Hacker News Books

I highly recommend checking out the book 'White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America' from your local library! A fantastic read about the historical realities of class in America. It reads quite academically, so I think some here would enjoy that style.

...are stupid even to contemplate while we're still increasing carbon emissions. If you actually cared about the impact — and weren't just cynically cashing in on environmentalism's recapitulated caché — you'd be shorting big markets. The biggest threat to the world is unbridled capitalism, which VC's like you are incapable of abandoning. May as well ask a fish to bicycle.

This post is a pitiable joke, whose highest purpose is to stand in a museum, one day, as a testament to how blindly we charged into the apocalypse. I only hope that museum's curated by our children, and not whatever species finds our remains.

For a good, hard look at why I believe this, read Naomi Klein's "This Changes Everything," and Peter Frase's "Four Futures."

If you're daring enough, you can follow those with Nancy Isenberg's "White Trash," and Barbara Ehrenreich's "Dancing in the Streets" and "Witches, Midwives, & Nurses" for a deep look at how and how long we've been going wrong.

If that all doesn't make you straight up suicidal (let alone quit maintaining your startup pyramid scheme), I have more reading suggestions for how to turn this ship around.

American identity politics started long before Trump, and long before the GOP's modern assault on governance. I just finished reading; White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America - it was illuminating.

The war against "cultural elites" started with the first "mountain men" that ran for office in contrast to the 'educated elites' from "the North". Sound familiar?

It's not liberals, leftists or elitists who started the war on manual labor - they used it to separate themselves a long time ago.

This of course was connected to slavery, which left the south under-educated and feeling personally attacked. Too much to cover here, just read the book!

Recommendations:

Non Fiction: White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

https://smile.amazon.com/White-Trash-400-Year-History-Americ...

It sometimes reads like "A People's History of the United States", but the chapter about Andrew Jackson's election would seem like they were forcing the analogies to the 2016 election if not for the fact that it was published beforehand.

Fiction: American Gods
https://smile.amazon.com/American-Gods-Tenth-Anniversary-Nov...

I think lots of people will like this book, but certainly those who are into road trips across America.