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zed

https://www.goodreads.com/4triplezed

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“Narrative history fell out of fashion for many years in the 1970s and 1980s, as historians everywhere focused on analytical approaches derived mainly from the social sciences. But a variety of recent, large-scale narrative histories have shown that it can be done without sacrificing analytical rigour or explanatory power.”
― Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich

13 likes

“What we designate modernity was not something natural or automatic. It involved a set of difficult-to-attain attributes—mass production, mass culture, mass politics—that the greatest powers mastered. Those states, in turn, forced other countries to attain modernity as well, or suffer the consequences, including defeat in war and possible colonial conquest.”
― Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Volume I: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928

13 likes

“Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.”
― Lorraine Hansberry

2208 likes

“Civilization is the name we give to the interaction of human beings in a very creative way, when, as it were, a critical mass of cultural potential and a certain surplus of resources have been built up.”
― J M Roberts, The Penguin History of the World

5 likes

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.”
― Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

563 likes

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zed ’s Groups

THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP — 2666 members — last activity 12 hours, 38 min ago
A chance to discuss books covering the Second World War, the battles, campaigns, leaders and weapons. Tantum librorum, tam brevi tempore (So many ...more

Goodreads Librarians Group — 302532 members — last activity 1 minute ago
Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Libra ...more

The BURIED Book Club — 929 members — last activity Oct 09, 2025 06:06PM
TODAY BOOKS ARE NOT BURNED. THEY ARE BURIED. WE SHALL UNEARTH THEM.

The Mookse and the Gripes — 2081 members — last activity 1 hour, 6 min ago
Forum for spirited and convivial discussion of fiction from around the world, with particular though not exclusive focus on 20th and 21st century fict ...more

The Short Story Club — 549 members — last activity 33 minutes ago
The purpose of this group is to read and discuss one short story a week. For the the first couple of years, we read from specific anthologies, but fro ...more

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