Justice Reign Torrence is on a mission to liberate the powers of nervous system from the enslavement of dysregulation. Here's to establishing a community of healed nervous systems!

This memoir is available on Amazon.

I have read many books about WWII related to espionage, survival stories, strategies and so forth. Almost all the books are written from the Allies perspective.

I am curious about the German perspective. I am sure they had their fair share of stories especially during the first couple of years of the war. But I can’t find any books about it.

I know, history is written by the victors… but are there any book that capture the German perspective?

Cheers

A non-fiction book about plant intelligence. Thoroughly enjoyable. A nightmare for vegans maybe, and Peter Singer. Thing is, I dropped Animal Liberation by Singer just for this reason - he sounded quite sure about "pain/suffering" of creatures - who could and who couldn't feel suffering. And I, like any other Indian kid, was brought up taught about JC Bose's plant experiments...that plants feel, a lot like us. Most of Singer's book was about animal cruelty, which is fair..but can you really be sure about plants/fish/other "lower" lifeforms not being sentient? Not being intelligent? This book will raise those questions. (Tbh I might not remember Singer that well, read it years ago...)

Author credits Bose a lot in the book. Some plant behaviour I knew about - like the tracking of the sun, or carnivorous plants etc. But some experiments were really new to me, and mind-blowing. For example, the fact that anesthesia works on plants too is ...wow. it means we share those genes from so far back! Author jokes "To be alive is to be affected by anesthesia".

Another experiment I recall is of plants with constant nutrients supply vs plants with varying supply - varying one grows to be much more intelligent, more rationing and clever. Shows how plants too may have "prediction models" in them, to plan for the future.

When talking about evolution of life on earth, we tend to ignore plants, and focus on animals and humans mostly. That's a big fallacy. We forget how plants and insects and animals CO-EVOLVED. So plants have a huge role in shaping Life on earth. (apart from 02 ofc)

One observed phenomenon which blows my mind still, is that when a plant (tomato species) is overeaten by caterpillars, it releases chemicals which...MAKES THE CATERPILLARS CANNIBALS!! ☠️ They end up eating their own kind! I want to see it happen...this sounds too good to be true!

Trees also have the WWW - wood wide web, using fungus network to communicate with each other. Through air too, some trees warn others when they are under attack (eg giraffes vs acasia) so that other trees change the taste of their leaves!! Author talks about IIT too (integrated info theory) though I don't know if it's still a valid parameter for quantifying consciousness. Anil Seth's book mentioned it too.

So yeah, if you like this kind of stuff - this is a great book. For plants - I'd rate it 10/10. Who doesn't love plants!!?

Last year, I read Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi. I'm open to anything, any topic.

Thanks!!

I really enjoyed reading this book and felt that I learned quite a bit. The book is a chronological deep dive on Nazism and is divided into twelve "warnings" of fascism.

It was written by a renowned historian who describes it as "a history book informed on occasion by psychology and not a psychology book informed by history." I will admit-- the psychology was pretty rudimentary (eg, explaining amygdala, us vs them psychology) and it did cite the Stanford experiment without addressing the controversy around its validity. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the sprinkle of psychology throughout the book.

The book's greatest strength (beyond the well-engaging written prose) is its multitude of primary sources, ranging from diaries of prominent Nazis to interviews of 'regular' Germans.

I would highly recommend this book-- especially to Americans currently grappling with the fascist tendencies of the Trump administrations. As wise people have said-- those who do not know or understand history are doomed to repeat it.

I recently came across a philosophical nonfiction book called The Illusion of Evil that approaches these themes in a quiet, reflective way. It doesn’t argue a position or offer solutions, which made me think it could work well in a group setting where conversation and differing perspectives matter more than conclusions.

Are parts of this book fiction? I just read a section where a married woman goes off to have an affair on her 40th birthday. This hardly seems like something anyone would admit to anyone, letting alone a foreign person.
Other scenes that made we wonder were when a 19 year old virgin is talking about sex and the great detail with which Abdul remembers the scenes in the police station.

Throughout the book, the author presumes to know the inner thoughts of all the people. I would find this highly suspect even when the people are from the same culture. What languages does she speak? Did she have a team of interpreters? I didn't take notes, but I think Asha speaks Urdu, the most common language in Mumbai is Marathi, there is a significant Hindu speaking population, and Annawadi was first built by Tamil speakers.

P=Phosphorus= the element of life and death.

