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Then I think you would probably enjoy Colin Woodard’s “American Nations - A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America”

If you're looking for some insights into why it's like that, you should make some time to read American Nations [0]. It connects a lot of dots. Probably the best book I read/listened to last year.

[0] www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures/dp/0143122029

Yes, I've read it.

It's possible to quibble with how some of the cultural areas are delimited. I would've drawn the lines differently - I think the divisions in Colin Woodard's more recent "American Nations" are more accurate (although also imperfect). The main takeaway is that the USA is incredibly culturally diverse, which is why it's so difficult to get things done on the federal level and why it'd probably be better served by even less centralization in government policy.

I found this book valuable, but for me it was preaching to the choir - it's pretty compatible with my own politics, and meshes with my own experience living in each of California, New York, and Texas.

The Troy rising trilogy by John Ringo. An excellent military science fiction book with a Libertarian lean. My favourite is the first in the trilogy called live free or die. Basically tells the story of how to bootstrap a whole world. Pays homage to a lot of other science fiction. If you complete this trilogy and are left wanting more then I suggest the legacy of the Aldenata and the black tide rising series.

American nations by Colin Woodward. Great book to understand the historical underpinnings of different regions in America.

Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons (who wrote Hyperion). Great horror scifi book with a nice concept. Fairly long though.

Thwarting enemies at home and abroad by William R Johnson. If you like spy novels or it’s text book albeit somewhat dated now likely on counter espionage.

On technical books I read the Linux programming interface by Michael Kerrisk. Really interesting incredibly detailed Linux book and always a great reference. Find myself keeping going back to it.

Ready player one the book by Ernest Cline. Way different than the movie. I actually preferred it as the movie justifiability leaves a lot out and condenses the story.

Colin Woodard: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America [2011]

Woddard's take on Trump victory

https://medium.com/s/balkanized-america/the-american-nations...

All consumed as audiobooks.

American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America - Colin Woodard;
I learned much about early US history.

Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman - Jon Krakauer

Find Me - Laura van den Berg

Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel

The Dog Stars - Peter Heller

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage - Alfred Lansing;
I was fortunate enough to read this right before Seveneves, so the references made immediate sense. Endurance looks to be popular on this list/this year. How many were inspired by Seveneves?

Seveneves - Neal Stephenson

The Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson

Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age - Michael Riordan, Lillian Hoddeson;
I highly recommend this book. Like The Making of the Atomic Bomb, but for the transistor. Lots of background on John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain. I was unaware of the great legacy of John Bardeen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bardeen

The Making of the Atomic Bomb - Richard Rhodes;
If you have not read this book, read it, just for the summary of discoveries that lead to the atomic bomb.

Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank

The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage - Anthony Brandt

The Worst Journey in the World - Apsley Cherry-Garrard

The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen - Stephen R. Bown

I am looking for other books similar to Crystal Fire and The Making of the Atomic Bomb, that cover the history of scientific and technological discoveries. Any recommendations?

"American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America" by Colin Woodward.

The illuminating thing for me was the history of different groups, where they were from, where they settled, where they migrated and basically how these cultures remain in those areas for the most part.

Maybe I had a naive view before, but after moving from one region to another, it was enlightening to see things described this way and help understand aspects of southern culture.

Nope.

Most of what you see in social media and mainstream media is intended to spark discussions, get eyeballs/likes/follows and go 'viral' (in the digital sense).

Most people that disagree with the politics of people in office can vote them out. None of the countries you listed, to my knowledge, are places where every citizen has that capability.

There have been massive differences in the US since foreigners came here (i.e. non Native Americans). They all brought their own cultural, religious and other beliefs with them.

You should check out the book American Nations by Colin Woodard [0] it goes into detail about how these different areas formed and who settled those areas pretty much dictates present day politics. These aren't new concepts either - political parties use these to decide where to campaign for decades now. A map that represents the areas in question. [1]

0 - https://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cul...

1 - https://www.businessinsider.com/the-11-nations-of-the-united...

Edit: answered the question.

Being fully conscious of privilege issues here... your comment sounds like Outrage Addiction to me.

Yes, aware of problems with vote access. But those problems are fundamentally legislative, and won't be solved by treating the symptoms. Go to a state with sensible voting laws (my beloved Minnesota), and the system is immune, thanks to same day registration and provisional ballots. Even a concerted purge effort would crash against the well-designed system. These short-term election issues are a product of fundamentally bad design. Focus on fixing the design, not "protest".

Moreover - and speaking of privileged perspective - there is nothing that says you can't pay attention to the news and read novels, memoirs, self-help books, and of course the classics. There is no plausible political situation where you can't squeeze an hour a day off your Twitter feed in order to spend it reading, say, American Nations, or The Cooking Gene, and learn some of the historical roots behind the news that's ruining your blood pressure today.

There's a real distinction between urgent and important. I can recommend multiple good books on exactly that.

I wonder if this could be connected to Colin Woodard's argument in his book American Nations (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670022969/) that there are eleven basic regional cultures in North America. According to his map (https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/55b273a2371d2211008b9...), North Carolina sits right at the intersection of three of them -- Tidewater in the north, Deep South in the south, and Greater Appalachia in the west. You'd expect to see lots of linguistic diversity in a place where different cultures are rubbing up against each other.

Interestingly, Woodard's book echoes an earlier work, Joel Garreau's 1981 The Nine Nations of North America (https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Nations-North-America/dp/0380578...). Garreau, however, put all of NC inside his "Dixie" nation, the analogue to Woodard's "Deep South." I wonder how much of this can be chalked up to differences in methodology, and how much to demographic shifts in the three decades separating Woodard's work from Garreau's.

That book is so totally "OMG, what's WRONG with those people???" Emphasis "those people."

While that's one interpretation, there's Long been conflict in the US on the rural-urban axis - see Andrew Jackson's vision versus Alexander Hamilton's vision

Race is only useful in this sort of thing as a predictor of rough economic class, and even then it's less than useful. IOW, I don't think it's specifically race.

A better resource is "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America"
http://www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cult...

For those interested in the relevant history that lead the US to this point, may I suggest American Character by Colin Woodard [1].

The ideology that drives the oligarchy (and arguably modern libertarianism) is descended from that which informed the founding of the Carolina and West Indian slave colonies.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/American-Character-History-Struggle-In...

Colin Woodard's previous book, American Nations was the most interesting book I read last year.

Colin Woodward wrote "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (ISBN-13: 978-0143122029)" and basically, the people who settled the center of the tech industry were Yankee Progressives, the sort who send third sons to be missionaries around the world. You have to accept the premise that somehow, the past stains present-day thinking more than is easily explainable, but this does not stop people who have demographically interesting professions from using this sort of thing.