United States History
tell me about your favorite books, documentaries, etc.
A New Project, Inspired by North Korean Defectors
Recently I’ve forced myself to spend some extended time offline, to try to gain personal clarity. It’s worked pretty well. I see that if I’m ever going to find a way to be happy, I have to find a way to leave more of my personal past in the past, and put more energy into becoming who I want to be.
I’ve been reading my way through a stack of books by North Korean defectors. I’ve written about some of them. I’ve also read A River in Darkness, by Masaji Ishikawa, Escape from Camp 14, by Blaine Harden, Dear Leader, by Jang Jin-Sung, and The Girl With Seven Names, by Hyeonseo Lee.
This has caused me to reflect a great deal about freedom and the value of freedom, and particularly how determined Americans seem to be to throw it away with both hands. From sitting members of Congress arguing that differing opinions are inciting violence, to blue states passing laws criminalizing what therapists can talk to their patients about, the government either is, or is threatening to be, part of our lives in ever more intrusive ways.
And all of the above has made me realize how deficient my education really was. I went to high school in a church basement, where what I learned about US history could be summed up as “they were all Christians who never intended for church and state to be separate.” In college, I learned nothing at all about US history other than that the Founders were all lying racist misogynist homophobic religious maniac slave holders who had no intention of setting up freedom for anyone other than wealthy white land-owning heterosexual Christian able-bodied cisgender males.
I read the US founding documents, after college graduation, for the first time—and mostly out of curiosity.
What Do You Recommend?
My new project is to educate myself on US history. I’ve ordered some textbooks (mostly from the pre-Woke era) on Amazon and found some YouTube channels with courses online.
I am very interested in any books, documentaries, or other resources you may recommend, and from a variety of perspectives. I can’t promise to read or watch them all, but I’ll consider them all, and I’ll definitely be writing about this going forward: book reviews and likely other related topics, too.
Edit: I gave myself a budget of $100 to start with and that’s gone, based on your excellent recommendations, but please keep them coming. I will give myself a new allowance in June, and some of the books being recommended are on Kindle Unlimited and thus free. Thank you!!
Housekeeping: Comments are open for paid subscribers, as they are on most posts. If you would like a paid subscription but cannot afford one, email hollymathnerd at gmail dot com and I’ll give you a free year.
My husband and I are both graduates of the US Naval Academy and I have a MS in American Gov and one of the resources we love to revisit is Great Courses History of the United States. It is available on audible. It was published in 2013 so it was early enough to not have revisions. I like to hear the history as opposed to reading because it brings it to life a bit more. It breaks my heart to hear of your college experience of US History and our founding fathers...not because America is perfect but because one doesn’t have to travel too far around the world to realize that the radical pursuit of individual liberty is worth the heavy burden of personal responsibility required to make it work.
If you want an understanding of the military history of the US, I cannot recommend anything by Rick Atkinson enough. I’m reading “The British Are Coming” now and it captures the Revolutionary War in a very readable way. His “Liberation Trilogy” is the acme of the story of American forces in Europe in the Second World War.