Recently: Razor Girl by Carl Hiaasen. As with all Carl Hiaasens, it's a tongue-in-cheek love-letter to the bizarreness of Florida. There are better books. Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Risked Everything To Solve One Of The Mysteries of World War II by Robert Kurson. It's about a pair of macho dumbasses that dive on a U-boat. the mystery they solved didn't seem important enough to mention. Got halfway. Meh. Thin Air by Richard K. Morgan. Not as good as Thirt33n yet somehow, the exact same book. Richard K Morgan seems to write exactly one story, with exactly one set of archetypes, and the only real change is how far into the future you go. The Last Palace by Norman Eisen. In case you were wondering if it's possible to tell history in an interesting way by making the protagonist a mansion in Prague, no it is not. 1491 by Charles C Mann. Argues that the inhabitants of America before Columbus were way more sophisticated than you think. Says nothing that disputes the conventional wisdom of the past 30 years. Days of Rage: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the First Age of Terror by Bryan Burrough. Points out that white kids used to blow shit up all the time in the '70s and nobody gave a shit. The minute black kids did it they got killed in shootouts. Weathermen, SLA, whoever - if you were white, you ended up teaching anthropology at Columbia but if you were black or brown The Man had no patience for your bullshit. Also Tupac Shakur's mom was way more interesting than Tupac. The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman. Basically a mile-high sketch of every stupid thing in history which would have been a lot more interesting if I wasn't already drearily familiar with every stupid thing in history. The Last Warrior by Barry Watts. Andrew Marshall basically shaped the American side of the Cold War the way Ayn Rand basically shaped domestic monetary policy. Scooter Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld. Unfortunately barry Watts doesn't think Andrew Marshall has anything to answer for. Gold by Matthew Hart. Gold mining is terrible and fucks people up. The end. Supposedly there are squatters in South African gold mines who haven't seen the sun in months and they're pale and there are hookers down there but [citation needed]. Also some guy who was on Big Brother South Africa shot three of them. Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975 by Max Hastings. Best laid plans. Basically Vietnam has forever been in the shit because the French are horrific colonialists, the Japanese are horrific imperialists, and the Americans are horrific capitalists. The Curse of Bigness By Tim Wu. Tim Wu makes the point that EVERYONE hated monopolies except for William McKinley, who did the world a favor by getting shot and allowing monopoly-buster Teddy Roosevelt to assume the presidency, and Robert Bork, who is an asshole for reasons well beyond his insistence that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to privacy. Also the Chicago School of Economics is bullshit yet has been calling the shots for 50 years which is why Google now owns you. I've got Harry Potter on hold. It'd be nice to read something that doesn't tell me how fucked the world is. On a lighter note, Frontline did a lovely little piece about how fucked up our indefinite detention of illegal immigrants is... in 2011 so I've got that going for me which is nice. ALSO because apparently I've broken my library: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism By Shosanna Zuboff. Which should have been a good book but is not. In part because Zuboff writes like she's trying to bore you, but mostly because she seems to think that Google is evil because it is, not because it does. I really wanted to like this book, I tried real hard, but when an author makes you feel that maybe Zuckerberg has a point she's doing a bad job of convincing you Facebook is evil. Especially if you are already pretty sure Facebook is evil.