What we're reading now

I am now reading The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara by David Kertzer. Very interesting.

I am almost done with

Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History by David Christian

I am also almost done with The Honey & the Hemlock: Democracy & Paranoia in Ancient Athens and Modern America by Eli Sagan

I am mid-way thru Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore by Bettany Hughes

I recently started reading "Acharnians" by
Aristophanes

In the car I just started listening to the Teaching Company Course "The Greek & Persian Wars"

I have some other things going to, but not relevant to this thread.

Until I can get my eager little hands on "Persian Fire," I'm contenting myself with starting, "Echoes of the Ancient Skies, the Astronomy of Lost Civilizations," by Dr. E. C. Krupp.

Oh man! Let me know how that one is! Sounds awesome :-)

Currently:

Fiction: A Talent for War by Jack McDevitt

Nonfiction: Maps of Time, An Introduction to Big History and

The Beginnings of Western Science, The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, religious and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450 by David Lindberg

In Car: The High Middle Ages, Teaching Company, Prof. Philip Daileader

Avocational: Ancient Coin Collecting by Wayne Sayles

ut-oh - sounds like enodia's coins are sucking you in ....

>6 Garp83:
Yeah. I've temporarily handed over my credit card to a trustee. :-/

Haha I should do that.... I have to buy a bunch of books for school... other ones always seem to sneak in there when that happens.......

I'm on chapter 3 of Maps of Time at lunch, chapter 2 of The Structures of Everyday Life at bedtime, Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf in the car, halfway through The Mysterious Benedict Society at breakfast, and almost finished with Think on My Words, my first Elizabethan England group challenge book.

Don't you have a morning bathroom book Stafford? Or do you just not like to refer to it in polite company ... lol

That's how I got thru Herodotus and Thucydides ...

Mine is Ostler's Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin :-D

On the Kindle:
The Local News by Miriam Gershow
A History of Histories by John Burrow
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible by Bart D. Ehrman (touchstones not working)

Paper version:
Big History by Cynthia Brown

Just finished
Fate of the Jedi: Outcast by Aaron Allston

I just finished Jonathan Kirsch's The Harlot by the Side of the Road, which dispite the sensationalist title, contains some very good scholarship on the origins and meanings of some of the Bible's most hardcore tales. I am down the the last chapter, on Ezekiel 40-55, in Mark S. Smith's The Origins of Biblical Monotheism and and partway through with William G. Dever's What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us About the Reality of Ancient Israel

All right, all right. I just bought Maps of Time. With all of you going on about it, I guess I have to read it . . .

>10 Garp83:
New York Post Su Doku

I just finished I, Claudius. I spent my monthly allowance at the big river (get it) and just got the package. I am starting Ordinary Men. The images coming off of the pages are pretty intense.
A book I have been reading for about one month is The Mind of the Master Class. It is a one semester seminar in itself but an excellent piece of scholarship. I am in the 50 book challenge here http://www.librarything.com/topic/53712
if you want to check out what I have read so far this year. I enjoy the challenge. It keeps me reading and gives me a nice yearly journal.

I'm drifting slowly through Voices of Morebath by Eamon Duffy. Very interesting.

Ted is 500 pages into Salisbury: Victorian Titan by Andrew Roberts, with 400 pages to go. This is a fascinating biography of the British conservative prime minister and a very good overview of late Victorian politics.

Finished my fiction book A Talent for War, and substituted my ER book, Full Meridian of Glory: Perilous Adventures in the Competition to Measure the Earth by Paul Murdin. Maps of Time is going well, though the science, at least in the early chapters is going over familiar ground. The way Christian puts together his conclusions and places the process and controversies of the main story into perspective is quite effective and valuable. Much enjoying.

I am enjoying American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever. It's a very interesting look at Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, H.D. Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, & Margaret Fuller.

Well, I am always reading four or five books at a time, catering to a combination of my mood and how much/little time I have to settle in. In a historical vein, the two current choices are:

1) Always Magic in the Air: The Bomp and Brilliance of the Brill Building Era by Ken Emerson (gotta have something going that is music-related)

2) The Most Glorious Crown: The Story Of America's Triple Crown Thoroughbreds From Sir Barton To Affirmed by Marvin Drager (because it is almost time for the Kentucky Derby)

>21 thejazzmonger:

Who was that man?
I'd likle to shake his hand.
He made my baby fall in love with me!

Right now I'm reading Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for class, as well as attempting to chip away at like 10 other books for my various research and whatnot.

Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs. The future is NOT looking rosy. Most of her first chapter is based on Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, so I'll have to get ahold of that one now.

While waiting for Guns, Germs and Steel to arrive (which I thought I owned but don't), I'm reading Cyteen, The Very Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenberg, The Prophets, The History of Myddle, and Ceremonial Death. I see that my desire for variety puts me in good company here.

Just finished reading In Search of Schrodinger's Cat and now am going to start reading The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II.

Working my way through Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens as bedtime reading.

Eventually, I will buckle down and get that Courtesans and Fishcakes book -- I've read good things about it here on LT, in the Ancient History group and so on. For the moment, I am still slogging away at Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace by Avi Shlaim. Fiction-wise, I'm also attempting acclaimed Iranian author Simin Danishvar's 1969 novel, Savushun (in English translation), which depicts life in and around Shiraz in the early 1940s.

Currently reading Ekot från Amalthea. No translation, and probably won't be any - it's a series of essays elaborating on political history and discusses the global economy, representative democracy, and political violence.

So I attended a lecture sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America by Prof. John Younger about Mycenae at Amherst College tonight. It was amazing how much of the many books I've read about ancient Greece in the last two or three years came flooding back at me during the lecture and the Q&A that followed. I remembered that in Courtesans and Fishcakes I learned that the alter where the sacrifice took place was more sacred than the religious center or temple and when it was my turn I asked whether there was evidence of that in the Bronze Age archaeology. Anyway, I always bemoan the fact that I only retain a fraction of what I read, but it's amazing sometimes what you do recall and how you end up relating it to other parts of the whole.

Kudos man... I've had the same experience before, good stuff. Problem is, retaining enough for discussion every Friday answering very specific questions with page and line numbers :-D

I actually found it easier to recall in college because I was focused on the info and I took notes and I chatted it up with others of the like-minded. Here in the real world and outside of academia, LT is one of my few opportunities for these kinds of discussions so it is hard to keep all that stuff alive in my "memory palace"

Well my school is full of religies who don't actually read books, even if they're assigned and there's a discussion on Friday. So we're essentially in the same boat here, haha...

So they only have to read one book? LOL

btw, here's the guy whos lecture I attended tonite:

http://www.archaeological.org/webinfo.php?page=10224&lid=131

Oh trust me, they don't even read the "Good Book." Anytime they try to argue any religious points they just recycle things they heard in Sunday school and which they recycle to their own Sunday school patrons.

Anyway, that's pretty cool you got to hear that guest lecture. I wish my worthless uni put on stuff like that.

How'd ya pick the ol' worthless uni, Feicht? Only decided it was worthless after you got there or something?

Just wanted to note that I just completed The Honey and the Hemlock: Democracy and Paranoia in Ancient Athens and Modern America – Eli Sagan -- this is a great political bookend to the Courtesans and Fishcakes social history of the Greeks. While Sagan sometimes stretches his psychoanaltical theories too far to suit the historical facts, this book is packed with great information. There is also some scary similarities to our own culture that will make you squirm. Read it!

>36 stellarexplorer: Stellar:

I didn't know how crappy it was till I was already here. I moved back to Ohio to go to the community college 20 mins from my parents' house, without really knowing what I was gonna do with my education. I've since transferred to main campus, 1 hour away, which I'd hoped would be better, but it's kinda...well...not. I'm sure it's not as bad as I make it out to be, but still... :-P

>38 Feicht:
That is unfortunate Feicht. A guy like you deserves a challenging intellectual environment. You could probably use some professors to disagree with you more, and to show you where you've gone wrong! :-P

The good thing, I suppose, is that (I believe) all education is really self-education.

Oh make no mistake, I've always kind of had to "teach myself" from the cradle on up, basically :-) I suppose now is no different.

Really though, it's not as if it's my professors' fault, they're just playing the hand they're dealt (classes full of fundamentalist idiots). I take every available opportunity to talk to them outside of class. And about the disagreeing with them aspect, where do you think I come up with all my anti-religion arguments? :-D Actually not from class because there are never any good counterpoints there, but rather talking with one of my main profs who basically shares my political beliefs (a rarity around here) but also considers himself a Catholic, despite the fact that he teaches all about other mythologies on a daily basis :-)

Just finished Ordinary Men. Not entertainment but very good reading. This edition had an afterword about Goldhagen's Willing Executioners. Browning takes him apart with his own words. I'm listening to A Savage War of Peace. This was a classic post WWII insurgency. I am told the book is read by people from Osama Bin Laden to Robert Gates.

Finished Thomas F. Madden’s Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice about Venice's transition to a sea empire and the pivotal role of both Dandolo and the Fourth Crusade in that process. Madden was co-author with Donald E. Quellerfor the second edition of Q’s great The Fourth Crusade; in this book too, he deals very matter-of-fact with the many historical biases against Dandolo.
Just begun with The Troubadour's Song by David Boyle, which is one crusade ahead of the one in which Dandolo played such a prominent part. This is an easy read, very enjoyable, about 12th century Europe – the Age of Light and “Stadt Luft macht frei”, so far.
After this I want to return to the Venetians: Eric R. Dursteler’s Venetians in Constantinople lies waiting.
(Last year we had on tv the BBC-series Francesco’s Mediterranean Voyage in which Francesco da Mosto in a late nineteenth-century schooner remakes his ancestor’s trip from Venice to Constantinople, a thing I dream about doing myself some day…).

Still plodding through the Hussein biography/doorstop but am also taking a break with a bit of lighter fare -- The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice. I find culinary history fascinating, and the author's style is quite engaging, so it should be a smooth, enjoyable read.

Which three cities is it?

Venice, Lisbon, and Amsterdam.

Finished A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962. I thought it was excellent. I didn't know much about this era and this book was very thorough and had excellent analysis. It also has a lot to say about wars of insurgency.
Now I'm reading The Mind of the Master Class. Excellent scholarship. At the end of each paragraph is a footnote with a paragraph of authorities on the statements in the paragraph. The authors give quite a different slant of the intellectual life of southern slaveholders. One of the authors, Eugene Genovese, started out as a Marxist and the Civil War is referred to as the War for Southern Independence.

^ 44, 45 Yes. Which, admittedly, is not quite what I was expecting (when I first read the book jacket). I was thinking more along the lines of Malacca, Mumbai, and Zanzibar, or some such. But it seems the book is (so far) shaping up to be more about the spice trade in (or to) Western Europe, and these three Western European cities that played a major role in it.

Thanks, Essa & Ted

Sounds like an interesting book.

Interesting, Ted. I knew about Amsterdam and Lisbon, but wouldn't have guessed about Venice.

Peter Padfield wrote a couple of interesting books about an historical causal chain (Kausalkette in German) leading from Venice in the 15th and 16th centuries over the Netherlands in the 17th, Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries to the United States in 20th. Maritime Supremacy and the Opening of the Western Mind and Maritime Power and the Struggle for Freedom. Both are highly recommended.

I am nearing the end of several books, which have all taken me a while due to work creeping into my reading time.

The great upheaval
mr adams' last crusade
the post american world - fareed zakaria
the unnatural history of the sea
the art and politics of science
einstein: his life and universe

and recently finished
wildebeest in a rainstorm
the honest broker

>49 Feicht:
I would have guessed Venice before Lisbon - it was the conduit for most trade from the eastern Mediterranean.

>52 staffordcastle: True enough, I guess I was thinking more "extra-Med." if you know what I mean. I knew all about the "Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie", and Lisbon just makes sense due to the power and conquests of the Portuguese in the 15th-18th centuries. But since those were the lines of my reasoning, I hadn't thought of Venice :-)

Anyway, as for my own "NR", I'm still plowing through Gibbon, but have been thinking of starting up a non-nonfiction (that's "fiction" to you and me, haha) book for bedtime; maybe Harris' Imperium, or Kane's Forgotten Legion... or maybe even The Silmarillion again, I dunno... so many books, so little time...

Feicht -
Have you tried The Peshawar Lancers by S.M. Stirling? Very interesting alternate history!

