#literature

8 Essential Non-Fiction Books.

1) When Pride Still Mattered, by David Maraniss. This book is not only the definitive biography of Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach, it is a prism into an America that is gone. Maraniss used Lombardi’s reputation and life to explain the coach’s life, but also a time when your word was bond, and hard work, craftsmanship, and pride in one’s self and work was paramount. Lombardi spend years as a football coach at a small Catholic High school, and he scratched and clawed his way to the top. There was no building of a ‘brand’, no posing for the cameras, and no handouts. It’s a fantastic journey into a more difficult, and perhaps better, America.

2) Carnage and Culture, by Victor Davis Hanson. There are reasons why the Christian West has won key battles throughout history. Hanson details all the key decisions, predicated on the culture of the West, that helped the British win at Rorke’s Drift, Cortez win at Tenochtitlan, and the Americans to win at Midway. There are other important battles talked about in the book. The chapter I go to repeatedly is the one on Cortez in Mexico. How a much smaller group of Spaniards could take down a powerful and violent Aztec Empire is fascinating. Hanson’s thesis is solid, and he impeccably defends it.

3) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, written by Himself. This is the first of the autobiographies, and the most raw. A young Douglass intuitively recognized not only the double and triple standards of society in his young life, he learned, and unashamedly described, human nature. The worst personality traits of each sex, the way power corrupts a soul, the power of literacy – Douglass learned them all before he was ten. A short read, but it has the depth of a much longer book.

4) The Underground History of American Education, by John Taylor Gatto. Gatto was a schoolteacher for 30 years. The last decade of his career he researched the creation and motivation behind the American public school system. What he found is both fascinating and disturbing. Disturbing is probably not a strong enough word. A small group of powerful people wanted a mass of malleable, thoughtless citizens who would be good factory workers and soldiers. To create the Elite top of the pyramid, look at the curriculum of the 8 top boarding schools in the United States (Kent, Hotchkiss et al). To create the managers of society, look at where I went, Brooklyn Tech High School. To look at how to create millions of unthinking consumers, take a walk through your local K-12 system. If you really want to get black pilled, read the Common Core State Standards. Gatto rips the cover off the system and shows you some dirty secrets. Often people ask me “what can one person do?” You can do what John Taylor Gatto did.

5) Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson. When they look back at the ‘woke’ era, this incident, meticulously recounted by the authors, will be one of the bellwethers of the time. 3 young men, all white and well off, were accused of a rape they did not commit. Because of their race and economic status, the Corporate Media told the American people, for months, that they were rapists and racists. The rhetoric and actions of the press, the awful behavior of the school administration and many professors, show you that the media and woke culture are 2 of the most despicable entities ever let loose within American society. The future Robot Historians will wonder why we didn’t put the press and university administrators on an ice floe and push them into the sea.

6) The Great Bridge, by David McCullough. The Brooklyn Bridge construction project began right after the Civil War. It is still one of the most busy and functional bridges today. How did they do it? Who dreamed it up and built it? There was no electricity. There were no combustion engines. And yet, the bridge towers are 275 feet high, and one of them is grounded on bedrock. The Manhattan tower never made it down to bedrock. They were so deep under the riverbed, and the silt was so thick, Roebling, the chief engineer, made the executive decision to anchor the tower and move forward. In an era of small to no government help, a gold standard, no unions, no bailouts … you get a look at how things got done and the intellectual firepower of the men who got them done. One of the best post-Civil War books of all time.

7) The Power Broker, by Robert Caro. This book won the Pulitzer Prize. Caro goes through the life of Robert Moses, one man who irrevocably changed the shape of arguably the most important city on earth: New York City. Moses wasn’t interested in money, but he was interested in power. Once he learned how to get it, he got more, and he learned how to keep it.
The whole thing can be read here: https://education-ny.blogspot.com/2020/04/8-non-fiction-must-read-books-mr.html
My school is here: https://thefreelanceteacher.teacha

Recorded in October 2019. Rumi was born in 1207, and died in 1273. The translation, by R. A. Nicholson, the greatest Rumi scholar in the English language, was made in 1898. The poem is taken from the Diwani Shamsi Tabriz, a collection of 3,229 lyric poems (called “ghazals”) which is considered one of the greatest works of Persian literature. A diwan is a collection of poems; Shams-i-Tabrizi was the spiritual teacher and friend of the poet, in whose honour the work was named. It is poem 48 in Nicholson’s collection of Selected Poems; in the original, it is ghazal number 3051.

A commentary on a few points that may potentially be obscure:

“Thou wert a favourite falcon, kept in captivity by an old woman.”—Nicholson informs us that a story of a “white falcon, whose beak and claws were cut by a vile old woman,” is related in the Masnavi. With respect to the falcon-drum, he says: “When the huntsman wishes to call his bird back, he beats a drum: the hawk, having an affection for the drum, returns speedily.” He adds that, according to Kaempfer, “it is carried by kings and nobles on the left side of their saddles.” The beater of the drum, then, seems to be God; the old woman, the evil of this world.

“Thou wert a love-lorn nightingale among owls.”—The owl is a major predator of the nightingale. Hence the owls, I presume, represent the ills of this life; the rose-garden, the world hereafter and refuge with God. Presumably Rumi likens the subject of this poem to a nightingale because of his beauty of soul, since the nightingale is renowned for its beauty of song; calls it love-lorn, as a metaphor for yearning to be with God.

“The tavern of Eternity.”—Meaning God.

“The world gave thee false clues, like a ghoul.”—A ghoul is the Arabic and Persian word for a kind of demon.

“Since thou art now the sun, why dost thou wear a tiara?”—Presumably, he who enjoys eternal bliss, has no need of earthly power. “Why seek a girdle, since thou art gone from the middle?”—Nicholson explains that “to be gone from the middle” is a Persian idiom meaning “to die,” and that it is analogous with the Latin phrase “e media abire.”

“I have heard that thou art gazing with distorted eyes upon thy soul,” etc.—Nicholson: “You look back with regret on the life of your individual soul, which is now exalted above life.”

“Since thou hast taken refuge with so loving a friend.”—Nicholson: “The soul, waking from the dark night of the world, enjoys eternal day in the bosom of God.”