Status Updates From A Short History of the Worl...

wonderful and interesting!! definitely learned new things and learned more about things i thought i knew!! so cool—i love anthologies i think!!

“To this day, there is nothing quite like it for exploring a subject in real depth. To read a book is a commitment of time and energy - both intellectual and emotional. It is a chance to engage with consciences that you would never otherwise encounter.”

“Until Gutenberg introduced his printing press around the middle of the fifteenth century, the number of manuscript books in Europe's libraries numbered no more than a few tens of thousands. Now, some three hundred thousand titles are commercially published each year in the US alone - a figure bolstered by millions more self-published titles. We are awash with books.” its actually so insane

“And when the night grows dark, when injustice weighs heavy on our hearts, when our best-laid plans seem beyond our reach, let us think of Madiba and the words that brought him comfort within the four walls of his cell: "It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul."

“Mandela taught us the power of action, but he also taught us the power of ideas; the importance of reason and arguments; the need to study not only those who you agree with, but also those who you don't agree with.“

“for with freedom comes responsibilities”

the revolutionary aspect of being able to digest hard to understand or access topics to the public should be talked about more

‘Why We Can’t Wait’: “justice too long delayed is justice denied”

i wasn’t expecting a book on DDT but wow that’s crazy i need to read this now

'The "harmless" shower-bath killed seven of our lovely songbirds outright. We picked up three dead bodies the next morning right by the door. They were birds that had lived close to us, trusted us, and built their nests in our trees year after year.' 😭😭😭

'Everyone in my book accuses everyone else of being crazy,’ he once said. ‘Frankly, I think the whole society is nuts - and the question is: What does a sane man do in an insane society?'

“The New York Times said it was 'not even a good novel' but nonetheless qualified the statement by claiming it was wildly original, brilliantly comic, brutally gruesome ... a dazzling performance.” not the nyt being like it wasn’t even that good *whole plate eaten and licked clean*

“the free woman is just being born”

it’s crazy that so many people probably read 1984 as part of a high school english class and yet america is still succumbing to a different big brother

trying not to cry reading about Anne Frank… she was just a girl 😭😭

absolutely insane how einstein just thought everything… like he’s just worked that out in his mind

i’m not a fan of freud but it is crazy his influence on the world… like he’s a freak but he’s a freak who everyone knows

“But it is not long before it becomes apparent that the book's many characters are little more than flotsam and jetsam cast about by the tides of history. In Tolstoy's own words: ‘Every action of theirs [great men], that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.'”

'Seize the moments of happiness,' he writes at one point, ‘love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly?’

crazy that on the same page of talking about marx call/prediction for the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeois, the author gives nod to engels (apparently wealthy born, privileged, etc) for helping pay for marx’s ability to publish… altho he apparently was also a coauthor which i’d never heard (engels in the afterlife like 😧)… idk just interesting

“Reader, it is not to awaken sympathy for myself that I am telling you truthfully what I suffered. I do it to kindle a flame of compassion in your hearts for my sisters who are still in bondage.”

‘There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.' thank you darwin *tips hat* you so get it

“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (to give it its full name)”

with feminist baddie wife this guy is cool

“The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it”

i had no idea poe was credited with first detective story that’s crazy

i wonder if the invisible life of addie larue is faustian/inspired

*pointing at myself* girl who is dumb. I thought Faust was the author this whole time, not the work itself 😭

laissez-faire, baby!

george iii to thomas paine: you’re a real PAINE in my ass