Looks interesting, but I should probably try to finish some books I own already first, haha

Right now I am reading In Miserable Slavery Thomas Thistlewood in Jamaica 1750-86. I got it from the library for research on an assignment for a class on medical history. When I saw that it could not be considered a primary source, it is distilled from his journal it is the journal, I moved it down the list to read. I did get some useful information from it but I was writing the paper as I read the book and the paper was finished first. That was Sunday but I am still reading the book. Thistlewood, by today’s standards is a cruel degenerate and I believe that some of his activities were frowned on even then but he is interesting. He was a gardener and he introduced many varieties of plants to Jamaica but it is his library that keeps me reading. He regularly imports books and lends and borrows from his neighbors. Titles like Horse-hoeing Husbandry: or an Essay on the Principles of Vegetation and Tillage by Jethro Tull (London, 1751), which he received in 1758. The Present State of Great Britain & her North American Colonies he read in 1775 but it was soon to be outdated. An Inquiry into the Nature causes of the Wealth of Nations Adam Smith (London, 1776) and the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 2nd Edition, Edward Gibbon (London, 1776) There were two by Ben Franklin and many others where the title or the author seems familiar to me.

I am about halfway through After the Ice and enjoying it, but am a bit worried that the parts that make it most interesting,the parts that compel the narrative (for me, that is, as a person who reads more fiction than non) - the descriptions of the mesolithic and neolithic lifestyles around the world, whether by the modern John Lubbock or by the author - are more fiction than fact. Indeed, when I check the footnotes they do often undercut the text rather than support it. How can he possibly say some of the things he says as if they were absolute fact? is he assuming the lifestyles were comparable to modern hunter/gathers, for which he does have evidence? or is there actually evidence for, among other things, wild sex, dancing and so on, in the neolithic era? He has a vivid and compelling imagination, but I wonder how much is from no other source.

>57 kokipy:
I have the book and am excited to read it -- it received acclaim -- but I have only read the introduction and not yet the text.

Crossed The Great Upheaval off the list - finished that last 40 pages the other night. Next to finish: Mr Adams Last Crusade.

>57 kokipy:
I'm in the chapter about early hominids in Maps of Time right now, and the author repeatedly says that the evidence of their lifestyles does NOT support a parallel with modern hunter/gatherer societies.

Because of so many of you here, I'm just beginning Guns, Germs, and Steel - very pleasurable reading so far. Thank you!

8-)

>60 staffordcastle:
Which early hominids, staffordcastle? There is a big difference between early hominids like Australopithicus, for example, and the Homo sapiens of 15,000 years ago as in After the Ice. "Early" is a relative term when discussing human ancestors that stretch over several million years.

I'll have to check and get back to you. I don't have the book handy right now. My memory is just reading that statement repeatedly. I haven't gotten to H. sapiens yet, though (next chapter, I think), so it can't be them.

Agreed about the value of "early."

I don't recall the exact part in Maps of Time but I think Christian was pointing to the fact that there is no evidence to assume that modern hunter-gatherers behaved exactly the way ancient hunter-gatherers did

oh here it isL=: pg 151

"Anthropologists constratly remind paleontologists that modern foraging societies are very modern -- all have been influenced in some way by modern society. So building theories about hominine .. social structure on these analogies may be risky."

Christian's book is very well-indexed

Thanks, Garp!

>63 stellarexplorer:
Stellar, I've just skimmed through that chapter again, and see that this statement is in the introductory part, before he gets into the detailed narrative of early hominine species; before he introduces Australopithecus. So I'm not really able to say which early hominid species he is applying it to - my feeling is "all of them."

My copy of Maps of Time arrived Saturday. I have to finish Little Dorrit and some odds and ends before I tackle it, though . . .

I started The Illustrated A Brief History of Time by Hawking today. I had a really hard time years ago with the original edition, bur I'm more confident now, especially after Maps of Time. This is an updated, revised edition that includes a lot of illustrations, so hopefully I'll stick it through this time.

I also have going Europe Between the Oceans, Wildebeest in a Rainstorm, Suttree, and a book of Aristophanes plays.

There's a few other things that have been momentarily or permanently put aside

Ooh, Aristophanes! Have you read him before. He is very very insightful and quite funny along the way. Which of his plays will you be reading?

Right now I'm on The Acharnians. I've read the Frogs. I plan on reading them all -- I bought the 5-volume Loeb collection. I've seen Lysistrata performed live. I love Aristophanes!!!

Approaching the end of Stephen Hunt's Court of the Air on paper at lunchtimes.

Nearly at the end of Feist's Magician: Apprentice on audiobook in the car on the daily commutes. Part 2 (Magician: Master) is lined up in iTunes ready to go next.

Also, a couple chapters into Flannery's Eternal Frontier at home. This one is remarkably easy reading so far - a good thing since it's a library copy and I only have it available for another week or so.

Apart from what I'm reading, I'm listening (and enjoying) Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcasts. And consuming Kenneth Harl's "Great Civilizations of Asia Minor" from TTC. I know some of you have previously enjoyed that one. (Garp, et al)

Harl is awesome! I've listened to that TC course three times and I will no doubt do it again one of these days.

Anyone who has not purchased a TC course should absolutely do so in the near future. Amazing stuff!

http://www.teach12.com/

Or do as I do and get them from the library or interlibrary loan!

Well that looks awesome but there's no way in hell I could afford those courses. How do you get them from the library, Stellar?

EDIT: Of course I may be tipping my hand to the fact that my local library is what the Germans would call, "verdammt wertlos" ;-)

Stellar, my friend, I always buy the Teach Co. courses -- I like to own them like books. Besides, they offer a 100% return satisfaction and I have returned a couple I didn't like. I own them so I can listen on a whim to any all over again, and most courses I have taken more than once.

Feicht: always buy on sale -- all courses go on sale at least twice a year

Yeah but still... fifty bucks?

>75 Feicht:
One of the few advantages of living in Westchester County NY is that the libraries are extremely well funded. My librarian has 50+ TTCs, and almost all the others are available through interlibrary loan from the other libraries in the County System. That said, I'd still be happier living farther from the megalopolis, but I have to earn a living. I am open to suggestions on more favorable retirement spots, but that's decades from now. I hear real estate prices are very reasonable in Borneo.

I can just see you wearing one of those muti-colored ponchos, sitting on a log in Borneo, re-reading Snow Crash And you . . . are ... smiling

But how will I get the Teaching Co courses? Gotta solve that one. The postage alone will kill me.

buy an Ipod, download in MP4 format of course!

By then I may be ready to take that technological leap.

I took a look at the courses and there was a lot of interesting material. I imagine that most of them are sold on sale, the regular prices are a killer. I have been listening to audio books on an Ipod and enjoying them very much.

Here's a list of the TC courses I've taken -- all purchased when on sale and rated by me in my 5 star system. If anyone wants further info on any of these courses, feel free to ask me and I'll give you detailed info:

TEACHING COMPANY COURSES TAKEN:

1. The American Civil War – Gary Gallagher *****
2. The Great Presidents – Alan Lichman ****
3. Human Prehistory & The First Civilizations – Brian Fagan *****
4. The History of the United States, 2nd. Edition – Alan Guelzo, Gary Gallagher & Patrick Allitt ****
5. Mr. Lincoln: The Life of Abraham Lincoln -- Alan Guelzo ***1/2
6. Conquest of the Americas – Marshall Eakin *****
7. The Foundations of Western Civilization – Thomas F.X. Noble (2006) *
8. Origins of Great Ancient Civilizations -- Kenneth Harl (2006) *****
9. Great Ancient Civilizations of Asia Minor -- Kenneth Harl (2006) *****
10. Ancient Greek Civilization – Jeremy McInerney (5-25-06) *****
11. Famous Greeks – J. Rufus Fears **
12. Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Age – Jeremy McInerney *****
13. The Age of Pericles – Jeremy McInerney *****
14. The Peloponnesian War – Kenneth Harl *****
15. Masterpieces of Ancient Greek Literature – David J. Schenker ***
16. Greece and Rome: An Integrated History of the Ancient Mediterranean – Robert Garland (3-5-09) ***1/2
17. The American Revolution – Allen C. Guelzo **1/2

Yeah, can you email them to me?

haha

Most are great, although there are a few lemons.

Also among the very best are:

History of the English Language taught by Seth Lerer

Literary Modernism: The Struggle for Modern History taught by Jeffrey Perl (wonderful!)

I also learned a lot from History of Ancient Egypt taught by Bob Brier

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES get "No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life" It sucked.

Don't worry... that title alone is enough to make my brain explode

If only that were the worst of it! :-D

My undergraduate adviser was a fellow named Jeffrey Perl at the University of Texas at Dallas. He was an absolutely brilliant man. The best graduate course in literature I ever had was a two semester survey of western literature. Young, too. An expert on T. S. Eliot.

I wonder if it is the same Jeffrey Perl who taught the "Literary Modernism: The Struggle for Modern History". In appearance he reminds me a little of Chester Gould's character Flat Top.

>88 stellarexplorer:

That's the guy, geneg. He is brilliant. He's at Princeton now. Here is his picture and bio from the Teaching Co site: http://www.teach12.com/storex/professor.aspx?id=86

Sho nuff, that's him. Well I'll be darned!

Small world, eh? :-)

Just started Steelworkers in America: The Non-Union Era by David Brody

ThePam was right about The Historians Craft I just put it down. It was written in 1944 and at one point he predicts the rise of social history. After reading that I decided he really might know what he was talking about and paid close attention. Bloch was very France centered and at times I felt like an outsider. That was not a bad thing, I think feeling that way every now and then helps keep me centered. He covered some interesting ideas that none of my classes have touched on. Anyone that wants to seriously analyze history would do themselves a favor by reading it.

I liked Jon Stewarts commentary last night on how the UAW owns GM now

I have to watch that tonight, the wife records it.

I told a co-worker here, I work at a Chevrolet dealer, that it would be nice to have someone in charge that actually depends on the company for their livelihood. It seems to me that for the last 40 years GM management has been more concerned with building a banking company, GMAC, and breaking the union than building a car people want to buy. Today the dealership is having a ‘special event’ unveiling the 2006, I mean the 2010, Camaro.

I finished The Taste of Conquest (which was thoroughly enjoyable), and have started Beans: A History by Ken Albala. One might not think a book about beans is terribly interesting, but I like culinary history and am enjoying the book thus far. Studying beans also entails looking at history from pre-historic times to modern day, as well as a wide variety of cultures around the world, so I'm finding that interesting, also.

Sounds interesting - (Beans: A History, that is) - maybe if I read it I might get to like them better; a flavor of history, as it were :-)

I love beans but usually the odor around here after I eat them ... er ...subtly changes ... maybe a book will come in handy

You could invest in a little Bean-o. :)

The best part of family get togethers is the ceremonial communal consumption of the musical fruit :-D

Thank you Jennie -- great suggestion ....

Oh and Feicht thanks for the invite to your family dinner this year but I have to wind my watch that day and ...

Don't forget about vacuuming the cat ...

It's a religious experience, really. You can tell there are spirits within the musical fruit because after you eat them, they try to get out!

Beans, beans the musical fruit.
The more you eat. The more you toot!
The more you toot, the better you feel.
So let’s have beans for every meal!

My Grandfather sang that before every meal when there were kids around. It made my Mom, her mom and all the aunts so mad! We kids loved it. I, of course, have passed it on to my grandchildren.

The book looks great, it is on my want list now.

Ah, yes! The kind of thing that makes me think human procreation is a kind of interspecies activity.

> 104 Indeed, Albala touches on exactly that. From the Introduction:

"Further complicating the history of beans, and hopefully adding some levity to the topic, is the persistent association of beans with flatulence. Any speaker of English knows at least one version of the ditty: Beans, beans, they're good for your heart -- the more you eat, the more you fart ... "

#104 - Part of the joy of grandparenting is passing along undesirable (from the parental point of view) information. We taught our granddaughter to make expanding worms from the paper covers on straws. Our daughter was not pleased! But we had fun.

I'm eating the musical fruit right now!!!

In other news (relating to the thread itself :-D), as of next week I'll be simultaneously working on:

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language by David Anthony, Tacitus' Agricola and the Germania, New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age by Edwards, and probably Homer's Odyssey as well. Taking four classes for summer semester (six weeks) with each one basically requiring a book every two weeks. Hopefully I can get through without my brain exploding. Luckily though, one of the classes technically extends beyond that and my trek in Germany is going to be part of it, so at least I don't have to have a paper for that until like August.

What is the topic anyway? Oh, yeah.

I only know one book I need for my summer classes, Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming, for a class on Native American cultures.

I also picked up a copy of America in 1492 last night. I heard about it here and it tied in with the class and it was a dollar so how could I pass it up?

