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For those who care(?) I ought to note that book reviews may be wanting for the next several weeks. I’ve committed to a pretty dense schedule of work, which is certainly not my ideal way to spend the remainder of the summer, but I’d prefer to do a lot of work for this one client in particular now rather than next winter since the long drive to their office is at least safe, now. Anyway. I can share a number of notes on one book:

Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East
Karl E. Meyer & Shareen Blair Brysac

So, full disclosure, I skipped about 100 of this book’s 420 pages, and then read the conclusion, but I’m calling it close enough. Mostly because chugging through the 300-some pages I did read was punishment enough that I feel I’ve earned it.

Which is not to say that this is a bad book. I think the book was a good idea, badly handled. (more…)

The seventh month of 2011 saw me observe the Rolling Rock birthday (“33″), attend an alleged high school class reunion (I suppose it was at least held in the community where we attended high school, unlike one ISU-related reunion held in Minnesota), and read several books which I shall now attempt to remember something about.

Bank of the Black Sheep, Robert Lewis. Fine, fine book, this. It’s a bit of an Elmore Leonard caper, a bit of a Guy Richie film, plus perhaps just a hint of a Paul Auster story, and more besides. In addition to being an entertaining crime novel, it’s also a deeply thoughtful examination of mortality, money and how they relate to what it really means to be living. I found the opening chapters, about the relatively-young protagonist’s experiences in a hospice center otherwise peopled by the ancient and forgotten, particularly affecting for personal reasons, but I believe they would make some remarkable reading for anyone.

1066 & All That, W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman. I’ve known of this book for quite some time, and when Robert Lacey, in his own excellent history of England, not only mentioned 1066 but basically said “go read this right now,” I put it on my list. And, well, it’s okay. Some parts were genuinely quite witty. One the whole, though, it fell rather short of “the greatest history book ever;” perhaps it was a case of excessive expectations. It may also be that to fully appreciate the humor, you need not only a familiarity with English history (which I believe I can claim, at this point) but a familiarity with traditional history curriculum as taught in English schools. Oh well.

Space Race, Deborah Cadbury. (more…)

I woke up this morning and checked the news, as per usual, and naturally I thought it was a joke at first. But no, April 1 was a month ago… I promptly turned to Professor Juan Cole, who of late had already become required reading once again anyway, and yes it apparently has in fact happened. Osama bin Laden, dead.

One thing in Cole’s write-up really caught my eye, however, when he wrote that “the Pakistani news channel Geo [...] says that Pakistani troops and plainsclothesmen helped cordon off the compound in Abbotabad.”

Apparently—having confirmed it at the BBC—bin Laden was found in a “compound” or bunker of some sort “in Abbottabad.”

Which I found faintly amusing because, you see, I’ve actually heard of Abbottabad before. (more…)