reading list update, jan -- jun

as i watch the continued degradation of our republic by a rogue supreme court, i've done a little reading, some of it oddly reassuring --- the first one was particularly apropos --- now working through Brands' Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and the Brawling Birth of American Politics

***Dennis C. Rasmussen, Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founders (2021)

**Roger Crowley, Spice: The 16^th Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World (2024)

Ramin Setoodeh, Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass (2024)

*Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (2005)

***Dennis Romano, Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City (2024)

Derek Wilson, Charlemagne (2006) [poorly written]

Michelle P Brown, Bede and the Theory of Everything (2023)

***Irene Vallejo, Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World (2022)

Hamish Coghill, Lost Edinburgh (2008)

*Michael Fry, Wild Scots: Four  Hundred Years of Highland History (2005)

**Michael Fry, Edinburgh: A History of the City (2009)

Ian Mortimer, Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter (2024)

Paul Stephenson, New Rome: The Empire in the East (2021)

Ernle Bradford, The Great Betrayal: The Great Siege of Constantinople (2014)--reread

Robin Waterfield, Plato of Athens: A Life in Philosophy (2023)

James R. Gaines, Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment (2005)

Karen Armstrong, The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts (2019)

Rowland J. Mainstone, Hagia Sophia: Architecture, Structure and Liturgy of Justinian’s Great Church (1988)

*Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle (1839)

*Jürgen Osterhammel,  Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment’s Encounter With Asia (2018)

Victorino Matus, Vodka: How a Colorless, Odorless, Flavorless Spirit Conquered America (2014)

***Hershel Shanks, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount: From Solomon to the Golden Dome (2007)

**Olivia Williams, Gin Glorious Gin: How Mother’s Ruin Became the Spirit of London (2014)