I am still trying to come up with a rationalization for why I bought the other books.

Bad move, TL. Never justify, never rationalize--at least with books. They're there because you need them, never mind why.

Jennieg speaks the truth.
After an excursion into rereading a space opera adventure from the early '90's I expect to get back on track with Germs, Guns and Steel. This one is so fascinating, and really so easy to read, that I have to keep pinching myself to believe that it's real (as opposed to pop?) history. I'm just about through with the second section. Thank you, group, for encouraging me to read it. Otherwise, I have a woman's book or two going, another space opera, a travellogue, and a dip from time to time into an introduction of the Jewish prophets. Discipline is not in my nature when it comes to reading. I don't even think I want to change.....

I know you keep hearing this, Lizzie, but you should give Maps of Time a shot as well. I do not read a lot of science, but I have found the early sections quite approachable. I just accept that I will never get my head around the numbers and move on.

"Discipline is not in my nature when it comes to reading. I don't even think I want to change....."

...and you should change because...?

TLC, thanks for letting me know about those - I've added both to my (Bookmooch) wishlist, they look really interesting.

And Feicht, those horse/wheel and gilded age books look interesting too! Actually, there are a lot of other good recommendations here too - I've starred this thread!

Hmm. I'm noticing that my readings selections at the moment have been guided by others. My history reading right now is perhaps not so BIG - going through biographies of John Quincy Adams (for the US Presidents Challenge) and Nelson Mandela's autobio (as picked out by Go Review That Book! group) and some fiction thrown in - Haruki Marukami's Kafka on the Shore - as chosen for my real-live-face-to-face-non-electronic- beverage-tasting-occasionally-potluck- human-interaction- book-club.

Edited to note that spaces were needed to break up the description of the book club because apparently LT will not post a whole word that long, but will rather truncate it with a "..."

Lizzie, I don't have a great science foundation, but I made it through Maps of Time: An Introduction to big History no problem. Only the early part has a lot of Big Bang cosmology in it.

Actually, reading it gave me the confidence to return and start over anew A Brief History of Time, long ago abandoned because I felt it was way over my head. Some of it is, of course, but I am actually halway through it this time because I feel more comfortable with the foundation. Plus, the Big History concept makes all of it far more critical to my ever expanding perspective on what constitutes history.

Of course there are foundational cosmology and physics texts more accessible than A Brief History of Time...

I found myself irritated by the fact that other people I knew had read Hawking and didn't find him as impenetrable as I so I felt challenged to read it. What can I say, I'm immature ...

A Brief History of Time was one of my favourite books when I was in high school :-D

My baby brother taught himself to read wit that book. He was four.

That's scary!

When I saw this preschooler reading A Brief History of Time while eating french fries at McDonald's, I thought I really should give it another try. But then when I heard George Bush was gonna pick it up right after re-reading My Pet Goat, that's when my mind was made up.

Do you think he will understand My Pet Goat THIS time?

Well that's a good question! My guess is ..... no ...

As for grown up books, I'm about 1/3 way through The Horse, the Wheel, and Language; so far I have to say I'm quite enjoying it. My only minor gripe would be that the "feel" of the text changes here and there, almost like some parts of it are just recycled bits from Anthony's PhD dissertation or something. Like, he'll have a great, relatable prose and then all of a sudden there will be 5 pages of jargon with no explanation. If you're in history or archaeology it's not like you won't understand, it's just a bit jarring, is all.

It's a minor detail, however.

Feicht -- I have toyed with the idea of reading The Horse, the Wheel, and Language but it just seems based on some of the reviews that I won't like it.

On the other hand, I am really enjoying Europe Between the Oceans although it is not necessarily an easy read.

Really? I haven't read any bad reviews of it. There have been a few scientific things in it that run contrary to what I've learned, but unless he says that Indo European languages spread 6k years ago because that's when the world was created, I'm still on board.

Curious what you've heard that makes you think you won't like it though.

No Feicht, one can tell from the words of Adam and Eve that they spoke Hebrew. Cunliffe surely knows that. Ergo IE had to have started later.

Adam and Eve - Hebrew? Certainly not! They spoke Elizabethan English.

Just like everyone else 6 thousand years ago!! :-D

Feicht -- Even the people who loved the book take issue with it, especially since his Pontic steppes origin theory is apparently a bit more controversial than he leads us to believe.

There are other issues too. Here's an ecerpt from an otherwise favorable review from an Amazon reader:

"I will concede that the author does thread a larger narrative through the endless site reports. There's a section, for example, on "The Economic and Military Effects of Horseback Riding", which explains the impressive idea that the real impact of horseback riding was that it made it possible for nomads to travel further from the river valleys while grazing their animals. Another example: "The First Cities and Their Connection to the Steppes", which describes the trading patterns that arose once cities appeared in Mesopotamia.

But these delightful sections are lost in the numbing freshet of details. Here's a quote, from page 293:

"The bronze tools and weapons in other Novosvobodnaya-phase graves included cast flat axes, sleeved axes, hammer-axes, heavy tanged daggers with multiple midribs, chisels, and spearheads. The chisels and spearheads were mounted to their handles the same way, with round shafts hammered into four-sided contracting bases that fit into a V-shaped rectangular hole on the handle or spear. Ceremonial objects included bronze cauldrons, long-handled bronze dippers, and two-pronged bidents (perhaps forks for retrieving cooked meats from the cauldrons). Ornaments included beads of carnelian from western Pakistan, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, gold, rock crystal, and even a bead from Klady made from a human molar sheathed in gold (the first gold cap!)"

The author simply couldn't make up his mind what kind of book he wanted to write. Let me speculate on how this chimera of a book could have been written: the author, having spent years with Russian archaeologists accumulating a huge store of information about their work, approaches the publisher with a great idea for a book. "These Russians have been digging up all sorts of wonderful things", he says, "but here in the West we don't know much about their work. I'd like to write a book putting all their results together into a coherent story."

To which the publisher replies, "Sounds great, but what's the hook? We can't call this book 'A Summary of Results of Russian Archaeological Field Work Over the Period 1980 - 2000'. We need something sexier."

Anthony: "Well, their research certainly sheds a lot of light upon the beginnings of the Indo-European peoples."

Publisher: "Perfect! Let's make the book about how the Indo-European languages got started! That's always a good topic!"

So Anthony writes some extra chapters to slap up front, and we get two books for the price of one:

1. "Beginnings of the Indo-European Languages"
and
2. "A Summary of Results of Russian Archaeological Field Work Over the Period 1980 - 2000".

Now, there's nothing wrong with this. However, buyers should be aware of the fact that three quarters of the book consists of site reports and only one-quarter deals with Indo-European languages."

So maybe these guys are all wrong, but that is what has put me off so far. If you finish the book and you love it, I will buy it based upon your recommendation.

I'm also interested but non-committed. I should have listed as an unfinished (but nearly so) book, J.P. Malloy's In Search of the Indo-Europeans. I bought it for the language, but most of it is archaeology - certainly not as tedious as the quotation above, but nearly so.

(The Edit: Wrong again. I just looked at the book. When I put it down 10 years ago it was because I was in the archaeology section - the last couple of hundred pages of the book. Since I had completely forgotten the language section - most of the rest of the book - I'll have to start over when I come back to it -------)

Ah yeah Garp, that is kind of what I've been noticing about it, as I mentioned in my last post. But still, it's not that big of an issue for me.

Like I say, there are sections which are rich in technical archaeological jargon (again, doesn't bother me but it's obviously not as enjoyable as narrative)--but he also provides lots of illuminating information about the mindset of the various Mesolithic thru Bronze age peoples he discusses. For instance I just got done reading a section where he talked about some of the "borderland cultures" through which the idea of cattle herding diffused to the people who would become the Proto-Indo-Europeans and some of what struck me the most was when he went on about their burial practices (or lack thereof). On the surface it may seem odd to us that any "modern" people wouldn't bury their dead until we realize that some cultures would've cremated their dead...but then he posits the idea that many of these tribes didn't leave cemeteries because they would've exposed their deceased comrades "to return to the birds"; sort of a metaphysical idea based on evidence we have for bird worship among Old Europe populations. One could imagine perhaps a specific area designated as sacred where the people would've brought their dead upon expiration; so it's not as if they just left their buddies to rot out in the open, it was all part of a religious ritual. Fascinating!

Anyway as for his origin theory, I don't see what's so controversial about it though; it's basically the generally accepted theory that the Pontic-Caspian steppe is where the speakers originated.

I'm currently reading Being Human, and if someone thinks history is just about yesterday I'm here do oppose! ;-)

Patterns in human behaviour is very interesting, and how we interact with the things around us do inform our general behaviour, social patterns, etcetera. So guesses on what is to come is as interesting and telling as discussions and analysis of the past. IMHO.

I'm going to write several pieces as a response to this volume... *wanders off, in thoughts*

The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome by Erich Gruen for the second time, i love it

Just finished G. O. Hutchinson's Cicero's Correspondence, a reread for an article I'm writing on, well, Cicero's letters. Hutchinson argues for the literary value of the letters and stresses that we shouldn't treat them as mere historical sources.

Hey Amber!! Wazzup?

So what is your take on Hutchinson's thesis? Do you score the literary value as high as he does?

Garp: I do, in fact. It's Cicero, and I don't think he could write anything that wasn't rhetorically styled in some manner. Of course the letters are valuable as historical sources, but it would be doing them a disservice not to look at them as literary works as well. But then again, I'm a literary scholar more than I am an historian, so go figure.

The ex-Latin teacher agrees. The reader enjoys them for insight into that complex man himself. I don't particularly like him, certainly wouldn't want to be tied to him in any familial way, but he is fascinating!

>104 TLCrawford:: do you have a musical reference for that verse? I think my children would enjoy it. I am old enough to be their grandparent so feel entitled to share it now without waiting for their children to come along....

kokipy

I will see what I can come up with.

I'm reading Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, The Father of Hate Radio by Donald Warren. The parallels to current events are fascinating.

Coughlin and Limbaugh have a lot of similar characteristics

In lighter news, I just finished Anthony's The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. I definitely recommend it, though stretches of it can be a bit of a slog. He makes a very convincing argument about the origin and movement of Indo European peoples, and introduced a few concepts I'd never thought of before. The only real problem is that in doing so he (and he almost has to) has to present a shit ton of archaeological evidence, which to most of us means absolutely nothing. I dare say he could have shaved 100 pages off if he did a better job of summarizing the data; for instance, you don't necessarily NEED to know the EXACT situation of every single gravesite between Bulgaria and Kazakhstan to get the big picture. But on the other hand, you DO need to know the overarching situation in various areas for it to all come together, so it's a fine line.

I'd definitely give it a 4 out of 5 stars though. I kind of wish he got into more about the spread of the individual branches of PIE, but he says right from the start that's not the focus of the book, so at least it's not liek you're left hanging. You at least get the initial stages of where they're heading, which is nevertheless fascinating. If nothing else, the book makes you wanna go out and check out the different themes that if he had gone into, the book would've been 1000 pages.

Just begun with The Whisperers by Orlando Figes. As a stepping stone to this book I read in my holidays Simon Sebag Montefiore’s first (historical) novel Sashenka which opened my eyes to existence of millions of orphans in Stalinist Russia and to the terrible plight of lots of those children in the Communal Orphanages for the Re-education of Children of Traitors to the Motherland (the protagonist saved her children from this fate).
Historian Montefiore did a very good job with this novel.

Not about reading per se, but I have been reviewing DVD documentaries to sue in Big history teaching and am currently revisiting (after what? 25 years?) Carl Sagan's Cosmos. I think there is a lot I can use out of this. Anyone think of any other Big History type documentaries?

Perhaps Kenneth Clarke's Civilization you mentioned elsewhere? The TV version, that is. Or James Burke's "Connections"?

Or Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man.

Along with my usual novels, I'm reading Greek Fire Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs, a book about ancient weapons of mass destruction. As odd as it sounds, I'm finding the book fascinating.

Thanks stellar and geneg, I have both of those. I am keen to find some docos that do the cosmic side of the equation as well.

As to reading, I am currently working through a massive and very interesting book War in Human Civilization by Azar Gat. It's impressive and the arguments are hard to fault as much as I dislike many of them because his scholarship is pretty impressive. ANother book I am finding immensely stimulating as Aidan Southall The City in Time and Space. They are both well worth the effort I think.

Right now for classes I'm on Wells' The Barbarians Speak, Puhvel's Comparative Mythology, West's Greek Lyric Poetry, and alternating between Green's Death in the Haymarket and Edwards' New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age.

