Cumwatch,
I embrace your call to do research. I love researching and studying stuff about American politics, history and culture and studying other topics too such as in the sciences and world literature.
PLEASE share with me or educate me about your favorite sources for the research you do and the topics you love to research.
I’d love to check out what you recommend that you think could make me better informed or more informed on a favorite topic or subject of yours.
In turn, I will share with you my top 5 favorite sources for my own study and research into issues addressed in these forums and in threads I’ve started. I love for instance books by Garry Wills on Reagan and Nixon and Jefferson.
FYI: I wrote a 450 page book (published by a university press ) on American politics, history and culture. The last 50 pages are devoted to my footnotes to the evidence and sources and texts I used to write the book. I researched and wrote it over the course of 6 years. I daresay I did more research into American politics and history in those years than you’ve done in a lifetime. But prove me wrong. I’m just making an assumption.
Do you have some favorite books about American politics or favorite writers on this topics? I have lots of them.
Neither you nor Flip have much of an actual clue about what I read and what I research. I have 7,000 books in my home. I’ll post a photo of my long , very well endowed bookcases in SLS gallery if you desire. I will also post a photo there of my “Free Little Library” in the front yard of my home where I stock a little library of 50-75 books for adults and kids that they can take for free.
I like doing research by reading books and not just checking websites and reading newspaper and magazines.
Flip: I read and research stuff from many points of view. I’ve made a deep study of the pro-slavery and pro-segregation arguments in American history and given much attention to speeches and essays and addresses by every president in my lifetime. One of my favorite collections of primary sources is entitled Fear of Conspiracy, edited by David Brion Davis, a history teacher I had. In college.
It provides primary source material on the long history of conspiracy fears on the part of both the far right and far left wings of this country. I love studying stuff from perspectives much different than my own