Open Thread - August 30th, 2010

I always forget about open threads! Anyone read any good books over the summer? Bad ones to avoid? I'll have a review of The Tenth Parallel up soon, but after reading it, and several other books...I'm beginning to think that for most Americans they should stick to American history if they want to read history. Unless they read high school level books. Shorter works are really hard to get much out of unless you have a thicker interpretative framework. So many times I catch myself thinking, "Ah, makes sense, I read in X the context behind this fact." Or, "That's a biased reading, I know that it doesn't comport with the field's consensus orthodoxy, which the author isn't noting for readers...." Next in my list is The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us, but first I need to finally finish The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. Also looking forward to Eureka Man: The Life and Legacy of Archimedes.