Pretty much enjoying them all. My prof hates the Wells book because he calls into question the ancient sources more than once, but I don't know; I guess I don't have the emotional connection to Caesar and Tacitus that professional Classicists do ;-) It makes sense to me to call everything into question, not just assume that the ancients didn't have any reason to lie.

Puhvel's book is fascinating, comparing chapter by chapter all the major mythologies of the ancient world, and the parallels and "borrowings" amongst them.

The Greek Lyric poets book is interesting, but the fact that most of this stuff comes down to us only in fragments is kind of annoying; I mean, you can follow the narrative flow of Homer, but trying to read Sappho or Semonides there's all these gaps where the papyrus turned to dust or whatever.

The Edwards book is alright, it just reads kind of like a textbook (albeit one I can agree with). The Green book on the Haymarket Riot though is amazing, and I'd encourage every American citizen to read it. Way too often modern Americans look down on, for instance, the Middle East as just a land where people don't behave, and the stupid governments are oppressive to the foolish people. Well I hate to break it to you (actually...I don't) but Chicago in the late 19th century was just as bad. The US Army was called in at Kent State in 1970 and killed four people (I think) and it felt like a turning point in our history. Well in the 1880s businessmen could call in the US Army or militia units, or even the police--which was far from the organized, disciplined, principled (in theory) institution it is now--and kill dozens of people with impunity. Imagine the Walton family today killing 30 Walmart workers for protesting having their jobs being replaced by cheaper immigrant labor. This kind of stuff happened seemingly every month back then.

> 149 Ah, yes ... The Good Old Days, when society ran smoothly, everything was perfect, and people were much more moral, upright and decent than they are today. ;)

I have just started on Sidney H. Griffith's The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (primarily c. AD 600s-1200s). He came to one of the colleges here and did a lecture one evening, mainly on the topic of Yahya ibn Adi and other Arab Christian philosophers of 10th-century Baghdad, and I went to see it. The lecture was engaging, and the book is shaping up to be quite interesting and informative thus far.

> 149: "(Four Dead in) Ohio" - Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

Hahaha thanks Matt (duh!! *smacks forehead*)

and Essa: Yeah, exactly, haha. I just don't get it when conservatives go on about the good old days, stuff like the Jeffersonian idea of the yeoman farmer. This just hasn't existed in reality since like the 1830s, and by the 1880s it had been murdered by corporations....who conservatives are in bed with nowadays. Strange bedfellows indeed...

The conservatives love the 'good old days' because they were the ones calling out the army to put down those uppity workers.

The little bit more they need to do today cuts into their spa time. ;-)

Well let's no mistake; "they" weren't necessarily the ones doing it. They just wish they were of the class who were ;-)

#147
Great book. I have used that in my research for the medieval series I did for Ace Books. Greek fire is a fascinating weapon, in all its forms. Nowadays I guess they call it Napalm.

I'm reading up on angels these days. Historical, biblical...particularly Michael and Gabriel. Guardian angels in general. It's for a project I'm working on.

>156 JulianneArdianLee:

Let me suggest Valerie Flint's The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe. The book is great overall, but you may especially enjoy her discussion of the cult of angels.

Darnit, I "was" reading the most fascinating book but now I can't find it. I'm afraid Mt. TBR slipped and buried it in a tectonic shift :(

Titled "Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico: The Diary of Susan Shelby Magoffin, 1846-1847", it's a startling open diary by a young woman. Unlike any of the other letters and memoirs of that era I've read (which granted isn't a long list) she talks about her relationship with her husband, and about loosing her first baby. In fact, there's a rather puzzling entry in regards to the latter where she uses the word 'abortion'. I can't tell whether she meant miscarriage or something other than what I could understand that term to mean.

What's just as interesting is that the editor makes no comment on the incident to clarify. (Editing in 1930 timeframe)

Reading nothing terribly important, merely the Eyewitness Travel Guide to Greece: Athens and the Mainland, Ancient Sites, Beaches, Monasteries, Mountains, Tavernas, and Museums ... all in preliminary preparation for a long contemplated trip to Greece.

For some reason I'm most interested in visiting the site of ancient Sparta. Evidently there's little or nothing to see of the city's original five villages, but I'm compelled by a desire to unlock the mystery of the polis' peculiar social and political organization.

Something of a Spartan, myself, I've long found the twin disciplines of simplicity and frugality to be admirable traits.

Thucydides predicted quite accurately: "Suppose the city of Sparta to be deserted, and nothing left but the temples and the ground-plan, distant ages would be very unwilling to believe that the power of the Lacedaemonians was at all equal to their fame. And yet they own two-fifths of the Peloponnesus, and are acknowledged leaders of the whole, as well as of numerous allies in the rest of Hellas. But their city is not built continuously, and has no splendid temples or other edifices; it rather resembles a group of villages like the ancient towns of Hellas, and would therefore make a poor show. Whereas, if the same fate befell the Athenians, the ruins of Athens would strike the eye, and we should infer their power to have been twice as great as it really is."

But I too would love to visit the site where Sparta once reigned oer the Peloponnese, as well as the mound at Hissarlik that was once Troy.

I'll get there someday :-)

I've actually always been fascinated by Anatolia as well for some reason. I know a lot of the cities have suffered the same fate as the ones in Greece, extremely built up during the 20th century with crappy buildings and whatnot, but there's still so much history there, I imagine the "vibe" would be amazing!

Not to mention, a lot of the "off the beaten path" places are still visible... Çatalhöyük, for example. Awesome stuff :-D

I mean Germany's cool and all, but I just imagine being further east (while still having access to..you know...services) in modern Turkey would just have a totally different feel for the depth of history and whatnot...

Yes, Çatalhöyük -- that would be part of my dream survey trip

Mary Lovel's Bess of Hardwick. I got half way through last time, and I intend to read it cover to cover this time. She's a really good writer who is also giving me a good impression of what life was like back then, as well as writing about Bess of Hardwick.

I'm borrowing a book from my prof that I'm gonna skim, called Reign of the Phallus written by one of his old professors. As far as I can tell, she's a super-feminist who is trying to provide insight into perhaps Classical Greek culture's most elusive subject: women. I'm fascinated by the book's premise, since she's right in that the vast majority of what we know from that time period comes from elite men and this skews any view we have about women as "the loyal wife" and the prostitute "with a heart of gold" and so forth. It looks like she extensively uses extant pottery as a source,which is interesting since if you know anything about Greek pottery, much of it is essentially porno, haha.

Anyway, according to my prof, the author eventually uses all her evidence to posit that the mutilation of the Herms prior to the Sicilian expedition was actually done by a group of militant feminists lashing out against the men in the city...though there's not really any evidence for this, and I guess she even kind of admits it's just a guess.

Looks like an interesting book on a topic that rarely gets attention :-)

That book sounds like great fun, Feicht. Please report back and let us (me) know whether it is worth tracking down immediately, or best kept to the edges of Mt. TBR.

Definitely, Pam. So far it looks like it's worth it if nothing else, for her captions under the vase pictures. My fave so far is "A Crass picture: many men masturbating whilst a dog defecates".....BGAHAHA!!!!

Wow, Feicht! That sounds like a title you might find in the Museum of Modern Art.

I know right? I started trying to look for an image of the piece online that I could post a link to, but I got nothing but links to bizarre porno sites :-D

Feicht, stop surfing porn & read your history books ...LOL

NEVER!!

hahaha

I don't think I've mentioned that I'm reading That Lady by Kate O'Brien, whose writing I enjoy. This is a novelization of the life of Ana de Mendoza y de la Cerda, Princess of Eboli and Duchess of Pastrana who did/did not have an affair with Phillip II of Spain. I'm slapping my hands to keep them from googling to see what history says about her.

Princess of Ebola? Duchess of Pastrami? I had no idea!

I'll bet you listen to Placebo Flamingo singing opera too!

Reading Real Enemies by Kathryn S. Olmsted.

I'm reading Early India by Romila Thapar. It answers a lot of questions for me. Unfortunately she also indulges in speculation without a whole lot of support or special marking. In the future I might say, "It happened that...," rather than, "Thapar thought..."

Robert

Just finished Miracle in the Andes. It was terrific. An inside view of the Alive story. Extremely powerful.

I'm still reading Mind of the Master Class, message #46. I only have 100 pages to go. I'm putting everything else aside so I can get this book finished.

Just finished Then It Was Destroyed by the Volcano: the Ancient World in Film and on Television. This book caught my eye in the library, but didn't live up to the fun promised in the title. It turned out to be more of a plot summary of movies made about the ancient world, although there is a nice chapter on references to the ancient world in Buffy. Overall, meh.

Reading The Talking Ape : How Language Evolved, by Robbins Burling. So far so good, but I have no idea about his general reputation among other linguists and anthropologists (he's active in both fields).
I plan to check this with a colleague who's a linguist as soon as he's back to work (here in Sweden the summer vacation period is still not quite over).

I'm now reading this really interesting booklet I just picked up at the Pfahlbau Museum in Unteruhldingen, Germany, all about the "stilt houses" of Europe in the Stone and Bronze ages. They sold it to me as a "museum guide" but it's really like a small book by itself that you should probably read BEFORE you go to the museum... hehe

So Feicht I'm skimming your post while multi-tasking and I thought you said "shit houses" of Europe and suddenly I stopped doing everything else to re-read the post, wondering wjhy you would need to read about shit houses before going to the museum ... imagine my surprise LOL

HAHAHA

Yeah and they weren't even BRICK shithouses, either... imagine the smell!!! :-D

I just finished God's Chinese Son by Jonathan Spence, about the Taiping Rebellion. Who knew. And how very depressing I found it. But, like all of Spence's books (that I have read, anyway), wonderfully written.

I'm still working my way through Einstein: His Life and Universe. It's very interesting, even though the physics are heavy going.

I'm slogging through After the Ice and, as pointed out in post #57, the author has a tendency to make pronouncements about the reasons why some cultures engaged in certain behaviors without using expressions like 'possibly' or 'my opinion' and I am finding it it increasingly annoying. Even where he references someone else's opinion he often words it in such a way that it sounds like a proven fact as opposed to a supposition. I am still enjoying much of it, though.

>184 jennieg:
Interestingly, I just finished Albrecht Folsom's Albert Einstein -- one of the best Einstein bios, especially for the section on the scientific response to the 1905 Annus Mirabilis, which has always interested me.

I've read a bunch of Einstein bios: Clark's well-known Einstein: The Life and Times; Thomas Levenson's EINSTEIN IN BERLIN; Abraham Pais' remarkable Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein; Edmund Blair Bolles Einstein Defiant: Genius versus Genius in the Quantum Revolution, which focuses on the decades-long dialogue between Bohr and Einstein. I haven't read the recent Isaacson, however. I'm wondering what it adds that hasn't been said? There are the more recent revelations that he wasn't the greatest husband or father. Ho hum.

Hey I remember this thread :-D

Right now I'm still working on Fox's Travelling Heroes when I'm not reading stuff for school... which isn't very often, haha.

Just started The Mummies of Ürümchi. Fascinating, but a bit heavy on ancient textile techniques, so far.

I'm half way through King Leopold's Ghost, it's alternately fascinating and sad.

>183 kokipy:

I am quite a fan of Jonathan Spence. I read about one-half of God's Chinese Son and put it down. I will put it on my tbr and give it another try. I would like to learn more about the Taiping rebellion.

I just started Empire of Liberty. It is a new volume in the Oxford History of the United States. I read What Hath God Wrought this year and it was very good.

>186 stellarexplorer: This is the first biography of Einstein I've read, soI am unable to compare biographies. I picked up this one largely because I enjoyed the author's bio of Benjamin Franklin. It's interesting and well-written, but I don't know that I'll feel a need to read enough to get a thorough grip of the historiography.

>190 wildbill:: I found Spence's treatment of the Taiping Rebellion in God's Chinese Son utterly compelling. It becomes more and more interesting the closer they get to Nanjing, and thereafter the closer they get to Shanghai and Beijing. Spence doesn't comment or pontificate, just sets out the facts, many of which he draws from hitherto little known and only recently discovered and published contemporaneous texts authored by the principals.

When I went through my Chinese phase I read a lot of Spence. Great writer.

On another note, in the Oxford History of the United States series I read The Battle Cry of Freedom and Grand Expectations plus started and read half each of The Glorious Cause and Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945.

