Well, was China's state religion in 1000AD as corrupt and perverse as the Church in 1500? Was China's culture similar to European one when it comes to reacting to said pervasive societal injustice? If you cannot convincingly reply "yes" to this questions, your objection is invalid.

And you cannot. Why would the people uprise, printing press or not? Hell, Confucius was practically the inventor of meritocracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism#Meritocracy). See also the Chinese chapters in the "Penguin history of the world" by Roberts.

On the other hand, there isn't a single "heretic" that made a sliver of difference before the printing press, while after you have countless ones, Luther being merely the first.

thread

pjc50Jan 2017

For the high-level sweep of history in a single volume, The Penguin History of the World is hard to beat.

But realistically you have to get closer. Pick a time period, or a theme, or even an individual, and start digging. Some people like local or family history. Try to find a selection of voices to read, but beware of the pseudohistorians and pop-scientists.

thread

blairbeckwithJul 2021

I had The Penguin History of the World recommended to me for exactly this purpose a couple of years ago. It’s quite a tome and I haven’t had a chance to finish it, but so think anything aiming to capture so much in one book will be incredibly dense.

It gets better reviews than you might suspect given the title.

thread

mindcrimeDec 2016

It's Not the Big That Eat the Small...It's the Fast That Eat the Slow: How to Use Speed as a Competitive Tool in Business by Jason Jennings & Laurence Haughton

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold

What Is Relativity?: An Intuitive Introduction to Einstein's Ideas, and Why They Matter by Jeffrey O. Bennett

Spooky Action at a Distance: The Phenomenon That Reimagines Space and Time—and What It Means for Black Holes, the Big Bang, and Theories of Everything by George Musser

Towers of Midnight (Wheel of Time, #13) by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson

Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Just started reading The Penguin History Of The World by J.M. Roberts & Odd Arne Westad. I'd always found history interesting in a general sense, but other than a couple of specific periods that I found interesting (the American Revolution, WWI, WWII), I had not studied the subject in much depth. So I figured I'd start with a good single-volume overview of World History as a whole, then go back and dig deeper into additional areas that pique my interest.

So far it's pretty fascinating. It's especially interesting when you see how elements of our modern world have roots that can be traced back for millennia. It's also fun to note the extent to which geography and climate have impacted the evolution of human civilization(s). It gives you a lot to think about in terms of dealing with anthropogenic climate change. Even if human civilization isn't wiped out completely, we could certainly see massive changes in the nature of our civilizations as a result. At least history seems to suggest so.

thread