What are you reading in March (2008)?

I did finish up The First Samurai and it managed the nice trick of being written for the general reader while still having a solid academic foundation.

Just finished "Ledyard: In Search of the First American Explorer" by Bill Gifford.

And next is "Andele, the Mexican-Kiowa Captive: A Story of Real Life Among the Indians".

I'm working on The Origin of Language by Merritt Ruhlen.

Guns, Germs and Steel and The Early Elizabethan Polity William Cecil and the British Succession Cris, 1558-1569 are up first. Guns has been great so far, the later is a dry as you would expect but necessary.

I'm reading a historical biography: Joseph J. Ellis's His Excellency: George Washington.

About 2/3 through Gordon S. Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution. Kicking off an early America stint and will follow with Almost a Miracle.

Touchstones not working that well.

Halfway in the Dutch translation of Simon Sebag Montefiore's Young Stalin, which makes one think ofThe Sicilian by Mario Puzo. Same methods, more succes. Also halfway in The Golden Step: a walk through the Heart of Crete by Christopher Somerville and that's quite another book. (One of the steps in the long stairway of the Monastery of Chrissokalitissas' church on a rock of the extreme westcoast of Crete, constantly battered by the sea, is said to be a golden one. Only visible to those with a pure heart). A lovely mixture of encounters with Cretans, landscape and history.

I just finished up Yaroslav Trofimov's "The Siege of Mecca" (B).

Currently reading:

Before Lewis and Clark: The Story of the Chouteaus, the French Dynasty That Ruled America's Frontier by Shirley Christian

>2 ThePam:

Pam, how did you like the Ledyard book? I read another one about him a couple of years ago, American Traveler , and enjoyed it quite a lot.

#10 Pawcatuck,

I enjoyed the book quite a bit. Since you read "American Traveler" you probably know that there isn't a great deal of Ledyard's writings that survived. The author of this book works around that pretty well, and adds to the narrative by his own experiences. For example, he took a working cruise on a replica ship to the one that Ledyard sailed in with Cook, making note of his observations. In a similar way he took a train through the Russian far east, to visit the area where Ledyard almost got to the coast, but from which he was arrested by Katharine of the North.

Now that I've had a couple of weeks to let it settle, I think I'd be interested in reading another book. And as fate would have it, I just looked and my library has "American Traveller" so that I don't have to even wait for ILL. Thanks.

Recently finished President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman by William Lee Miller. Very good and interesting. Only the second book I have read about Abraham Lincoln.

I just finished Homeland Calling, an examination of the relationships assorted ex-pat communities had with the aspirant ethnic governments in the break-up of Yugoslavia (A-).

I just read Andrew Jackson by H.W. Brands (OK, but frustrating) and The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan (excellent). About to read "Drake" by Stephen Coote and The River of Doubt by Candice Millard.

I'm still going through Rashid Khalidi's The iron cage : the story of the Palestinian struggle for statehood. Haven't been able to do as much reading as I'd like, lately, so it's slow going.

I just finished A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 by Vasily Grossman. Grossman was a Soviet military journalist who later wrote Life and Fate. It's edited by Anthony Beevor and consists of large chunk of Grossman's notes and writings during WWII.

Next up is new biography of TR's daughter, Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker by Stacy A. Cordery

This month I am looking for pirates in the Eastern Mediterranean, in the early modern and Napoleantic times. I use books like Corsairs of Malta and Barbary, The pirate wars, both by Peter Earle.
Also Kaperbloed en koopmansgeest, a book about 'legal' searobberry by Joke E. Korteweg, a Dutch maritime historian. And to my great joy I found that Jules Verne wrote a novel about this subject, called L'archipel en feu, of which I purchased a nice secondhand Dutch translation(Een archipel in brand) for only €4. Makes one think about the antiquarians as the great benefactors of mankind! This story revolves in the Aegaean during the time of the Greek struggle for independence (1821), I am going to meet Bouboulina and her kind!

If you know books (non-fiction and fiction) about piracy, specifically in the Eastern Mediterranean in the middle ages, early modern and napoleontic times, please let me know.

I'm reading Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America by Thomas Fleming which is kind of fun, because previously I read Alexander Hamilton by Chernow, and was surprised to find that the former is as pro-Burr as the latter is pro-Hamilton. And both disparage the other Founder. It's clear that if you only read one book on a subject, you may not get a well-balanced picture, even when the authors are respected historians!