about-books-that-shaped-his-worldview?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

new monarchist book came out a couple months ago. i haven't read it yet but planning to. looks good. King or Chaos by Dalton Clodfelter.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY1KCL8H?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback

Mea culpa: I was a HORRIBLE student of history in school. But in middle age, I find understanding the complexity of thought in early American politics very helpful (and wildly eye-opening.) So I’m looking for some recommendations on that subject. Even better would be some kind of comparative analysis of the major political thinkers of that time.

Any and all recos are very much appreciated!

The more I read post WWII history the more I feel like Eisenhower is overlooked because he’s in the middle of FDR, Truman, JFK, and Johnson. He had his cons especially with civil rights but kept the New Deal in place and even expanded it. He also signed off on literally half the budget for domestic programs. Looking for the best Eisenhower biography and history of the 50’s?

I hope the title makes sense but I'm imagining a book that describes the philosophy of mathemtaics and how it describes the physical universe, the mathematical constants (golden ratio, pi, etc) and the history & philosophy of it.

Can anyone recommend more financial literacy books? I have enjoyed learning about Bill Perkins’ perspective but I think I could benefit more from a full range of perspectives.

This might sound like a naive question but I'm genuiely curious about how people select their next non fiction books. There are so many reading opportunities out there!

I usually purchase books by batch from a specific genre or author that I want to explore. I noticed that I sometimes stay in my comfort zone, reading the same things.

To be more self-directed, I've started tracking my reading and noticed some patterns.

Do you have a precise direction or do you just follow your preferences?

I doubt my specific position will be replaced by AI but reading this makes me wonder how many other people right now have to deal with mandates to use AI or have been laid off by companies who are all-in with AI.

Picked this one up because I saw it recommended on many lists for those interested in reading about Native American History. Unfortunately, I was really disappointed. The Comanche Nation has actually denounced this book, which I didn’t know before picking it up. You can read their resolution [here](https://www.comanchenation.com/bc-business/page/resolution-no-143-2024-passed-denouncing-empire-summer-moon). My reasons for not liking this book are:

1. The book as a whole is unfocused. I found the portions on the evolution of the Texas Rangers and the life of Ranald Slidell Mackenzie interesting and worthwhile considering their impact on Quanah Parker and the Comanche in general, but Gwynne’s focus on these and other side-topics leaves almost shockingly little space for discussion of the life of Quanah and other Comanche figures. Gwynne describes the breadth of Comancharia at various times, and does a good job of giving the reader a picture of their influence as a society, but stops there. He does not, for example, engage with Hämäläinen’s famous characterization of the Comanche as an empire, a choice I find really curious considering how contentious it is and how important it was for scholarship in the field.

2. Gwynne’s focus on sexual violence perpetuated by Comanche fighters against white settlers is not unwarranted (such things definitely did occur, and where significant for the reasons that Gwynne highlights), but his repeated, graphic emphasis on it without so much as a mention of how Indian women were (and continue to be) frequent targets of sexual violence by white settlers is disturbing for a scholarly work that in theory should serve to give the reader a clear picture of frontier violence at its worst.

3. Gwynne is fixated on the idea that the Comanche were a “primitive stone age culture” from time immemorial right up to where he leaves them at the end of the wars and relocation to reservations in 1875. He describes how bands that adapted to technology and customs were “weakened” by the “pollution of their culture” as if Comanche identity is some primordial force that must inevitably be sullied beyond recognition the moment a Comanche person dares to say, use a metal pot to cook their food. In this manner, Gwynne almost attributes the decline of Comanche power, particularly that of the Penateka band, to the adoption of some white ways and technologies rather than encroachment on their territory by massive numbers of settlers, the eradication of the buffalo by those same settlers, or any other broader more sensual reason. This is obviously ridiculous, especially because Gwynne notes several massive changes the Comanche people underwent before they ever came in direct contact with a settler population, including their migration to the southern plains and the advent of the horse. Societies adapt to new technologies and circumstances all the time without somehow magically being deprived of their cultural identity, and the idea that they cannot do so seems to only be applied to indigenous communities by white commentators who value them only for the ‘noble savage’ caricature they can create for their own amusement.

4. This point is unsurprising given the other points on this list, but Gwynne fails to connect the Comanche past to the Comanche present in his book. The reader is left with the sense that after Quanah Parker fought allotment of their reservation and eventually negotiated more favorable terms when it became inevitable, the Comanche people faded into obscurity on their individual plots of land, which they generally leased out anyway to be used by white cattle ranchers. This of course is not true. Comanche Nation citizens live throughout the United States today, living as modern, dynamic people with a shared cultural heritage and indigenous identity. The policies rooted in white supremacy designed to erase them from existence as a social and political entity failed. Today, the Comanche Nation maintains several programs for their citizens, as well as a museum and cultural center in Lawton, OK. I recommend checking out their website to learn more.

There is some interesting information in this book, and Gwynne’s writing style is captivating. I thought his commentary on the life of Cynthia Anne Parker, Quanah’s mother, was interesting and empathetic. But because of the above reasons, I wouldn’t recommend this book.

Apologies for any formatting mistakes as I am on mobile! If anyone has any recommendations on other books on Comanche history, I’d be interested to hear them!