Roots: Reconnecting with the Mother Continent

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With each passing year, society moves farther from tradition, leaving behind the foundations of the European culture and civilization we hold dear. Technological and geopolitical developments continue to render the history of millennia increasingly alien and impenetrable. At the same time, many of us have grown up in the “New World” and are many generations removed from our ancestral homelands. Some of us are European racial mixes, with roots is disparate parts of the Mother Continent. Many of us no longer have living connections in Europe.

Also, whites today live in environments that are hostile to their race. Racially conscious whites must remember, celebrate, and carry on the culture of their forefathers, whether they be continental customs, such as Christian holidays, or specific traditions, such as a dialect or feast from one’s town or region in Italy. Universities are now inverted to misguide, and the resources necessary to stimulate this rediscovery and cultural maintenance have become harder to find.

Since the end of the First World War, there has also been an acute fear of “Americanization” on the other side of the Atlantic, as the former British colonies began culturally colonizing the rest of the world. A woman living in London articulated the threat:

As a European, I’m getting increasingly tired of American influence, from media, politics, work & lifestyle etc. It is overwhelming how much input is coming from [the] US when it doesn’t relate to my experience / life / context day to day. At this moment there is no way to filter it.

Between Americanization and mass non-white immigration into low-birthrate Europe, European culture is endangered even on its native soil. Just as we have offered guidance on community organizing and practical social rebellion, we hope to inspire readers to reconnect with their European roots. As Leonardo da Vinci (perhaps apocryphally) said, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”

The vastness of European history and heritage presents boundless opportunities for exploration. Some of us will be intrigued by the Roman ruins scattered around the Mediterranean and in Britain; others by the splendor of Renaissance cities or the transformation of Arab structures after Spain’s Reconquista. The wooden buildings of Baltic and Slavic nations have their own charm, as do the walled cities of Brittany. The great churches are fundamentally tied to today’s American and European societies. All of these are your heritage.

Likewise, European politics are our politics. Europe is our homeland; we are its people, and what happens to it must be our concern. In history there are no clean breaks; each person remains much the same as the ancestors whose blood circulates in his veins. Each European identity is linked to a culture that, while sharing attributes with American society, is different. Many Germans, Britons, and Spaniards alive today fondly remember life before “multiculturalism.”

It is not too late to experience Europe, and any self-conscious white man should do so. However, the Western European capital cities are already lost. Eastern Europe’s great cities, such as Belgrade, Budapest, or Warsaw, offer a more homogeneous population and rewarding experience, and throughout the continent, smaller cities and villages are still (relatively) pristine.

Visiting Europe doesn’t have to be a luxury. Transatlantic flights can often be found for around $500 from major gateway cities. Lodging, transportation, and food in Europe tends to cost less than in the US. Do your research — consider trains, buses, local hotels, hostels. You might even try something like WWOOF.

Because travel is cheap, students and young professionals travel a lot, and congregate in the places you would visit. Especially outside major cities, Americans may still be a novelty, particularly a young solo traveler, so it’s easy to make friends.

Undergraduate degrees cost a lot less than in the United States, and, in some places, such as in most German states, are virtually free, even for Americans. Many universities offer English-language undergraduate and graduate programs. These days, whites need degrees; through pure competence, we prevail as DEI acolytes stumble. A European degree represents a good, affordable education, and American employers will be impressed.

Working in Europe is an option. European salaries tend to be lower, but Europeans have lower living costs. Public transit tends to be safe, clean, and functional because it is used by normal white people who don’t own cars. Europeans also tend to live in semi-detached houses or apartments rather than single-family homes. This makes for walkable communities.

Make a point of visiting the land of your ancestors. There is something indescribable about walking the streets they did centuries ago. Ask older relatives what they remember, and look through publicly available immigration paperwork. You may find a group of extended family members who stayed behind and would be happy to welcome you. Such relationships have an intriguing strength and draw you closer to your roots.

You may even be able to gain citizenship based on ancestry. The process differs by country, and it can be time consuming, but it is worth exploring. Some countries known for citizenship-by-descent programs include Ireland, Italy, and Poland. Specialized lawyers can help with paperwork.