I'm currently reading:

1. The Ancestor's Tale -- Richard Dawkins
2. Alexander Hamilton – Chernow
3. The Island at the Center of the World -- Russell Shorto
4. The Link -- Colin Tudge
5. The Iliad – Homer (Lattimore verse translation)
6. A Companion to the Iliad – Malcolm Willcock
7. Now the Drum of War – Roper
8. Perfecting Sound Forever – Greg Milner
9. Europe Between the Oceans – Cunliffe
10. Pride and Prejudice -- Jane Austin
11. Black Elk Speaks -- Neihardt

I know, I have a "book problem" ... I probably need help ...

Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides
Forecast: The Consequences of Climate Change, from the Amazon to the Arctic, from Darfur to Napa Valley by Stephan Faris
Consider Her Ways and Others by John Wyndham
Fresh Kills (Berkley Prime Crime Mysteries) by Bill Loehfelm
John Quincy Adams: A Public Life, a Private Life by Paul C. Nagel

>192 kokipy: I definitely will have to read God's Chinese Son soon. Chinese history was one of my first loves and Spence is very good.
>193 Garp83: This year I read Battle Cry of Freedom and thought it was excellent. It was not just about the Civil War but the Civil War era. It opens with Winfield Scott going into Mexico City and the war doesn't begin for 200 pages. I just finished Glorious Cause and I am not recommending it. The author used at least 50% secondary sources and shoehorned the Constitutional Convention and ratification of the Constitution into 40 pages. I do have copies of Freedom From Fear and Grand Expectations waiting for me after I finish Empire of Liberty.

Also on my reading list is The Origins of the War of 1914. It is a three volume opus that begins with the Conference of Berlin in 1875. It is touted to be the authoritative text on the subject. The author was an Italian newspaper editor who wrote it in the 1930's when some of the major players were still alive.
Help me, I can't stop!

The other one is the giant From Colony to Superpower which is daunting but I do plan to read it. I was disappointed with "The Glorious Cause" especially because it was so well reviewed. I tried twice & never made it through. It is so hard to find really good books that are comprehensive about that era. I also abandoned A Leap in the Dark midway through because it just bored me. These are both the opposite of Battle Cry of Freedom

Now reading "Niagara: A History of the Falls" by Pierre Berton. I can't see how any Canadian history buff like myself can avoid reading him, he had such a fantastic way of making history come alive. Sadly, I'm nearing the end of what he's written that's of interest to me.

After a four college course Enlightenment, and some of the non-fiction I want to read (biography/history: Spinoza, Franciscus van den Enden, the Encyclopedie - Enlightening the world), I needed as a break some fiction: just started with the first tome of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque cycle: Quicksilver. I’m only on page 58, but sofar enjoy it very much!
Also viewing Heimat 3: Chronik einer Zeitenwende 1989-2000 by Edgar Reitz. Last winter I saw the first two series. It's about a German family (Hunsrück) throughout the 20th century.

I read Blom's "Enlightening the World" for a class a few years ago. It was enjoyable reading for me, and it introduced me to famous people such as Voltaire, whose names I had heard, but whose works and personalities I knew nothing of. The book was a mini education on the Enlightenment, which had to have inspired the founders of our own society. Blom's descriptions of people and places opened up my eyes and piqued my curiosity about that time.

True Walf, a very readable and interesting mini education on French Enlightenment.
Which was less radical than early Enlightenment I learned in that course, I went to in the first place because me too I am rather an ignoramus on Enlightenment, a term much misused in my country these years to fling at Muslim citizens.

These weeks (months) I am “in” Neal Stephenson, but later on I want to find out more about Franciscus van den Enden, friend and teacher of Spinoza.

(Van den Enden and his family had a school in Amsterdam, later (at age seventy!) he went to France, where he died at the gallows as a conspirator against Louis XIV.
In 1661 he was asked by some Dutch aspirant emigrants to America, to plead favourable tax conditions for them by the Amsterdam authorities, who “ruled” New Amsterdam. He didn’t succeed however, radicalised, and wrote Vrye Politijke Stellingen (Free Political Theses, 1665), in which according to Spinoza scholar Wim Klever “for the first time in politicology’s history democracy is postulated as the only possible way of appropriate political organization”)

Stephenson is fun.
(and I am a great admirer of a thing critized by many, his frequent use of his historical research, for the history lover this makes beautiful reading)

I loved the Baroque Cycle.

I am on p. 173 now and was appaled by his vivid description of the experiments with animals by some members of the Royal Society, in their feverish pursuit of knowledge. He certainly gives Enlightenments' brutal aspects.

> 202: Last year or the year before I read a terrific biography of Robert Hooke, curator (if that is the right word) of the Royal Society during this same period - in fact I believe Hooke figures in the Baroque C. - same point made.

It was him and some others.

I'm reading Before the Dawn now - most interesting, particularly as I recently read After the Ice. Different time periods, of course, but interesting resonance.

I am reading The Hot Zone, which someone in here recommended. I am enjoying it, but I've discovered I cannot eat AT ALL while I am reading it. ;o)

I do so love emerging infectious diseases!

My Plague books, nonfiction only

Encouraged by this thread I went to my local library to see what they had available. So I am reading Out Of Eden: The peopling of the world by Stephen Oppenheimer.

It is very thought provoking so far and I definitely want to read Guns, Germs and Steel soon.

#207 - Don't you rate what you've read? Or are those all sitting in your TBR stacks? I read Mountains Beyond Mountains and enjoyed it.

#208 - Oh, that does look good! Wishlisted!

No, I don't routinely rate everything I read. I would be willing to do so if I were convinced I am acting contrary to good practice. This would be to serve the public good? I'm often off to fetch the next book, and don't stop to rate or review without a good reason. I usually review either books I like, books I have something specific to say about, or ER books.

My TBR stack is separate, and currently is populated by 177 books.

out of eden: the peopling of the world sounds like the chapter in before the dawn that i am now reading

#210 - I often evaluate books I might be interested in based on the ratings they get here, both fiction and non fiction.
For non fiction I often read outside my field which means ratings and reviews from people who might be more well read in the area are helpful as they can tell me if what this particular author says is pure speculation or not.

kokipy -- hope you enjoy Before the Dawn as much as I did. I read it shortly after Guns, Germs and Steel and it made a great bookend to it -- nurture vs. nature, etc

#210 - If I'm on the fence about a book then I will often check the ratings of people who show a similar taste in books. I rate mine when I'm done. I have noticed I rarely finish a book that isn't three stars or more, unless it is for a book club, or an Early Reviewer book.

>210 stellarexplorer:, 212, 214

I often check the ratings and reviews, and always rate the books I've read so I can refer to those ratings later and also to add my 2 cents to the LT consensus. Frequently I review a book, especially for a challenge or if I have something particular to say about it. With books I don't formally review, I write brief notes to myself in the private comments section so I still have some idea why I rated it as I did.

>213 Garp83:: yes, Garp, thanks, i am enjoying Before the Dawn very much. I love the detective work - it is amazing what can be learned about the distant unrecorded past from DNA etc. I am really truly amazed. I have Guns Germs and Steel also waiting to be read - hope it has the same effect when read after BD as when read before.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is one of the best books ever... you'll definitely enjoy it :-)

I agree with Feicht on GG & S & kokipy I don't think it matters what order you read the books in but I think reading them sequentially is great ... I didn't set out to do that but that's how it turned out

>209 clamairy:, etc
Well, most of the books that I have read in my library I read a long time ago. I could see rating new reads. But I find the idea daunting to go through all my books and rate the ones I read in the past. It's a lot of books, a lot of ratings, and no doubt many books imperfectly recalled.

But I'll consider it. I'm looking now at my upcoming schedule.

Quite another aspect to such a task would be that you might not rate a book the same now as you would have when you first read it, long and long ago. I certainly have books that I thought were fantastic when they were new, but with greater knowledge of their subjects, I now find to be not so very good :-(

>220 staffordcastle: Oh yes -- I used to love The Hardy Boys several decades back!

And then there are also books that may be better appreciated by a more mature and discerning reader than one might have been in those frisky young years -- King Lear, perhaps, and others.

Very true!! I have at least one book that has gone full circle, from loving it a lot, to not thinking it was so good after all, and back to having a lot of respect for it.

Your other category is the disappointing one, isn't it? The beloved book at age 13 or 14, a time in reading that is hard to replicate later, with its special kind of absorption into the book-world, and to later have to respect and appreciate the experience even as you recognize the shortcomings and imperfections you never suspected...

Indeed; it also includes those books I never read, which it is now too late - an adult coming to some books will never have the wonderful experience that a child or teen would with the same book. My husband tells me that Edgar Rice Burroughs has to be read young :-)

You have no idea how apt that comment is, stafford. One of the seminal reading experiences -- nay, experiences without qualification -- of my childhood was that transcendent moment at eleven, exploring the back stacks of my school library. I discovered a treasure: a very old, beautifully illustrated incomparable copy (left over from an ancient magical place and time?) of Edgar Rice Burroughs' At The Earth's Core. It was perhaps a bit dusty and hadn't been opened in forever. There were mind-bending color plates, and a story like none I had ever encountered. My mind reeled at the power of the book to transport me to another reality! And I, I alone, had unlocked this magic. I knew a truth impossible to tell and precious to contain.

Sigh - Oh, les beaux jours de nos jeunesses! :-)

#219 - I just rate books as I read them, except for some that I haven't read in some time now but which were frequent rereads earlier. As I use the rating and reviews of others I'm willing to pay back in the same coin :D

#225 Stellar -- beautifully put!

>227 Busifer:
There's a point. I rarely pay much attention to ratings; I'll give much more credence to an articulate review. So for me "paying back" means writing a review, which is usually going to be about I book I liked enough to spend the time commenting on.

I see your point :D Only to me it's as important to know what book NOT to spend time and money on, so reviews telling what's poorly done or low ratings is as helpful (or, actually - MORE helpful) than the raves.

I can see that. I'll ponder it for a time, Busifer. Maybe I should be doing more for this community. I'd hate to see myself as a freeloader!

Just finished The Mummies of Ürümchi - basically about the same finds as The Tarim Mummies but I still have buy a copy of that one. The book is a bit heavy on the ancient textiles (and their production) and I get the impression that the author is sometimes clutching at straws in her attempts to link ancient peoples on that technology. Central European early Celts and these people from Chinese Turkistan closely related populations because of some weaving ideosyncracies?.. But okay, way out of my area of expertise and apparently there is some supporting linguistic evidence. Makes me wonder what the other (newer) book has to say on this.

Now reading Mummies, Myth and Magic in Ancient Egypt. So far it looks like a bad choice - for me, because I know much more about Egypt as it is and this book seems to be aimed at a more general audience. Ah well...

At the moment I am not reading anything although I should be. I just finished the reading for the assigned texts for my three history classes, five weeks before classes end. There are still some reading assignments for a class called Sociocultural Studies in Education but that is never more than 20 pages a week. I have four books on Argentina that I should be reading for a paper I have to do but I am lacking motivation. There is also Union-Free America Workers and Antiunion Culture by Professor Richards on Miami’s Middletown campus that I got interested in when I was trying to get him to help me with a self designed class. When I pick it up I feel that I should be reading about Argentina so I put it down again.

edit : interesting touchstone choice. Here is the book http://www.librarything.com/work/8247936/edit/51985612
Sunday I have to buckle back down.

>227 Busifer:-231, Rating and reviewing books
For the last two years I have kept a book journal first on the 50 book challenge and now Club Read. I write a review of everything I read and then transfer it to the book page so it can be found as a review of that book. I try to remember to rate the book when I transfer the review.
I have written negative reviews for several books that I did not like. In a recent review of The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution 1763-1789(touchstone error) I listed what I felt were some shortcomings in the book. I feel like writing the review helps me to think over the book and is part of getting a better understanding of what I have read. I print out the journal at the end of the year and keep it in a binder. I do try to write a good review for the benefit of others. Sometimes on the thread I will get some comments on the review and a discussion going about the book and I always enjoy chatting about books.

Right now I'm reading The search for the perfect language.
No, I'm not obsessed by language and linguistics. But I'm very interested in the history of ideas.

Sounds fascinating - I'll have to look that one up.

It's not touting Esperanto is it? I have a problem with attempts at creating rational, artificial languages. Humans don't get messier and less rational than in the natural development and evolution of language. Artificial languages will never be anything beyond curiosities.

No, I'm not obsessed by language and linguistics.

But I am. That's going right onto my wishlist.

And I'm interested in both the history of ideas and language and linguistics. It went right onto my wishlist.

