I just finished Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer, and found it very interesting (though it's long at 900 pages). It's a work of cultural history which identifies four dominant British cultures in America, and links them to the regions of Britain they came from.
I found it interesting for reasons that are hard to describe without going into excruciating detail, and recommend it to anyone who is interested in creating deliberate culture, or thinks that 900 pages of culture and history sounds like a good time. "Folkways" is the term Fischer used to describe a collection of "ways"- like time ways, death ways, power ways, wealth ways, and so on. Some of the ways strongly resonated with me (like the Puritan time way of "improving the time") but other ways were simply repulsive, which made the conflicts between groups more interesting- while I could share the Puritans' and Quakers' disdain of the Cavaliers, it took a bit of mental growth to fully understand the Puritans' and Quakers' disdain for each other. (I found myself roughly midway between them.)
And everyone disdained my ancestors, the North Britons. I changed my surname from Potts during my Extropian phase years ago. Recently I learned that the Pottses lived as Border Reivers, part of the ancestral group of the Scots-Irish and other marginal Brits from the Border region who migrated to the Colonies and became the ancestors of the hillbillies, white trash and crackers in the U.S.
This is the monthly thread for posting media of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Post what you're reading, listening to, watching, and your opinion of it. Post recommendations to blogs. Post whatever media you feel like discussing! To see previous recommendations, check out the older threads.
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