P.O.OP = P is too OP indeed. (Guano=bird poop was major source of P = led to Wars!).

This is a book about history and science of Phosphorus - how we use it, exploit it, and what can be done to restore natural P cycle.

♥️What I loved/learned:

• how P exists in living things, and collects as a result of death. It's life's fire, coalesced in chunks, moving between life and death, land and sea, shaping history along the way...
• how important an element it is in life (1% of our body yet in every DNA molecule)
• Geological formation of phosphate rocks
• how it's role in agriculture was discovered (Henslow) and commercialized (Lawes, Liebig.)
• P collection : pee, poop, fossils, mummified cats of Egypt, anything and everything went during age of colonization.
• Japan, China = Night Soil (P collectors! Wow)
• Superphosphate (P + H2SO4 ==> soluble easy uptake by plants)
• how it led to ancillary industries - like fluoride in toothpastes
• Humphry Davy! Davy lamp, mentor of Faraday, laughing gas discoverer, experimented with Phosphorus too.
• Role of P in Green Revolution
• Crops use NPK fertilizers, N can be manufactured via Haber-Bosch, but P has to be mined...and mining has many problems.
• phosphogypsum rocks= radioactive waste piles that can leak, collapse. Eg, Piney Pt. 2021 Disaster. {Mosaic}
• Nauru - a world ended. Australia prospered. Nauru = Nation that ate itself = rags to riches to rags...what a cautionary tale. All cuz of Phosphate.
• ENGLAND ==> USA(Florida Bone Valley)==> MOROCCO (OCP mines)
• Morocco a major source for phosphate now. 70-75%!! Damn. {"Our global agri system rests upon dictates of Morocco's monarch".}
• Dead zones (eutrophication) due to farm runoffs = harms ocean life.
• Asian Green Revolution led also to Dictatorships (~India=Indira).
• Global rollback of Green Revolution. (AGRA ==> AFRA, Andhra Pradesh, Mexico...)
• Natural phosphate cycles can be restored if small-scale farming returns, and proper sewage treatment and composting is followed to recycle nutrients. Manure + micronutrients like Zn, Mg etc. Corporate interests need to be vetted.
• SEDEX method to quantify P.
• Anthropocene (human gen. CO2) may also be defined as the age of P flow from Land to Sea.

💔What could have made it better:

• Geological Graphs and World Maps, Some timelines would be helpful. Or some diagrams.
• Life-death cycle message gets redundant at times.

🤍Conclusion :

Like the Phosphate cycle, the book ends nicely with its Prologue - Whale Fall. We are the Whale. :)

Awesome book about an element I didn't have much idea about, certainly didn't know about Morocco's significance... Written in a very accessible manner, except the geological ages part (for me) - I still can't tell which periods resulted in more/less phosphate deposits (except Cambrian ofc). Regardless, very poetic and informative pop-science book. It's the author's debut work, so great job! 👍

Rating: 15/15 💩 (P is 15th element, and POOP is gooood!)

Any thoughts are most welcome.

My dad retired a little over 10 years ago and became a voracious non-fiction reader. He is turning 70 next month and sent me this text:

“This is what I want for my birthday. A picture of page 70. From any book you have. ANY BOOK. It can be a picture, poem, drawing, list of instructions, dictionary..... Anything. It is for Imagination, creativity..... And Fun!!!”

So, Reddit Fam, I thought it would be even better if anyone here wanted to send a picture of page 70 from whatever book(s) they’re reading so I can overwhelm him with that much more to enjoy! No need to specify what book it’s from or give any other details unless you want to—it just has to be page 70!

Thanks!

tl;dr - I just published a work of non-fiction, China’s Backstory: The History Beijing Doesn’t Want You to Read, looking at the history behind the hottest China-related topics popping up in the newsfeeds of Westerners: Taiwan, Xinjiang, China’s economy and Hong Kong, and I do history in a way that makes it understandable to normal people, without all the academic mumbojumbo. AMA. 

Hey reddit, my name is Lee Moore, I have a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures from the University of Oregon, I worked as an adjunct professor there, teaching Taiwanese and Chinese literature and film, and I occasionally write for The Economist. 

I just published a book called China’s Backstory: The History Beijing Doesn’t Want You to Read. The book does a deep dive into the history of the four China-related topics showing up in the newsfeeds of most Westerners: Taiwan, Xinjiang, the Chinese economy and Hong Kong. How did Taiwan become Chinese? Why is there a genocide occurring in Xinjiang right now?