#237 - No, it's more into mapping the ideas driving this search for the perfect language. I found it because an interest in the philosophical language and the Real Character as formulated by Bishop Wilkins, back in 1668. It was the vogue back then, Leibniz was into it too (and it was when searching out books about him /or rather the switch from 'natural philosophy' to 'natural science'/ I found this).

#238 - I know ;-)
And you've pointed me towards so many things it only feels right to be able to give something back!

One of the books I got for Christmas was 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon by David Pietrusza, focused upon the 1960 election. I started it almost immediately and basically shunted aside most of the rest of the books I have in play to focus upon it, finishing it this morning.

Let me say that Pietrusza demonstrates that a writer of history – in the tradition of Tom Holland, for example -- CAN write an exciting, very readable book for ALL audiences that contains copious (70+ pages) footnotes. I would suggest that anyone who has interest in this election, those three giants who would dominate American politics in the 1960's, or simply the American political/electoral system shortly after mid-century should read this book. More than 400 pages long, yet never for a moment tedious or dull, Pietrusza brings to life a realistic and not-too-flattering portrait of the candidates and their respective entourages in this pivotal election that was to be (with the critical addition of television debates) the dawn of modern campaigning. More than that, however, the author introduces and fleshes out the larger cast of characters – from Eisenhower to Symington to Lodge to Stevenson to Rockefeller – who dominated American politics in the fifties, and capably brings you up to speed on American politics in what was very much a transitional era.

Whether you are already widely familiar, as I am, with the intimate personalities of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, or whether you are completely new to their bios, “1960” will suck you in and not let you go, page-by-page, from the first stirrings of the campaign to election night and beyond. Highly recommended!

Garp, you were right. Under the Banner of Heaven is excellent!

yeah isn't it? disturbing too ...

Very.

I hope to finish Maps of Time this weekend. No internet or TV is proving helpful to my reading!

#342 & #243 - I lost precious sleep over that one! :o/ It also made me hyper-aware of the gullibility of the masses. :o(

One of the featured characters reminds me a lot of my brother-in-law. Disturbingly.

One of my many current books is 1492: The Year the World Began by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. So far I recommend it.

I'm hoping to re-read The Silmarillion during spring break week :-)

I finished Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman yesterday, and was sad to part ways with it. Luckily for me there appears to be something of a sequel, which I'll be snagging from the library today. In the meantime I'll fill in with Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, which I'll continue to read in drips and drabs. It's much too depressing for a full throttle reading. (For me, anyway.)

I'm still working my way through Shelby Foote's massive Civil War trilogy. Current volume: The Civil War: Fredericksburg to Meridian.

>249 clamairy: I must have read all of the less technical Feynman books clamairy, not to mention books about Feynman. He's a hero of mine. I can well understand sadness when finished. I'm working through his classic physics lectures.

I also collect scientist biographies: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/stellarexplorer&tag=biography%252Fscient...

#251 - I don't know how I've managed to live so long without 'bumping into' Feynman before. I don't think I would have found him if I hadn't seen that YouTube video that features him along with Sagan and deGasse Tyson.

I added a couple of his other books to my wishlist yesterday. I made a joke on Twitter about how I was having trouble deciding where in my home to place the shrine I want to build in his memory. I was thinking it belonged between my (imaginary) shrines for Vonnegut and Sagan.

Edited to add: Nice science biography pile, stellar!

For Feynman's popular works, I'd probably recommend The Pleasure of Finding Things Out after SYJMF. If you'd like to go slightly deeper, The Character of Physical Law is excellent. Gleick's bio is pretty good, but it's a bit of a rehash of most of the anecdotes that Feynman relays himself (it doesn't present much that hasn't been offered before, but it works pretty well as an anthology nonetheless, and is very readable.)

And, yes, Feynman kicks ass.

Yes, he does/did.

So why isn't his joyful curiosity about ANYTHING and EVERYTHING something that all schools try to instill in students? Why are most schools still teaching from the kinds of textbooks he hated so much? I know change comes slowly, but sheesh. :o/ I did laugh (bitterly) over his story about how the students in Brazil had memorized everything but had not a single clue what any of it meant. I know so many kids like that.

I'm reading volume one of The Debate on the Constitution. It is a collection of letters, articles and pamphlets that were written during the ratification debate. At the same time I am reading parts of James Madison: Writings; Writings 1772-1836. I am also listening to the audiobook version of Plain, Honest Men It is like spending some time in the years 1787-1789 every day.

Re Feynman - my monthly book-n-beer club chose his Six Not So Easy Pieces as one of our monthly selections. I was humbled. I could not follow it and I could not finish it. It made me yearn to have a better background in physics and general science than I in fact possess. I hope to one day approach one of his more accessible works.

Escaping North Korea and Classified Secret

So why isn't his joyful curiosity about ANYTHING and EVERYTHING something that all schools try to instill in students? Why are most schools still teaching from the kinds of textbooks he hated so much? I know change comes slowly, but sheesh. :o/ I did laugh (bitterly) over his story about how the students in Brazil had memorized everything but had not a single clue what any of it meant. I know so many kids like that.

You'd have to ask Doug that...

One of the other notable things about Feynman that's notable (in the sense that others in the community have noted it). He had a willingness to be wrong. Feynman was willing to sit and talk about all of the blind alleys that he went through to reach his conclusions that isn't always so common amongst scientists (or anyone, for that matter). Reading Feynman has done quite a bit to shape my approach to life.

Yeah, he was the opposite of a stuffed shirt or an ivory tower academic. Brilliant, but never lost touch with being a man, or with his humility.

Presently I'm reading Society without God. So far he accurately describes how Sweden/Denmark differs from the US. At least looking from a Swedish point of view ;-)

The only thing that chafes a bit is that from a Swedish viewpoint Norway is VERY religious, and he describes it as just as secular as Denmark/Sweden. Which not even Norwegians think, not those I have met.
I can see how from the author's perspective they aren't, though - he's from California, with an axe to grind with Robertson, Coulter and their ilk ;P

Given how long I've been absent from here I am also reading threads :D

I definitely agree about Norway. I haven't been there yet, but the Norwegians I've met go on and on about how annoying it is to live in a "over-religious" country. Being from America, I can only smile and nod, given our situation over here.

Yeah, Norway is only "over-religious" compared to Denmark and Sweden (I'll humbly admit that I have no idea whatsoever about Finland). I'd actually think it would be interesting to hear what someone from the US has to say about this book, for comparison.

Recently finished Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth by James M. Tabor

and Death on the Barrens. Not big picture stuff though.

How was the Tabor book, Pam?

>262 Busifer:

Hi Busifer, I'm very interested in your comments, coming as they are from Sweden. I'm in the U.S. and posted a lengthy review. Currently it's the third one shown on the book's page.

Some in America practice a rather orthodox Christianity, some, the ones I'm sure the non Americans hear of, practice what some of us call Christianism. It's a make believe version of Christianity that passes for religion in the rest of their make believe world. Sarah Palin is a big believer in Christianism. Based solely on what I read in the Bible, Jesus would look at it and consider His life and death a waste of time.

Having said that, for all our church going, next to no one actually practices a religion. The Muslims and some Native Americans come closest to practicing their religions. The rest of US use religion as another tool in the tool box of authoritarianism. We all bend it to our own needs. God is pleased.

Well said, Gene :-)

Now reading Eiffel's Tower: and the World's Fair ... by Jill Jonneswhich is unexpectedly interesting. Wish I could have gone to that fair!

Geneg you said that so well. Kudos!

#265 et al - While I think Gene (#266) has a point it's not the whole image, not as seen from outside the US. Being religious can be one (or both) of personal/private and public/culture. Of course the personal, en masse, is what makes a culture so the two are intertwined.

From a Swedish horizon even the mildest case of Belief/Faith, the in US' eyes mildest expression of it, is... over the top, be it personal or public. US people often says, offhandedly, that they're going to spend time in church this weekend, or whatever.

I've stopped taking offence but to me that is one offensive, invasive, statement. And when US non-believers says they belong to a church regardless, for social reasons... that's, that's just unbelievable, for me.
Where I live the preschool closest to us is Protestant, run by the Church of Sweden (the old state church). I wouldn't EVER place my child there even if it's walking distance, because I don't share their world-view.

That's how much we differ.

Of course there's other things as well, as the fear of being a loser that I think is the biggest roadblock culture-wise for the US when it comes to a "sharing" culture. But that's not inherently linked to religion, but more to the ethos that made the US what it is...

No offense, Busifer, but to me it sounds like you're a bit extreme. Most of the people I know would simply not care. After all, there is still a huge percentage of the population that are members of the old state church, even if they are not regular churchgoers.

Well there's something to be said about "standing up for what you believe in", which to me is better than the attitude of the typical American "Christian" who just has the attitude of "eh, whatever, I'll go with it."

#271 - I know, most people doesn't care, emphasis on DOESN'T CARE, but I wanted to underline the rather huge difference between "religion as culture" in Sweden and in the US. Because it IS huge.

And I'm not extreme, in the least, I know lots of people who are like me in this. Ask yourself. If someone you know suddenly says "there's a nice sermon this Sunday", or "I'm going to a group doing bible studies", what is your reaction?
A lot of "don't care"-people I know views such people with suspicion. People who are open with their belief/faith in Sweden tend to be rather zealous people, wanting to convert the rest of us, or at least make us see the light.
Of course, I live in a big city, and there are regional differences, like the Bible belt down south, or up north, in Västerbotten. But those are deviations, on a larger scale, and the only places close to anyplace in the US. IMHO.

To be honest, though - what I take offence at isn't people going to church every Saturday or Sunday. What I find offensive is that whenever there's some kind of difficulty normally sensible people turns to god. Not to themselves, or their friends, but to god, asking for intervention and, ultimately, judgement. They ask me to pray for them, to ask god on their behalf.
Do they think I'm stupid or something? At least that's my gut reaction.

I'd like t hear your reaction to Society without God. It was, I thought, a very interesting book.

>273 Busifer: Here's an oddly funny cultural thing for you Busifer: One of my closest friends are a couple, the wife of whom was diagnosed recently with Stage 4 ovarian cancer : metastatic, poor prognosis, devastating. Two young kids, horrible, etc.

Each time we email each other, I come up with the phrase "I am praying for you." Now, I don't believe in praying for things to happen, or that there is really someone/something to pray to; I'd go as far as saying it might be a comfort to some.

So I look at that phrase, knowing that is a commonplace US expression to use in that situation (not that everyone would use it). And then I conscious erase it, because it makes me uncomfortable, and its not who I am. I rewrite it, wondering what I meant. Partly I meant, I am thinking of you, I am on your side, you can count on me for support whenever needed. So I say something like that. I also think I am hoping you get better, as powerless as that statement is, as banal. But there's also the part I don't say: I wish we both believed in a god who could fix this. But we really don't. Or maybe, I want to offer a religious sentiment, not to miss the possibility that I am missing some possible god-truth that, as unlikely as it appears to me, exists. An yet, for all my mental gymnastics, the phrase "I am praying for you" is unremarkable and ordinary as any.

>273 Busifer:
Don't know what my reaction would be, as I have never been asked. I wouldn't see it as particularly "invasive", but then again, I've grown up on the countryside where the local church did arrange a lot of activities. I do agree that people are not publicly Christian as in the US; if someone would end a speech with something like "God bless Sweden", they would definitely be seen as weird.

The impression I get from your post is that you actually do have strong feelings about these things, in a way that I've seldom encountered. Could just be that we have chosen friends with similar views as us, but I think that most Swedes tend to think of church as something vaguely positive: perhaps not so much "religion" as "tradition". There are certainly many more who want to have church weddings, baptisms and funerals, and maybe Christmas concerts and such things in there, even if they are not regular churchgoers.

Yeah Stellar, you see that a lot with people. It is a big "comfort" thing. Especially if someone is dying, nobody wants to imagine that that is it, you know? Hence the foolish but understandable desire for the belief in an afterlife.

Here's the moment were a fellow Swede saying "I am praying for you" s/he will be labelled as weird.

Yes, we use it in the "beg" variety, but not in the sense of praying to god. Not anyone I know, ever, in 44 years, have ever said it in that way without belonging to some sect... and I can count those to... perhaps 4 or 5 people, in total, if you only count RL Swedish acquaintances and encounters.

I sometimes,when speaking to/with US acquaintances, wish I could use it - it's an easy way out. But I just can't bring myself to do it.

Of course, if you live in one of our two Bible belts, as of above, the reality will be different.

