Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

Truman by David McCullough: https://www.goodreads.com/zh/book/show/2279

Really amazing biography about a man who became president by accident and guided country during the initial years of the atomic age. He was perfect, but the book depicts him to be a great person and a good president .

The End of the World Is just Beginning: https://www.amazon.com/End-World-Just-Beginning-Globalizatio...

Uses lots of data to back up his hypothesis two events

1. the US no longer policing the world 2) demographic shifts in most countries not reproducing

have create a situation where the the world as we know it is changing, and things are only going to get worse, the peace we know and the supplies we rely on will no longer exist soon.

Countries like China and most of West Europe are completely fucked because their populations are going to decrease by > 50% in the next few decades and they do not have the workforce or immigration policies in place to solve these problems. Ironically, he claims the US is in the best position because we have all the natural resources we need, we are not dying demographically, and Mexico and Canada are not threats.

We should expect to see less peace, more nationalism and overall a lot more instability in the future.

> I’d look for societies that were individualistic rather than authoritarian as polygamy seems to me to be a function of patriarchy and power consolidation

I wonder whether patriarchy is a consequence of polygamy rather than a cause.

It's very hard to compete with a person who has dozens or hundreds of children. And women cannot have more ten or so children, even in a non-monogamous setting.

This advantage is most visible in a hereditary aristocracy where a man could have a stable base of heirs, a large group of natural allies and the political opportunities of arranged marriages for children.

But even working class farmers would have the benefit of more free labour, and the middle class merchants could enjoy networks of trust in which to conduct commerce.

Although monogamous and eventually growing out of the middle class, the first / second Rothschilds are an example of the latter business benefit of having many competent adult children.

Interesting theory. If I tell you I read Jurassic Park, does that that mean I'm a brontosaurus?

Une Histoire Populaire du Baseball

https://blacklephant.com/ouvrage/une-histoire-populaire-du-b...

Yes, a book about baseball written by a Frenchman. Interesting that did focus on the "big names" (Ruth, Gehrig, Mayes, etc.) but instead focused on Edith Houghton, Victor Starffin, Moses Walker, Bonnie Baker, Bill Veeck, Effa Manley, Amanda Clement, AG Spalding, Bill Lee, and Juile Croteua.

Yes, he talks about other famous players, but it certainly is a different perspective. As an amateur baseball historian, it was well written and different from what I'm use to reading.

If you can overcome the small problem of it being written in French, and you like baseball, I highly recommend it.

Just finished The Farfarers by Farley Mowat. Mowat tells a compelling speculative history of seafarers reaching North America (and Iceland and Greenland) before the Vikings. I don't necessary believe it all, but he certainly asks compelling questions that don't seem to be answered satisfactorily by "real" historians and archeologists. It's an interesting reminder that despite all we do know (or think we know), there's an awful lot we don't.