What I’ve been reading

1. Michael Kempe, The Best of all Possible Worlds: A Life of Leibniz in Seven Pivotal Days.  A good book, I had not realized the full import of Leibniz in the history of binary computation, his understanding of “novels as models,” his theory of social distancing during epidemics, or just how much attention he devoted to the historical episode of a woman as Pope.

2. Judith Scheele, Shifting Sands: A Human History of the Sahara.  A quite good, informative, and readable book on a very much undercovered topic.  Saharan civilization is something that runs deeper, and is more coherent, than any set of national boundaries in the region.  The author spent years living in the Saharan region of Chad.  Recommended, a good example of “you should read a book about a topic you are not thinking of reading about.”

3. Frank Close, Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age 1895-1965.  A good look at the underlying scientific history behind nuclear, most of all in the pre-Manhattan project years.  I had not sufficiently realized how dangerous this research was, and how many of the people died prematurely from cancer, quite possibly from radiation exposure.

4. Bijan Omrani, God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England.  Some might argue this book is a “duh,” nonetheless I found it a good overview of the importance of Christianity in British history, and suggesting that those ties should not be lost or abandoned,

5. Sam Dalrymple, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia.  Are you excited by the prospect of learning more about why Burma split off from the rest of the Raj in 1937?  If so, this is the book for you.  It also has good coverage on the role of the Middle East in the history of the Raj.

6. Perry Anderson, Disputing Disaster: A Sextet on the Great War.  This strikes me as the kind of book where a very established author is seeking to work out issues that preoccupied him as a much younger man.  Such books tend to be interesting but also incomplete and unsatisfying?  Overall I am glad I read this one.

7. Diana Darke, Islamesque: The Forgotten Craftsmen Who Built Europe’s Medieval Monuments.  Perhaps overargued in places, but an excellent book, with super-clear explanations and wonderful illustrations.  Excerpt: “No architectural style just ‘appears’ magically out of nowhere.  All the key innovations attributed to Romanesque — new vaulting techniques, the use of decorative frames, interlace and ornamental devices like blind arcades, Lombard bands, blind arches, lesenes, Venetian dentil and the use of fantastical beasts and foliage in sculpture — can be traced back to their origins, and all of these without exception lead us eastwards [to Islam].”