I once, at a flea market run by a Christian congregation, down south, saw the sign "the only surveillance here is God". It felt... naive.
But in that, of course, I speak in my extremist outfit. My husband only thought it quaint. But then he's agnostic ;-)

Stellar, in that sort of situation, I usually just put "Sending good thoughts your way" or "Sending good thoughts of healing" - it fills the same niche, without being religious. It has, perhaps, just as much nonsense content, but it does convey the caring issue.

Recently completed:

Simon Singh’s epic, masterful account of codes and code–breaking: The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, a recent monthly "book 'n beer" club selection, is highly recommended. Some of us never gave codes more than a passing thought beyond the comedy of Ralphie Parker’s Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring in the movie A Christmas Story. Many of us never suspected that code-making and code-breaking have been such powerful forces in our own history, from the decipherment of ancient languages to the defeat of Nazi Germany to the development of the modern computer. An exhaustive study, yet never tedious, Singh’s talented prose transmits his own powerful fascination and enthusiasm for the theme to the reader, striking just the right balance in the challenge of coherently presenting the complexity of the subject while formulating its elucidation for a mass audience.

The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000-3500 BC – edited by David W. Anthony, Jennifer Y. Chi. This is the companion catalog to the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture exhibit I saw in NYC recently. The accompanying essays are sometimes a bit dry in a scholarly archaological sense, but I learned a great deal and the color photos of the artifacts are wonderful.

The War With the Newts" my monthly "book 'n beer" club selection. Out-friggin'-standing! Literature, sci-fi, satire, philosophy -- call it what you will, but Capek -- writing in the mid-1930's during Hitler's rise to power -- gives us a very funny, very scary sendup of humanity. Cross Solzhenitsyn with Twain... with Vonnegut and perhaps a grade B sci-fi flick and you get this brilliant work!

#264, Garp

The Tabor book was interesting and taught me a lot about the Super Caves. I wouldn't say though that his style was as good as Krakauer's, but it flowed well. (I found some small number of descriptions that sounded repetitive.) His research on the American explorer, Bill Stone, appeared to be excellent. (The copy I had was a review copy and didn't have the footnotes yet, but there certainly seemed room for lots of them. And there were obviously plenty of interviews with people who knew Stone well and who had climbed with him.) I suspect his study of the Ukrainian wasn't based on personal interviews.

But in any case, I enjoyed it and would recommend it as a Library find.

=========
edited for typu, grammaroo, and various other reasons

I'm currently reading "War and Peace and War" by Peter Turchin (2006)
The account of the Russian frontier is quite interesting and the author makes a number of good points regarding biases and subjectivity in historical accounts.

I just finished Spencer Wells' Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization. I have to say, I can't recommend it highly enough! I've always liked Wells' writing style since I read his The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey several years ago. He has the rare ability, in my opinion, to discuss complicated science in a way that anyone can understand.

That said, if you are looking for an erudite breakdown of every single aspect of the Neolithic Revolution, you won't find it here. Instead, Wells takes a more "thematic" approach where each chapter has a broad theme, and he pulls examples from all over the place which may seem disparate at first, but eventually all make sense together. And his mini-discussions are literally taken from all over space and time; from the thought processes of the first farmers, to the tooth decay which the new Neolithic diet brought to the first cities in Pakistan, all the way up to how Facebook today can be used to expose our own perhaps innate longing for the sense of community everyone on this planet would have had 15,000 years ago in our hunter-gatherer communities (I found this part particularly fascinating!).

At some points you can get the impression that Wells really longs for the days of the Neolithic in many ways (the days before large scale war, anthropogenic climate change, industrial devastation, the Neolithic diet's negative impact on the human body, etc), but he is quick to point out that he is not on a soap box telling us all to burn our houses down and go live out in the woods. Rather, he contends that when seeing all the negative effects in context, we will hopefully at some point be able to at least modify our behavior slightly to once again become more in tune with the world instead of seeking mastery over it as we have since the first seeds were planted in the Fertile Crescent.

>282 Feicht: Sounds like you were sympathetic to his message, but did he tell a lot that you didn't know?

It was more like, he'd talk about something I did know, and then go in depth about it giving details I didn't know. For example, there's a good bit of stuff about psychology in the book, something which I'm not super keen on, but I had read before about the negative impact of modern society on the human mind. So he talks about that, but he then takes it further, for instance with the Facebook example.

I had literally never thought about it before, but he's totally right: we all have a limit to how many people we feel comfortable with asking for a favor (for instance), and this number is usually no higher than 100 or 150; when he first mentioned this in the book, and linked it back to our Paleolithic heritage, I was like "yeah, okay, I guess..." and I sort of began trying to count how many people I even knew and if it was even close to that number.

Then near the end of the book he brings up the Facebook connection and it's like "good lord, he's right!" The average person on Facebook has between 130 and 170 "friends", and many people, if they get any more than this, start "culling the herd" to get down to a workable number. In many ways I guess you can interchange the "ask for a favor" stipulation to "feel comfortable letting them see your birthday pictures online".

But I found the connection very interesting because during the book he constantly talks about how in some ways our biology is "revolting" against society (bodily troubles, mental illness, etc) since we really didn't evolve to live in this complex, worldwide civilization we've created for ourselves... and yet right there in one of the most "modern" of our conventions, internet communities, it seems most of us subconsciously try to get back that sense of small community where you know everyone else that you interact with on a daily basis.

Interesting thoughts, Feicht! I may have to look out for this book.

(So many books, so little time ...)

I really do recommend it! It felt pretty refreshing to me especially because I'm used to reading really focused research style books, where the author isn't free to make all kinds of connections, and bring up anecdotes from their personal lives (or even, use contractions!)

use contractions!

LOL!

#282 - Sounds like an intriguing book! Part of what I do for a living is "research" (not really research, as in academia - perhaps "charting" would be a more appropriate term) concerning how people use electronic media and how these patterns map with our social and "tribal" behaviours and patterns so I have seen a lot of the psychological costs of our digital civilisation (not least in the way many Westerners /let's not go there just now, eh?/ are blind to how exclusive their lifestyle is, on a global scale).

I decided to tackle Social origins of dictatorship and democracy. I have already started to think I should had chosen Maps of Time instead but I'm sure I'll write a scathing review once I've finished it ;-)

Last night after finishing the Wells book, I'd started reading Freeman's AD 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Christian State, but I just realized that since I'm taking this HIST480 class on slavery in world history, I'd be better advised to crack into Strauss' The Spartacus War, which I've also had laying around waiting to be read for a while. I've heard the guy can come off as kind of a right wing quack like Hanson and Kagan, but that doesn't necessarily make him a bad historian; I'll just have to keep my eyes open for when the crazy starts to seep in.

Having just joined this group a few minutes ago, and since the name of this thread is what are you reading now, I will report that inter alia I am reading M.I. Finley's Ancient History: Evidence and Models as it was recommended by Makifat on the Ancient History thread a few days ago, and I will add that like all other books by Moses Finley, it is informative, thoughtful, challenging, and dry as dust. I will need to read more of it before evaluating his arguments but I think I am going to learn a lot from it about historiography.

I have that on the shelf -- been meaning to get to it for quite some time. Glad to be reminded.

The Houses of History, a historiography that explains the theoretical perspectives historians work from. So far they are using standard English and clear examples and it is much clearer than it was in class.

#290 Most historiography is dry as dust.

As I just mentioned on the gloomier thread, I just finished The End of Oil. Excellent!

I just finished reading 1861: The Civil War Awakening by Adam Goodheart. It is astonishing indeed that given the tens of thousands of books and articles written about the American Civil War that Goodheart could come along and write something with a remarkably fresh perspective that actually tells a tale never really told before in this fashion. An outstanding, well-written book that I highly recommend to all, whether or not you typically read United States history.

http://www.amazon.com/1861-Civil-Awakening-Adam-Goodheart/dp/1400040159

I've been reading this along with a half-dozen other books and I must say this one had the most compelling narrative

Thanks for the review, Garp - I'd been eyeing that book in the shop, and wondering if it was worth getting!

I too had had my eye on it. Thanks Garp!

Wow, holy thread resurrection, Batman!

I'm still working through Adrienne Mayor's The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy, and quite enjoying it. My progress has begun to slow a bit however, since I'm also currently working on an abstract for a paper submission to CAMWS..... fingers crossed!...... so I've been sifting through the internets for all the pertinent articles I can find, and skimming those, too.

Currently reading Descartes' Bones and really enjoying it !

#295
I read 1861: The Civil War Awakening earlier this year. The author is able to communicate the tension and excitement of the times from a different point of view than the usual book on this topic. The book is for anyone who wants to read a good book and informative enough for a Civil War buff.

#300 I read Garp83's testimony and then saw your review and moved the book to the top of my TBR pile. It has to be good with such reliable recommendations.

Currently reading Women in England 1500-1760 by Anne Laurence. Parts of it are rather heavy on statistics, but she kindly warns you in the preface which chapters those are, so you can skip them if you want.

#301 TL -- I am honored ...

#300 Bill -- I'm glad you agree but not surprised ... we seem to be on the same page (yes pun intended!) with books quite often.

#298 Feicht thanks for the Mithradates review and the actual physical copy of the book -- nice surprise!

Just finished reading Lincoln: President-Elect– Harold Holzer. Some interesting additional details that fills in the blanks about Lincoln's controversial relative silence in the months between his election and inauguration, overall this was hardly a compelling narrative. I don't recommend it, except for serious Lincoln scholars & nerds like me . . .

http://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-President-Elect-Abraham-Secession-1860-1861/dp/074...

No problem dude. I'm almost done with it (one more chapter, plus the appendices), so I'll maybe give a proper review soon. As soon and I'm done with this damn CAMWS abstract though. Ugh. I really need to get onto this conference. Thing is, I'm not sure whether it'd be scarier to be rejected, or accepted, and have to present and defend my research to a room full of assholes. Haha..

Speaking of reviews, I just had to write a book review for one of my classes, so I reviewed Holland's Persian Fire, naturally, since it's one of my favorite books of all time. If anyone's interested in reading it, the link is:

http://blogs.bgsu.edu/germanblogfeichtj/2011/09/15/persian-fire-the-first-world-...

EDIT: Errr..... it's in German though. But there are pictures :-D

The pictures were excellent. My guess is that is was nicely written and well-argued. But that's a guess! ;)

Haha my prof liked it, and said everything made grammatical sense. Other than that it's pretty similar to my LibraryThing review of Persian Fire... just a little longer. hehe

Current historical read: The Gate of Remembrance by Frederick Bligh Bond. Just started it so no opinion yet but I'd love to hear from anyone who has read it.

Just finished a quirky, outstanding novel The Sisters Brothers —Patrick DeWitt. Go get it right now and read it. Now. I'm not kidding goddamn it!

# 306 I'm about half way through Persian Fire. I am really enjoying the book. Unfortunately I don't read German.

Persian Fire is great. I too lack to be reading German in ...

I just finished Adrienne Mayor's The Poison King: The Life and Legend of King Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy. I've also skimmed through a few dozen books lately while cooking up an abstract for the CAMWS conference, which is due at the end of this week. But since that is mostly done, last night I cracked into Lindsay Powell's Eager for Glory: The Untold Story of Drusus the Elder, Conqueror of Germania, and meanwhile I've also been reading an essay here and there in Jon Krakauer's Eiger Dreams.

(I posted this exact same post in the Ancient History board too, just in case anyone thinks they're seeing double, going insane, etc. You may in fact be, but it's not my fault... I swear!)

I posted this to a forum board as part of my Master's course, and I thought it might be germane for you guys:

Interesting sidenote, which fits into my current obsession with “Big History.” Today, after work, hanging on the deck with a cold Harpoon IPA beer, I began reading Plows, Plagues and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate, by William F. Ruddiman, a book my daughter bought me some months ago. It was Ruddiman, formerly Professor of Environmental Sciences and University of Virginia, who first proposed the remarkable theory that human-instigated climate change began not with the Industrial Revolution, but with intensive farming 8000 years ago, a concept that has taken hold because the evidence for it is quite dramatic. In any event, the following paragraph magnificently captures the inseparable marriage between science and history in the contemporary academic world:

“Knowledge of the more recent history of humans has increased even more re- markably. Decades ago the field of archeology was focused mainly on large cities and buildings and on the cultural artifacts found in the tombs of the very wealthy; today this field encompasses or interacts with disciplines such as histori¬cal ecology and environmental geology that explore past human activities across the much larger fraction of Earth's surface situated well away from urban areas. Radiocarbon dating (also based on radioactive decay) has made it possible to place even tiny organic fragments with a time framework. The development of cultivated cereals in the Near East nearly 12,000 years ago and their spread into previously forested regions of Europe from 8,000 to 5,500 years ago can be dated from trace amounts of crops found in lake sediments. On other research fronts, archeologists unearthing mud-brick and stone foundations of houses have been able to estimate population densities thousands of years ago. Others examining photos taken from the air in early morning at low sun angles find distinct pat¬terns of field cultivation created by farmers centuries before the present. Geo¬chemists can tell from the kind of carbon preserved in the teeth and bones of humans and other animals the mixture of plants and animals they ate. From these and other explorations, the developing pattern of human history over the last 12,000 years has come into much sharper focus.”

