Melissa 'Splains The Classics

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s "The Gulag Archipelago" is a living, breathing work that feels more like a primal scream cutting through the darkness of the human heart than just words on a page. It’s righteous but never arrogant; a self-help book for building integrity and personal responsibility with a fiery contempt for injustice that will get you pumped and ready to punch injustice in its stupid face. This book made me goddam furious but my favorite part was the dark humor baked into every grizzly part of it. Solzhenitsyn’s humor is so dark that it makes George Carlin look like Barney the Dinosaur. I’ll be posting extras and additional details that I couldn’t fit in this video to Instagram and Twitter, as well as exclusive videos and more to my Patreon. Follow me on those platforms if you’re down for some bonus content. Instagram: @melissadiaz4u Twitter: @tinystories4u Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=6349020

Kidnapped by gypsies when he was 3 years old, raised by a single mom in turn of the century Scotland after his father died chasing highway robbers, toured France during a golden age of art and philosophy as the personal tutor of a young Duke, was very popular with the opium-addled, party-going French intelligentsia, and friends with the likes of David Hume and Voltaire. Yet somehow managed to write one of the most boring books you'll ever read. When Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was published it was a huge hit and redefined the field of what's now known as classical economics for the industrial age. Terms like "Division of Labor," and "The Invisible Hand" were coined in this work of literature, and through it the concept of the Free Market was born. Here's some more interesting content about Adam Smith, some of which are source material for this video: - Noam Chomsky on Adam Smith YouTube Vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1GF_o7Fj0M&list=PLzphOk2dUEoMYlY5wyqsz9IWtGd_5yp26&index=5 - Warren Buffet on Wealth of Nations YouTube vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiK-pNVGm1g&list=PLzphOk2dUEoMYlY5wyqsz9IWtGd_5yp26&index=26