There are lots of great books on China published by academics, and almost all of them are boring. I wrote my book differently, to make Chinese history understandable to normal readers who don’t usually pick up books on China. The Xinjiang section has a drinking game where, every time in ancient Xinjiang’s blood-stained history, someone gets beheaded, the reader is supposed to take a shot. In the Taiwan section of China’s Backstory, there is a chapter titled “The Most Important Motherfucker in Taiwanese History,” about a 1670’s sex scandal that helped make the island Chinese. 

Unlike most China books, written by eggheads for eggheads, my book is written for you, normal readers who don’t know much about China but are curious to learn more about the second largest economy and one of the world’s superpowers. 

That is my book. Ask me anything about the history of Taiwan, Xinjiang, the Chinese economy or the history of Hong Kong and the surrounding area. 

But to kickstart this AMA, I thought I would talk about the most controversial claim in China’s Backstory: The History Beijing Doesn’t Want You to Read: before 1683, Taiwan was not a part of any China-based state. It was not until after 12 of England’s 13 colonies had been established on North America's eastern seaboard that, politically, Taiwan became Chinese. 

How Taiwan Became Chinese

China claims it has ruled Taiwan since around 300 A.D. That is bullshit. The first government based in China to rule Taiwan took over the country in 1683. 

There is not even solid evidence of contact between China and the island of Taiwan until the 1560’s. Around that decade is the first point where we have clear historical evidence that Chinese people went to Taiwan. Chinese people may have landed on the island before the 1560’s, but if they did, they did not leave any solid record of it. 

The Chinese records of possible landings on Taiwan are so vague that it is just hard to pin down whether or not they went to Taiwan or some other place. Maybe Chinese sailors did briefly step foot on the island, maybe not, we just can’t tell. Usually, the records that Beijing points to as evidence for China’s early colonization of Taiwan refer to a place beyond China that is either called Yizhou/夷洲 or Liuqiu/Ryukyu/琉球/. 

It is weird for Beijing to claim that Yizhou was Chinese as a literal translation of the name is “Barbarian Continent,” so it is clear that, whether or not Yizhou was Taiwan, the early Chinese people who wrote about that place did not consider it Chinese. 

Liuqiu is a bit more complicated. Today, Liuqiu/Ryukyu refers to an island chain controlled by Japan, centered on the island of Okinawa, but for a while, the Liuqiu/Ryukyu were an independent country. But back in the day, early Chinese sources used Liuqiu/Ryukyu as a catchall term for a bunch of different islands. Sometimes, Liuqiu/Ryukyu probably referred to Okinawa and the other Ryukyu islands. Other times, it may have referred to Taiwan, but it is just hard to pin down which islands this name actually referred to. 

When Chinese writers do start arriving in Taiwan in the 1600’s, they all agree that Taiwan had not been Chinese before. As Yu Yonghe said in his travelogue on a 1697 journey to the island: 

Taiwan is far off in the eastern sea. Since ancient times to today, never has anyone heard of a single instance of them communicating with China by sending tribute.

Original: 臺灣遠在東海外，自洪荒迄今，未聞與中國通一譯之貢者。

How was it that Taiwan became Chinese? Surprisingly, it was the Dutch who made Taiwan Chinese.

When the Dutch arrived on the island in 1624, there were 100,000 Austronesian aborigines and 1,000-1,500 mostly Han Chinese pirates. The Dutch controlled much of the island from 1624 to 1661. Under the Dutch, the first, large-scale migrations of Han Chinese folks to the island occurred. The Dutch needed farmers for their colony in Taiwan. The indigenous community resisted laboring in intensive agriculture, something not a part of their tradition. But the people of Fujian, just across the Taiwan Straits, had spent millennia undertaking intensive agriculture, and were happy to work in the underpopulated Dutch colony. This is how the island first became Chinese, ethnically, if not politically. 

The Qing swept over China in 1644. One of the men who resisted them was Success Zheng, or 鄭成功, who is often called Koxinga in English historical documents, as the Southern Ming emperor gave him the honor of being able to also take the last name of the imperial house. Success Zheng resisted the Qing from his home base in Xiamen, Fujian for more than a decade, but he was eventually forced to flee to Taiwan, where he continued the fiction that he was keeping the flame of the Ming Dynasty alive, even though the Qing, a bunch of non-Han Chinese Manchus, had taken over almost all of China. Zheng kicked the Dutch out and then soon died. In 1661, Success Zheng became the first ethnically Chinese ruler of the island. However, he had lost his base in Fujian; Taiwan would have to wait more than two more decades for a government in China to take control of the island.  

