As per kleinbl00's recommendation I've been reading Destiny Disrupted. I was expecting a more difficult read, but Tamim Ansary does a great job of explaining the situation in clear language. It's nice to read his explanation of people's behaviour instead of abstracted nations and groups. This part of history is such a blind spot for me, and while it's not easy dealing with all the foreign names and pronunciations I like what I'm reading so far. Last week I found out that my university has Springer books under license. I found this out while looking for the 1629 pages, $1,440 monolith called Handbook of Intelligent Vehicles. So now I've started the collossal task of reading the entire thing because I can't call myself knowledgable on the subject until I've done that. It's very interesting though. (If anyone knows some more good Springer books, let me know! I already found a neat Python for science book.)