How did you do with those billion pages? Lots of repeats from last year. I used to have a copy of Modern Times but must have lost hope and gotten rid of it. I think I wanted to read The Intellectuals first, but I didn't take the class that was assigned in. Sounded like a fun survey of ad hominem. The Lombard Laws? How's that Bulgakov going, anyway.
Intellectuals is an exercise in ad hominem, of course, but I found it legitimate. Explores the boundary between malicious personal opprobrium and justified criticism for the sake of truth. I also learned rather a lot. But it couldn't exist on the same bookshelf as History of Western Philosophy... -- I read Piketty. That's about all I can say. I'm still not exactly sure why he needed 600 pages. The graphs speak for themselves.