history – Marlo Yonocruz

Book notes: Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi

Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi book summary review and key ideas.

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi

Synopsis:

“Some Americans cling desperately to the myth that we are living in a post-racial society, that the election of the first Black president spelled the doom of racism. In fact, racist thought is alive and well in America – more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues in Stamped from the Beginning, if we have any hope of grappling with this stark reality, we must first understand how racist ideas were developed, disseminated, and enshrined in American society.

In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. Stamped from the Beginning uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals – Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis. – to offer a window into the contentious debates between assimilationists and segregationists and between racists and antiracists.”

Book notes: A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles book summary review and key ideas.

A Gentleman in Moscow: A Novel by Amor Towles

Synopsis:

“From the New York Times best-selling author of Rules of Civility – a transporting novel about a man who is ordered to spend the rest of his life inside a luxury hotel.

In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.” -Audible

Book notes: The Dictator’s Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

The Dictator’s handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith book summary.

The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith

Synopsis:

“For 18 years, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith have been revolutionizing the study of politics by turning conventional wisdom on its head. They start from a single assertion: Leaders do whatever keeps them in power. They don’t care about the “national interest” – or even their subjects – unless they have to.

Book notes: Tribe by Sebastian Junger

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger book summary.

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger

Synopsis: “Tribal society has been exerting an almost gravitational pull on Westerners for hundreds of years, and the reason lies deep in our evolutionary past as a communal species.

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