Try to travel for something other than just tourism, for some purpose that means you meet people. You will be taken into the nooks and crannies of your destination, and you will see how people really live. There is a huge difference between having dinner at the home of a friend and dining at a restaurant. Rather than touring a European city frantically on an American schedule, know it by living in it for work or school. Of course, traveling for tourism is better than not going at all.

Americans are deracinated. Discover the beauty and bounty of white heritage, participate to the extent you find fulfilling, and consider options to stay involved through personal connections. Consider engaging in cross-border politics and activism. Maybe even date and marry a European. Learn your ancestral language. It may seem a monumental task, but start slowly and you will be surprised how quickly you are rewarded.

To conclude, we have included below an introductory reading list to better learn whence you come. Remember: formal education will make you a living, but self-education will make you a fortune.

A reading list

Here are lists of what we think are the finest Western nonfiction and fiction. Clearly, it would take more than a lifetime truly to understand and appreciate all these books — and there are countless more that are immensely valuable.

The Western literary tradition is incomparable in breadth and majesty. Europe extends from the mountains of Western Russia to the Iberian peninsula, and then to the British Isles and Iceland. This relatively small area gave rise to innumerable languages and dialects, societies, customs, and conflicts.

Some Europeans left these often belligerent lands to populate the regions of the world where non-indigenous Europeans call home, from Australia to South Africa to our own United States. Although we are widespread, only approximately 12 percent of the world population is “white.”

This list contains very little pure philosophy or histories of any one nation, with the exception of the United States, and there are no primary or later sources about scientific advances. We have selected and categorized these works at our own discretion, and if you have suggestions or adjustments, we would be happy to hear from you at imperiumaeternum14@protonmail.com.

Classical foundation

These are the roots of who we are. The vast majority of these books date from or deal with the period directly after prehistory all the way until Late Antiquity. We include William Shakespeare, because he is fundamental to our modern English language, as are certain prominent Bible translations.

• The Old and New Testaments of the Holy Bible (~2000 B.C. to ~100 A.D.)
• Harvard Classical Philology Reading List: https://classics.fas.harvard.edu/philology-reading-list
• Epic of Gilgamesh (~2100 B.C.)
• Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor; The Tale of Sinuhe (~2000 B.C., ~1200 B.C.)
• The Iliad; The Odyssey; Hymns, by Homer (d. 701 B.C.) (Avoid twenty-first century translations, such as those by Emily Wilson, which distort the original works with extraneous and anachronistic political concepts.)
• Aesop’s Fables (d. 564 B.C.)
• The Tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides (d. 456 B.C., 406/5 B.C., 406 B.C.)
• Works of Pindar (d. 438 B.C.)
• The Histories, by Herodotus (d. 425 B.C.)
• The History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides (d. 400 B.C.)
• The Comedies of Aristophanes (d. 386 B.C.)
• Cyropaedia; A History of My Times; Anabasis, by Xenophon (d. 354 B.C.)
• The Republic; Dialogues, by Plato (d. 348/347 B.C.)
• Nicomachean Ethics; Poetics, by Aristotle (d. 322 B.C.)
• Histories of Rome by Cato the Elder, Polybius, Livy, Josephus, Tacitus, Cassius Dio and Marcellinus (d. 149 B.C., 118 B.C., 17, 37, 120, 163, 391)
• The Works of Cicero, Horace, Ovid, Martial, Lucian, Tertullian and Boethius (d. 106 B.C., 8 B.C., 17, 104, 180, 220, 524)
• On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius (d. 55 B.C.)
• The Poetry of Catullus (d. 54 B.C.)
• Commentaries of Julius Caesar (d. 44 B.C.)
• Eclogues; Georgics; Aeneid, by Virgil (d. 19 B.C.)
• Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, by Plutarch (d. 119)
• The Twelve Caesars, by Suetonius (d. 122)
• The Enneads, by Plotinus (d. 270)
• The Secret Histories, by Procopius (d. 570)
• The Works of William Shakespeare (d. 1616)
• The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon (1776)
• Bulfinch’s Mythology (1867)
• History of Rome, and of the Roman people, by Victor Duruy (1883)

Character building

This list is made for people of all ages. These books underscore how bad times create strong men.