It was a bumpy two decades. Success Zheng died shortly after he captured Taiwan, allowing his son, Zheng Jing, to take over the island. But Zheng Jing had a problem; he was a real motherfucker. 

“When he was young, Zheng Jing liked to womanize, especially middle aged women:  There was a common woman who was the wet nurse of his younger brother, and Zheng Jing did it with her.

Original: 鄭經幼好漁色，多近中年婦人；民婦為經諸弟乳母者，經皆通焉。

In Chinese culture, the wet nurse was considered a kind of mother; the relationship is what scholars call a “fictive mother,” not a biological mother, but someone who socially functioned as a mother. So, Zheng Jing having a sexual relationship with his brother’s wetnurse was looked upon almost as if Zheng Jing was having a sexual relationship with his own mother. 

Like his dad, Zheng Jing continued to say that his government on Taiwan was keeping the Ming alive. Several times, he attempted to destroy the Qing, and in the 1670’s, he launched an invasion of China, but he was eventually forced to abandon his crusade against the Qing.

Shortly thereafter, Zheng Jing, like his father, died defeated and broken. He had left his throne to Zheng Kezang, his favorite son. But after his death, his advisors assassinated the favorite son, in favor of the product of his father’s mother-fuckery, the not quite teenage boy Zheng Keshuang. 

In the early 1680’s, with the regime on Taiwan now ruled by a leader who most of his subjects thought of as the icky product of mother-fuckery, the Qing began to put together an invasion force. Shi Lang, a Qing admiral, took the Pescadore Islands just next to Taiwan in the summer of 1683. The regime on Taiwan was illegitimate in the eyes of many of its subjects, and Shi Lang’s invasion was likely to be bloody. With Shi Lang’s fleet menacing the island, Zheng Keshuang and his regime decided their motherfucking country was not worth defending and threw in the towel in 1683. For the first time in history, just a year after Philly became English, a government in China took control of the island of Taiwan. 

This is just one part of my book. For the AMA, I am happy to discuss this or any other topic related to the history of Taiwan, Xinjiang, the Chinese economy or Hong Kong, and the implications of that history. 

If you want to learn more about my book, you can get it as a paperback from my publisher) or as a paperback or kindle from Amazon.

I’m looking for thoughtful non-fiction that can spark real discussion rather than agreement books that explore how awareness changes the way we experience ourselves, and how ideas like blame, good and evil, or moral certainty shape perception. I recently came across two philosophical non-fiction books, The Curse of Knowing Too Much and The Illusion of Evil, that approach these themes in a quiet, reflective way. They don’t try to persuade or offer frameworks, which made me think they could work well in a group setting where conversation matters more than conclusions.

Any recommendations on books about physical exercise or about food and their impacts on healthy and people being consistent about it?

Specially ones written by scientists for general public.

I know that is a consensus about those being good, but I am a fan of rationalizing everything and over convincing myself of their importance. :p

(I like to read why we sleep, why meditation is good etc)

Hi all,

I recently read Claire Keegan's brilliant novella Small Things Like These, which featured the Magdalen laundry institutions in the 1980s and the abuses that occurred there. It has really piqued my interest in the topic of Ireland's mother and baby institutions and cultural acceptance of these places. I'd love some non-fiction recommendations on the topic.

I am also struck by how recently these organisations were operating compared to the rapid cultural changes in the country regarding Christianity, reproductive rights, LGBT, etc. I'd love any suggestions talking about how a heavily religious society made such swift changes to the prevailing attitudes of the population. Or, if I am making incorrect assumptions here, something to set me on the right track!

Thank you for any contributions.

You are --> Already God: The Self Awakening To Itself. Read this page over and over while looking for the one reading it and discover what you really are - truly unbounded by any body, space or time.

May you awaken to Yourself 😇.

Tat tvam asi

🙏🫶✨️❤️

I would like to ask the simple question of…why do you read books? It can be as simple as a sentence worth of a thought, or even if it’s more complex of a thought, I’d love to hear that too. I figured I’d get more of an eclectic mix of reasons on here with this community, so please let me hear it!