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I suspect he's one of those guys that doesn't think he needs a hunting license since he owns 30 acres.
Joke's gonna be on him when someone on the neighboring lot hears him shooting his shotgun in say August, and then finds a wounded deer on his property.
Also he should have fun figuring out which are the edible plants and which are the look alikes.
I eagerly await his preparations for winter in Wisconsin.
If I were him I'd find a copy of this at his local Goodwill.
In West Africa most of the land was owned by the state often literally the king himself.this contrasts with Western Europe where we know many nobles and lords had vast landholdings and used them as a measure of status. In west Africa slaves were the main form of personal property a wealthy person could own. Thus the incentive between plantation slavery and that of west Africa is different.
In plantation slavery the slave is similar to livestock, only kept as long as they can be physically productive. In African slavery the slave is a status symbol in and of itself entirely separate from their economic productivity. With this in mind, an African slave owner would be directly damaging their wealth and prestige by behaving in a way that was overwhelmingly detrimental to that of their slaves (for example working them to death). There's more to this...I can add specifics later but I can't remember off the top of my head.
Charles C Mann's 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created devotes a pretty decently sized chapter to talking about the different conditions that helped slavery take the form it did in the Americas.
After leaving office, he led a dangerous expedition into the uncharted Amazon to find and map one of the sources of the Amazon river. It's an amazing story, and very well told: The River of Doubt.
Everyone should read the book about this when they can. It's an extremely enjoyable and sometimes gritty true account of a group of men who went into the jungle in search of a lost city and simply vanished from the face of the earth.
They based their hunt on a rare Portuguese document written by a friar in Brazil after one surviving man from an expedition emerged from the jungle in 1753 after 10 years and gave his account as to what they saw. It's a real document known as Manuscript 512 and it's in the Brazilian state archives.
I'm a sucker for ruins. A couple other ideas:
Part of a civilization in decline secured some of their sacred relics but didn't have the resources to continue to occupy the city containing a major temple. They leave with every intention of coming back at the next high holy day but... don't. Maybe they were killed by disease or starvation, maybe the intervening country became occupied and they didn't dare risk a journey that could lead an enemy to a sacred site.
Placing ruins in difficult and inhospitable places also helps. Look at the jungle ruins we are still finding to this day only thanks to new technology. A place can be carved out and livable and then quickly disappear back into "nature" in our own world. Adding the chance of magic / divine intervention in the mix makes this even more likely. The book The Lost City of Z really cemented this idea for me when I read it a couple years ago. I highly recommend it!
Sometimes the ruins are simply occupied - an army or some creatures moved in and chased off the original inhabitants. They either don't know about or don't care about what the players find valuable and thus the PCs have to sneak in and get it.
Sometimes nature just surprises you, like what happened over time in Dunwich.
Anyway, I hope at least some of that helps!
On that same note, Lansing's The Endurance (about Shackleton's attempted voyage to the South Pole and absolutely miraculous escape from what would have or should have been certain death) is equally amazing for the real-life adventure readers.
A little different than what OP said but I’d recommend reading The River Of Doubt. It’s really cool, if I’m remembering right, it’s in a way his suicide march
... a supply of seal blubber and sugar cubes can get you through till tuesday.
I recommend a copy of Endurance as reading while waiting for your snow to melt.
Candice Millard has a killer book about Roosevelt exploring an unmapped tributary of the Amazon after losing the 1912 election. It's fascinating stuff, highly recommended.
So many...
One of my favorite reads of all time, though, is "The Endurance" by Alfred Lansiing.
A non-fictional account of an amazing heroic story of survival, exploration and leadership in the Antarctic in the golden age of exploration of the poles. What they did, when they did it, with the technology they had at the time - it's truly unbelievable. A must read:
In the same genre, Aspley Cherry Gerard's "The Worst Journey in the World" is a long but incredible story of Antarctic exploration written by a survivor academician that was actually there.
The Worst Journey in the World - Wikipedia
Exploration and adventure non-fiction is a powerful genre for me, easily more impactful than even the best fiction (and I'm a big fan of that too!) because reality gives it that more powerful punch.
The extreme conditions of the arctic and Antarctic race to the poles are pretty amazing tales of human perseverance and bravery when you consider the conditions, the challenge, and the capabilities of human technology at the time these almost foolhardy men accomplished it.
I just read it in a book recently. I actively looked it up because I was like "wtf, did he just spell aesthetic wrong?"
Not sure how interested you are in non-fiction, but I highly recommend The Lost City of Z by David Grann. It's the true story of the explorer Percy Fawcett, who set out in 1925 in search of a lost civilization in the Amazon. I won't give away too much more than that, but it's an outstanding book. And while it is non-fiction, it definitely reads like a novel.
Theodore Roosevelt did a bit of river exploration himself. After failing to secure a third term, he co-commanded a scientific expedition which was the first to descend the Rio da Dúvida (River of Doubt, renamed Rio Roosevelt), a major tributary in the Amazon rain forest.
Candice Millard wrote an excellent book about it called River of Doubt.
Yes, the book is called "The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon" by David Grann. Below is a link to it on Amazon. This is one of the best books I've ever read.
