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4.5 on Amazon
10 HN comments

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
Dava Sobel
4.5 on Amazon
5 HN comments

The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
Malcolm Gladwell and Pushkin Industries
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3 HN comments

Energy and Civilization: A History (The MIT Press)
Vaclav Smil
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Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
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Common Sense: The Origin and Design of Government
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2 HN comments

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition
Jared Diamond
4.5 on Amazon
2 HN comments

The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World
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2 HN comments

Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork
Reeves Wiedeman
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2 HN comments

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World (Politics of Place)
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How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
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Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
Jane Mayer
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Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
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1 HN comments

In Cold Blood
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A History of the World in 6 Glasses
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wpietrionApr 30, 2021
I don't think anybody's consciousness is "determined" by anything. But there are strong correlations. The language people speak, their religion, their customs, and many of their views are usually taken from the people around them growing up. That's the whole point of culture, after all: inter-generational transmission of non-genetic adaptation.
Some of that cultural heritages is good, some bad. All of it should be consciously examined. But conscious thought is small and slow compared to our vast cultural inheritance, so it's inevitable that many of people's beliefs and behaviors will be unexamined. More so if they are "frankly embarrassed" by anybody doing that examination in their presence.
I am not only a well-off white male. But I'm definitely those things, and they have had an influence. That's especially true in a society where well-off white men drew strong legal and cultural divisions between well-off white men and everybody else. Your unwillingness to examine whiteness is part of that culture.
So if you are seriously concerned about crimes against humanity (hint: you probably aren't) you should really take some time to look at the cultural and ideological factors behind America's wide array of those. A good place to start: Who were the perpetrators of those crimes? If you can sit with that question for as long as 30 seconds, you might be ready to read Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning" or Loewen's "Sundown Towns".