Hello, folks! This is my first post here (and in the great, wide, still-confusing world of Lemmy). So stoked to find a new book community!
To answer the question, mine is "The Future of Nostalgia" by Svetlana Boym. I stumbled upon this book when I read a quote from it in a different book and I immediately went to track down a copy. A truly happy accident.
The most fascinating thing about this book was how universal it felt. Here was someone writing about post-Soviet Russia in the nineties, yet it felt strangely familiar. The commercialization of nostalgia, the unchecked rewriting of history, and the rose-tinted delusion of "The Golden Age"; it felt like she was talking about my own country. I'm a Lebanese expat, so nostalgia is a big part of my life and my relationship with my country (which is very much a love/hate relationshit), and this book completely redefined my understanding of nostalgia, nationality and collective identity, heritage, and even food. It helped me understand the survivor's guilt, the PTSD, the resentment, and the stubborn fondness. It's been so long since a book scooped out my soul and shook off the dust like this.
So, yeah. What's the last book that made you go, "Holy shit, I think that just rewired my brain"?
"The Triumph of Broken Promises" by Fritz Bartel
It's basically a retelling of the cold war that focuses on economic factors over individual actors. It makes the case that the cold war ended as a 'race to break promises', many countries needed to figure out ways to implement austerity at the time for economic reasons. It goes into the difficulties state socialism had implementing their version, perestroika, and relative ease of implementing neoliberalism in democratic capitalism. The book is very well sourced, so it gives insight into these conversations of people like Gorbachev, Thatcher, Honecker, Jaruzelski, Reagan, etc, and their advisors. The typical narrative I had learned before reading this placed emphasis on individual actors like Reagan or Gorbachev, but this economic view gives a story that feels much more comprehensive.