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-City-Deadly-Obsession-Amazon/dp/1400078458
If you're looking for similar jungle adventure/endurance books I would highly recommend:
The Lost City of Z by David Grann
The River oF Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
Both books are extremely readable and cover similar true stories of journeys into the jungle in search of something undiscovered.
Anyone interested in reading a great true story about his should pick up The River of Doubt. It's a wonderful recounting about his expedition into the Amazon.
Sounds really fun!
I don't know what books / resources you're using, but if you're looking for a big-picture context of the political, social, and economic forces in the colonial era, I hear that1493 is great book.
For a more focused view on colonial life, Alan Taylor's work has received praise as a good history that takes into account both European and Native peoples.
To be clear, I haven't read these books - I only mention them as popular sources. If you're looking for something more detailed, I bet r/AmericanHistory or r/history would have all sorts of great resources and people with much better recommendations.
You can think I'm wrong all you want or you can pick up the book 1493
http://www.amazon.com/1493-Uncovering-World-Columbus-Created/dp/0307278247
And get a good handle on the last thirty years of research about the consequences of the Colombian exchange.
My point wasn't that 90% of the native didn't die from disease. I understand that fact. My point was that this was unintentional and unavoidable from the first journey of Colombus to the Caribbean. Because it is well documented through physical evidence that the waves of diseases left the Caribbean and made it to Peru-Bolivia and Massachusetts well before any Europeans set foot in those lands.
The idea that the Indians were intentionally genocided through disease is wrong. It would require people like Colombus having your understanding of disease, its origin and transmission. There are some examples of possible intentional genocide (through disease) in the 1700s with the French & Indian Wars.
Take a look at “In the Heart of The Sea: the Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex”. It’s the real story that inspired Moby Dick. The scary part is that after the whale sinks the ship, most of the crew survives, but are stranded in whale boats, for a very long time. They eventually had to resort to what they euphemistically called “the custom of the sea”. I don’t blame them.
I read "The River of Doubt" about his journey with President Theodore Roosevelt down the uncharted river now named Rio Roosevelt. If I remember correctly it portrayed Colonel Rondon as a tough but competent leader and a champion of Indigenous rights. On that expedition, however, several people died, including one who was murdered. Roosevelt got so ill and hungry he begged his son to leave him to die and he began reciting poetry in a trance-like state. He did survive however, and returned to the US looking much thinner and weaker.
My #1 favorite book of all time. The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
"Living off the land" is nice and romantic in theory, but turns out to be somewhat more challenging in practice. Read <em>Into the wild</em> by Jon Krakauer for a nonfiction account of one young man who starved to death trying to do just that.
Definitely start with Endurance by Alfred Lansing
It’s the story of Ernest Shackleton’s voyage to Antarctica in his ship Endurance
4.8 star rating from almost 9000 readers.
It’s an incredible read. The next family member will have a hard act to follow
PS. There are many versions of this historical voyage, make sure you choose the one by Lansing. His research was outstanding.
It was referred to as “the custom of the sea”. Those sailors who survived being stranded at sea were generally not shamed to their face, but it was very difficult for them to be seen in polite company for the rest of their lives.
Read In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick. Tells the true story of a whaling ship sunk by an angry whale and how some of the crew survived months at sea in the small whale boats.
The trick is, to Australia is you hang out with your black and Hispanic Marine buddies. You'll get a lot of action; White and asian Marines, not so much. not exotic enough for them, i guess. but black and Hispanics, the Aussie girls go crazy.
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I read https://www.amazon.com/World-Lit-Only-Fire-Renaissance/dp/0316545562 something similar here, in which Magellan's men where ever they went in their round the world voyage , local women practically raped the dudes. instinct, hormones , genetic, or something.
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I dunno, what the reason is, but black and Hispanic Marines are highly desired in Australia. Oh, and kangaroos are delicious!
Endurance by Alfred Lansing - tells the true story of Ernest Shackleton's 1916 South Pole expedition. I read this a few years ago when going through a rough patch at work, put it all into perspective.
Was it based on a true story? It sounds a lot like the Shackleton mission, and I found a book called Endurance that is based on it.
Yeah basically, or rather Diamond has a somewhat mechanistic explanation for How History Happened and sort of fits everything into that framework. Like I remember he makes one tossed off argument that Europe is geographically suited for small, competing states, while China and India and geographically situated such that they favor large empires, which really just needs a quick glance at a topographic map of Eurasia or a political timeline of India to set your head a-scratching.
That said, I have long been of the view that when talking about Diamond it should be borne in mind that the primary competing argument for Why History Happened As It Did was not a complex, multifaceted approach like in the recent The Dawn of Everything but rather "white people are culturally or biologically superior and so took over the world." There are worse things than geographic determinism.
(Also if you want a book that is somewhat Diamond-ish in being very geographically conscious and a touch mechanistic but more engaged with the scholarship, I still quite like Ian Morris' Why the West Rules--For Now)
If you like that, you'll enjoy Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. It's the story of an expedition to the Antarctica in 1914. The ship was crushed by ice and the crew had to travel across the frozen ocean to the nearest civilization outpost. The book is based on the crew's journals.