• Letters from a Stoic, by Seneca (d. 65)
• The Handbook, by Epictetus (d. 135)
• Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius (d. 180)
• Roman Honor: The Fire in the Bones, by Carlin Barton (2001)
• Faust, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1831)
• On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, by Thomas Carlyle (1841)
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Anti-Education, by Friedrich Nietzsche (1885, 1887)
• Self-Control: Its Kingship and Majesty, by William George Jordan (1905)
• Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton (1908)
• Growth of the Soil, by Knut Hamsun (1917)
• Steppenwolf; Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse (1927, 1922)
• How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie (1936)
• The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis (1943)
• Lord of the Flies, by William Golding; The Butterfly Revolution, by William Butler (1954, 1961)
• Strategy, by B.H. Liddell Hart (1960)
• Cat and Mouse, by Gunther Grass (1961)
• The Human Zoo, by Desmond Morris (1969)
• The Culture of Narcissism, by Christopher Lasch (1979)
• After Virtue, by Alasdair MacIntyre (1981)
• Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen (1986)
• Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, by Neil Postman (1992)
• The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories, by William Bennett (1993)
• The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene (1998)
• Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, by James H. Billington (1998)
• No More Mr. Nice Guy, by Robert Glover (2000)
• The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, by John Mearsheimer (2001)
• Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, by Samuel P. Huntington (2004)
• Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, by Roger Scruton (2009)
• The Way of Men, by Jack Donovan (2012)

Adventure and discovery

This category aims to inspire readers, through the tales of intrepid Westerners past, not to languish in comfort or fear danger. It also seeks to make known the beauty of the natural and untamed world.

• The Travels of Marco Polo (1300)
• Christopher Columbus’ Journal (1493)
• The Adventures of a Simpleton, by Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1669)
• Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe (1719)
• Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann David Wyss (1812)
• Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott (1819)
• The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper (1826)
• The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, by Edgar Allan Poe (1838)
• The Count of Monte Cristo; The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas (both 1844)
• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville (1851)
• Adventures of an African Slaver, by Theodore Canot (1854)
• How I Found Livingstone, by Henry Morton Stanley (1871)
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (1876, 1884)
• A Hunter’s Wanderings in Africa, by Frederick Selous (1881)
• Treasure Island; Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883, 1886)
• King Solomon’s Mines, by H. Rider Haggard and A. C. Michael (1885)
• Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad (1899)
• The Poetry of Rudyard Kipling; The Jungle Book (d. 1936, 1894)
• The Call of the Wild; White Fang; The Sea Wolf, by Jack London (1903, 1906, 1904)
• The Works of Jules Verne (d. 1905)
• The Warwolf: A Peasant Chronicle of the Thirty Years War, by Hermann Löns (1910)
• Tarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)
• Storm of Steel, by Ernst Jünger (1920) (Opinions starkly differ on the best translation but the authors we note that the 1929 translation by Basil Creighton is based on the unexpurgated original text, even if the translation itself is less polished.)
• Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (d. 1930)
• The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas, by Thor Heyerdahl (1948)
• True Grit: A Novel, by Charles Portis (1952)
• The Gold of Troy: The Story of Heinrich Schliemann and the Buried Cities of Ancient Greece, by Robert Payne (1959)
• Bayonets to Lhasa, by Peter Fleming (1961)
• Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest, by Julius Evola (1974)
• The Name of the Rose; The Island of the Day Before; The Prague Cemetery, by Umberto Eco (1980, 1994, 2011)

Understanding America

We believe these books convey the flavor and true substance of the American story.

• Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, by David Hackett Fischer (1989)
• American Colonies: The Settling of North America, by Alan Taylor (2016)
• The Journals of Captain John Smith (d. 1631)
• The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
• The New England Theocracy, H.F. Uhden (1850)
• Colonial American Travel Narratives, by Various (Penguin Books Collection, 1994)
• Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, by Jonathan Edwards (1741)
• 1776, by David McCullough (2006)
• Common Sense, by Thomas Paine (1776)
• The Federalist Papers, by Hamilton, Jay and Madison (1788)
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1791)
• His Excellency: George Washington; American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, by Joseph Ellis (2004, 1996)
• Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville (1835)
• Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times, by H.W. Brands (2005)
• The Alamo, by John Myers (1948)
• Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America, by Walter R. Borneman (2009)
• Abraham Lincoln: A Biography, by Lord Charnwood (1916)
• The American Civil War: A Military History, by John Keegan (2009)
• The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (1885)
• Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee (1904)
• Lee, by Douglas Southall Freeman (1935)
• Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson, by S. C. Gwynne (2014)
• Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell (1936)
• Edmund Morris’ Theodore Roosevelt Trilogy (2010)
• The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve, by G. Edward Griffin (2010)
• The Writings of H.L. Mencken (d. 1956)
• Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son, by George Horace Lorimer (1903)
• Spoon River Anthology, by Edgar Lee Masters (1915)
• Oil!, by Upton Sinclair (1926)
• The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
• The Writings of William Faulkner (d. 1962)
• Reminiscences, by Douglas MacArthur (1964)
• The Works of John Steinbeck (d. 1968)
• Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology, by Will Herberg (1955)
• The Growth of Constitutional Power, by Carl Swisher (1963)
• The Power Broker, by Robert A. Caro (1974)
• Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam (2000)
• Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence, by Bryan Burrough (2016)
• The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America, by Peter Zeihan (2017)

Understanding our European foundation

These works are “Part 2” of the classical foundation category.

• The World of the Etruscans, by G. Cianferoni (2001)
• Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin, by Nicholas Ostler (2007)
• Nobilitas, by Dr. Alexander Jacob (2000)
• The Teuton and the Roman, by Charles Kingsley (1889)
• The Germanic People: Their Origin, Expansion, and Culture, by Francis Owen (1991)
• Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland, by Bryan Sykes (2007)
• Confessions; City of God, by Saint Augustine (late 400s to early 500s)
• Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney (700-1000)
• Egil’s Saga; Njáls Saga; Völsunga Saga (850-1000, 960-1020, 1200s)
• The Song of Roland; The Poem of Cid; The Song of the Nibelungs (1000s, 1100s, 1200)
• Of Being and Essence; Summa Contra Gentiles; Of the Governance of Rulers; Summa Theologica, by Saint Thomas Aquinas (1200s)
• The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri (1320)
• The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio (1353)
• The Canterbury Tales; Troilus and Criseyde, by Geoffrey Chaucer (Late 1300s) (Try to read Chaucer in his original Middle English; start slowly and sound the words out phonetically! The consistency of Middle English to today’s vernacular is a gift that most native English speakers never recognize.)
• The Book of Deeds of Arms and Chivalry, by Christine de Pizan (1410)
• The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis (1427)
• The Death of King Arthur, by Sir Thomas Malory (1485)
• Utopia, by Saint Thomas More (1516)
• The Three Treatises and Table Talk of Martin Luther (Early to mid-1500s)
• The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (d. 1519)
• The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy, by Niccolò Machiavelli (1532; 1531)
• The Works of Desiderius Erasmus (d. 1536)
• The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, by Giorgio Vasari (1568)
• The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1580)
• The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser (1590)
• The Essays of Sir Francis Bacon (1597)
• Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes (1615)
• Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes (1651)
• Paradise Lost, by John Milton (1667)
• Pensées, by Blaise Pascal (1670)
• Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler (1756)
• A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, by Laurence Sterne (1768)
• Lord Chesterfield’s Letters (1774)
• Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (1813)
• On War, by Carl von Clausewitz (1832)
• Fear and Trembling, by Soren Kierkegaard (1843)
• The Works of Honoré de Balzac (d. 1850)
• The Servile State, The Crusades, Characters of the Reformation, Joan of Arc, by Hilaire Belloc (d. 1953)
• A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (1859)
• The Essays and Aphorisms of Arthur Schopenhauer (d. 1860)
• The Brothers Karamazov; Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880, 1866)
• Quo Vadis, by Henryk Sienkiewicz (1896)
• The Poetry and Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred Tennyson, William Wordsworth, William Blake, Elizabeth and Robert Browning and Thomas Hardy
• Present-Day Europe, Its National States of Mind, by Lothrop Stoddard (1917)
• The Decline of the West; Man and Technics, by Oswald Spengler (1918, 1931)
• The World of Yesterday, by Stefan Zweig (1941)
• The Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1973)
• Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950, by Charles Murray (2003)