Current Reading May 2026

Just finished the Kindle version of On The Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini by James M. Grimwood & Barton C. Hacker.

Started from the library: History Matters by David McCullough
Collection of his speeches and essays.

Finished an excellent The Guns of John Moses Browning: The Remarkable Story of the Inventor Whose Firearms Changed the World by Nathan Gorenstein

Completed a short Vaqueros: America's First Cowmen by Martin W. Sandler

Wrapped up World's Fairs on the Eve of War, a good examination of what one of the contributors calls "the olympiads of propaganda."

>5 Shrike58: I've always been interested in the world's fairs How did they start who started them Why have they stopped Is this a good book for that What do you know of another Regardless I am going to read this book it looks very interesting thank you for suggesting it

>6 cindydavid4: I don't have a specific book in mind but look up works about the British Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851...that was really the first of these events.

A few World's Fair books I have and can recommend:

The Great Exhibition of 1851: A Nation on Display by Jeffrey A. Auerbach
Eiffel's Tower by Jill Jonnes
The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City by Margaret Creighton
Twilight at the World of Tomorrow by James Mauro
Treasure Island 1939-1940 by Richard Reinhardt
The New York World's Fair 1939/1940 by Stanley Appelbaum
San Francisco's Jewel City: The Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 by Laura A. Ackley

Finally finished The Six Loves of James I by Gareth Russell and it was excellent. A great read and deeply researched. I highly recommend it.

>7 Shrike58: , >8 jztemple:,thanks for those!

Completed Prelude To Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain, 1764-1776 by Arthur M. Schlesinger

Started from the library: Bloody Crowns: A New History of the Hundred Years War by Michael Livingston
France and England were the two main combatants but the war spread throughout continental Europe over 200 years.

>11 jztemple: Looks very interesting.

I finished Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, a history and anthropological study of a village in the French Pyrenees in the early 14th century that was pieced together from the transcriptions of interviews done at the time by an inquisitioner intent on stamping out the "heresy" of the Cathar sect of Christianity. It's a fascinating (if occasionally a bit dry) study of a small, remote village and many of the individuals who lived there 700 years ago. My full review is on the book's work page and my Club Read thread.

I just started "The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II" by Jonathan Haslam. I'm not very far into this yet, but it seems well-researched and nicely written.

Inspired by Shrike58, I purchased and just finished Vought F7U-3 Cutlass (Famous American Aircraft) by Tommy H. Thomason and Alfred C. Casby

Third time is a charm. I have this bad habit of forgetting to push "Post Message"

I finished reading Boise The Peace Valley. If you want get a feel for what was going on in Idaho up through the 1930's this a book worth looking at.

Finish reading Unlimited Horizons: Design and Development of the U-2 by Peter W. Merlin

Completed System Lorenz: The History, Technology, and Tactics of the Austrian M.1854 Lorenz Rifle by Brett Gibbons

>14 rocketjk: intersting barbra tucman wrote a similar book titled a distant mirror the calamitous 14th century she weaves her history of the time thro one family the sire de coucy read this ages ago and found it intersting wonder how it might be similar

>20 cindydavid4: I haven't read that book of Tuchman's (though I've read at least one other--The Guns of August), so I couldn't say for sure. Montaillou is about only one very remote village. There's no attempt to describe what live is like in cities or castles or even other villages. I would guess that there'd be some similarities between the two histories, but possibly they're more different than alike, other than the time periods they cover.

Knocked off the The Long Hangover, which is a state-of-play examination of Russian and Ukrainian attitudes at the time of publication, and which might not be necessary for people who were paying attention to events in 2018.

Finished reading Flagler: Rockefeller Partner and Florida Baron by Edward N. Akin

Finished Walter Lippmann, an examination of the thought of one of the supposed "wise men" of peak "American Century." I bounced between being impressed and being annoyed with Lippmann.

Completed Parting the Desert: The Creation of the Suez Canal by Zachary Karabell

Wrapped up the month with A Brave and Cunning Prince, a rather speculative book about the early days of English colonization in what is now Virginia, and the tough-minded defense of the Powhatan Confederation.