I am completely out of control with my reading these days and I have to stop starting new books. As of right now, the following is a list of what I am working on, all at the same time:
Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation: A Biography by Merrill D. Peterson
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes
The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate by William F. Ruddiman
Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices by Noah Feldman
House Arrest by Ellen Meeropol
Great Harry: The Extravagant Life of Henry VIII by Carolly Erickson
Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy by Caroline Kennedy --- listening to CD's in the car

Garp, read my review of The Grand Design before going too far.

I am quite late here but the following is what I'm currently reading:

Boardwalk Empire by Nelson Johnson
A Short History of England by G.M. Trevelyan
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell
Conan the Barbarian: Original Stories by Robert E. Howard

#317 -- Stellar, you and I discussed Grand Design already and I note your points. A fascinating perspective, nonetheless, altho it is beyond arrogant for him to assert that science had made religion and philosophy obsolete

#318 petros -- I love the symmetry between Why I Am Not a Christian and Conan the Barbarian LOL

Hah...I didn't notice the symmetry...but sometimes the callous and indifferent Cimmerian god, Crom, is more appealing than the Christian one.

@232 BarkingMatt - Have you followed the later developments about the Tarim Basin archaeology site? (I found the book and the whole story so interesting, that I was following the updates for years.)

The Mummies of Ürümchi was written by an expert in ancient textiles, Elizabeth Wayland Barber, who had been brought into the project owing to her specific expertise. She was brought in to help analyze why the clothing on the mummies had not deteriorated as much as would have been expected, based upon their age, and among other things, why Celtic patterns appeared in mummies' clothing when the mummies had been dug up in a desert in Far Western China.

Skipping a few interim "findings" and to simplify, the emergence of DNA analysis in recent years allowed the scientists to determine that the current population of the region is multicultural, that this site was one of the "stops" along the Silk Road, and, specifically, that caravans from the East and the West stopped and met at about that location to exchange goods. (That is, trade along the Silk Road involved a meeting of caravans at a "trading post".) And there was intermarriage, as the faces--and DNA--of the people who populate the area now show.

Last year, there was an exhibit, Secrets of the Silk Road, that was shown in three museums here in the U.S. Attending it was a peak experience in my life. (Seeing what they dubbed the "blue bonnet baby" mummy on exhibit was, to me, astonishing.)

>321 Diane-bpcb: No, by all means, feel free to belabor the story. Most of us are probably limited to Barber's book you cited, as well as The Tarim Mummies. Would love to know more.

>321 Diane-bpcb: Your message came in as I was editing my message. Actually, I did leave out a couple of interesting parts of the story. Will summarize them and submit a posting.

I echo Stellar's encouragement; pretty much everything I know about these people comes from either Barber or Mallory :-)

Yes, goes for me too. (I did get to read Mallory/Mair since that earlier message).

I know I would probably have loved "Secrets of the Silk Road" but didn't have the funds to come over from Europe for it (alas).

The DNA findings come as no surprise, but having evidence instead of guesswork is great.

I just bought today A Grammar Of Civilizations by Fernand Braudel. I will start reading it tonight.

More about "Secrets of the Silk Road":

I had first found out about these mummies from a documentary on TV that was repeated and sometimes updated for about eight years, and I had gotten a book associated with it, The Mummies of Urumchi, early on and had read it several times. It was fascinating to me, especially the introduction to ancient textiles. The documentary, however, as it got updated, provided ongoing discoveries about the archaeological dig, and in the latest version that I remember, they had added film of the people who currently live in that area. Most had faces had mixed Asian/European features. I think that the documentary had suggested at that point that there had been a trade route here to account for the intermingling of the races.

Then one day, I just chanced to discover that the mummies had been brought to several museums in the US, and that they had been scheduled to "open" at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia within a week or two. The discoveries had advanced to the point that they were calling the show "Secrets of the Silk Road", their determining that it was not just a trade route, but the Silk Road itself, which was new to me. EXCEPT THAT China had just unexpectedly announced that the mummies and artifacts had to be returned to China immediately: antiquities are not allowed to be outside the country for longer than a sequential calendar year, which the scheduled final museum would expand beyond. At first, the Penn Museum staff was in shock, of course, but they very quickly planned a completely revised show, where the actual artifacts would be on view for about two weeks, followed by a "virtual" exhibit, based on photographs, etc., that would continue for the rest of the summer. It was a remarkable feat by the museum, and fortunately, China accepted it.

And, of course, it was of so much interest to me that, despite some personal disabilities, I knew I had to get to Pennsylvania and to the exhibit while "actual" mummies and artifacts were there, and fortunately I did.

Here are a couple of URLs for the exhibit at the Penn Museum which provide photos of the mummies and objects and some more history:

http://www.penn.museum/silkroad/about.php (This is mostly the interactive publicity for the exhibit--a few sections are no longer working, since it has ended.)

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://penn.museum/documents/publications/expeditio... (This is a pdf file provided by Victor Mair, and includes photos as well.)

Be sure to try all the hyperlinks you see, because photos of the mummies appear at unexpected places.

I will follow this message up with one more, about a few of my personal favorites and experiences about it all.

My favorite aspects of this interest in--what began as reading The Mummies of Ürümchi and later included the ongoing reports of new findings from this excavation site:

- The relatively excellent preservation of the mummies (far better than the earlier Eqyptian mummies) resulted largely from their being buried in what was or what became dry, salty soil--which also caused the colors of the clothing to brighten over the centuries.

- These mummies were dressed for winter, which most likely also contributed to the quality of preservation.

- The author's expertise in weaving and fabrics was explained to the reader so clearly that it brought out my (as yet, not fully realized) inner fantasy of being a textile expert or seamstress of beautiful fabrics. (No, I don't sew or knit or anything.)

- Her expertise also allowed her to point out how much love and thought went into the preparation of a child's and a baby's bodies for burial. To my surprise, what they called the "Blue Bonnet" baby had partially flattened over the centuries, adding another layer of "unworldliness" and enchantment to it.

- When I had discovered (just in time and by chance) about the Penn Museum exhibit, it was because I glimpsed a partially torn-off newspaper photo of these mummies on the back of a newspaper clipping that my husband had given me. I immediately started find a copy of the entire article, which was printed before the controversy that almost canceled the exhibit (see above) was resolved.

- By the time that the exhibit was mounted, many more aspects of this ancient site had been studied, and it was presented in a visitor-friendly manner--including a guessing game on the original source of English words from the mixture of ancient languages at the site!

One of the most rewarding books I ever happened upon.

I recall that our own Garp attended that Penn exhibit

> "our own Garp"?

Yes, Garp. Frequent contributor to this Group, polymath, autodidact, bon vivant, and man-about-town. Cf. >315 Garp83:, 319, eg.

Thanks. Have read some entries but didn't remember the user name.

Yeah that's me -- as in "World According to . . ." I had tickets and hotel to see the mummies on opening day and the day before China pulled the exhibit because of sensitivity about "Caucasian" mummies in China! Of course the Chinese on ethnicity are like Dr. Zaius from Planet of the Apes on religious orthodoxy. The exhibits with photos instead of mummies were quite underwhelming, as you can imagine. Later, the beneficent Chinese totalitarians restored the right to exhibit the mummies, but I could not make it back to Penn again to see them, to my chagrin. I highly recommend Mallory's The Tarim Mummies. They also turn up peripherally in David Anthony's magisterial The Horse, the Wheel and Language. I picked up The Mummies of Urumchi at a used boom store recently, but haven't read it yet. I must confess I am much less interested in textiles than in the mummies and their significance as a lost branch of Indo-Europeans ...

Yeah, aboriginal peoples haven't fared well in the modern world.

> 333: Well, it's not just on the textiles.

>333 Garp83:

Garp83, I almost hate to tell you this, but I saw Victor Mair in the lunchroom at the museum, and if he hadn't been entertaining guests, I probably would have approached him. Interestingly, his appearance has changed considerably from his photo in The Tarim Mummies in that he has shaped his (now white) hair into a Chinese-style bowl-cut so that he looks like he might be a Buddhist monk, which I would imagine was influenced by his interest in this fascinating history. Also he is not tall, unlike the 6'6" mummy that had reminded him keenly of his second-eldest brother, enough so that he calls it "Ur-David."

I hadn't realized that the exhibit opened with photographs until the Chinese relented for a ~ two-week span. The newspaper clipping I had picked up was at least a week old, and the online information about the exhibit seemed to be unclear until a day or so later--which probably was when they were transforming the exhibit back temporarily. Also, I now realize I only read the "approved" version of why the mummies had to be rushed back home, that is, that Chinese antiquities can't be outside the country for more than a year, sequentially. (I had figured that it was a bureaucratic foul-up.)

I hope you were able to see the bright colors of the exhibit that were within the URLs I had provided above.

I am about half-way through The Tarim Mummies. Will have to get The Horse, The Wheel, and Language. (I had recently learned that with the new breakthroughs in DNA, they had determined that Western European men and their male descendants all descend from the area of the Eurasian Steppes--which I had assumed had to do with the barbarian invasions.) So that will be interesting to learn more about it.

I'd be interested in reading more about this DNA evidence you mention. One of the reasons I am so enamored by the Anthony/Mallory hypothesis is that it posits "cultural change" as opposed to "population change"; that is, the people of Europe themselves didn't undergo any massive shift with the changeover to Indo-European language and cultural trappings, but rather it was more of an "elite dominance" model where a relatively small number of people migrated over time through what was essentially like a "franchising operation", and was able to inadvertently create more or less the present distribution of IE language/culture that we see today.

As for DNA, I'd also read (I think this was via Spencer Wells) that basically all Eurasians descend from an ancestral population living around what is today Tajikistan, as opposed to what you might think would make more sense, namely the Middle East or North Africa (for Europeans, at least). This doesn't sound like what you're talking about, but it would be one way to account for the evidence.

#336 -- I saw Victor too and he looked pretty miserable -- opening day & no mummies -- so I didn't approach him either.

David Anthony's book is not easy to read -- too many archaeological field notes woven into the narrative -- but he makes a good case. The people who came to dominate Europe supplanted the Cucuteni-Trypillian population in Romania, for instance, and did seem to have a very different culture from they or the other remnants of old Europe. I too would like to see more DNA evidence and follow-up studies.

Having more of a "physics for poets" interest in science than purely scientific--as my two scientific siblings don't hesitate to remind me often--my introduction to recent DNA discoveries have been through:

1) National Geographic documentaries (such as http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/specials/in-the-field-specials/grand-c... or
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/human-family-tree/)

2) The Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/06/neanderthals-dna-humans-genome

3) The New Yorker:
From the August 15, 2011 issue:
ANNALS OF EVOLUTION: Sleeping with the Enemy by Elizabeth Kolbert

4) Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s documentaries for PBS, which provide the ancestry and then the DNA origins of various individuals' backgrounds; they include things like the difference between "how" black or Asian or American Indian or whatever a person believes they are, vs. what the DNA studies prove to be true.)

5) I can't recall right now, although I think it was in The New Yorker, that a new section of DNA structure for a subgroup of humans was found only in people from a country in Scandinavia and New Guinea, I believe. Can't remember the details, and they did not have a theory yet of exactly how that subgroup diverged in such a distinct way.

So I'm sure that if you are interested, if you look at these, you'll be able to find the more serious underlying studies on these DNA findings.

As for #5, could you be thinking of the recent finding that people from and around New Guinea have a much higher proportion of Denisovan genes than any other group?

Yes, exactly that. Thanks. I just Googled it and can see that the research is progressing. Fascinating stuff.

Yeah, I love the traces of history preserved in genetics - I try to keep track of that stuff. And prehistory in general fascinates me.

And nobody I know is more in sync with Denisovan gene discoveries that our Mr. Stellar ... I'm not nearly as well-versed, but like Stellar I follow this fairly closely myself. Science has very recently completely rewritten the early man/prehistory story and of course it remains very much a work in progress