Review

First Durant history that I’ve been able to compare to similar books elsewhere, and #11 doesn’t come out well in the comparison. Covers Europe from 1789-1814, and essentially focuses on Napoleon and the Napoleonic wars. Biographical focus is too tight - the affairs and dalliances of the great man in charge rather than the context of a given court or culture. Yet by combining biography and history, ends up a cursory sketch. Gives paragraph level details of battles, but nothing that imparts wisdom beyond facts. ...

Amazing that I like this series so much but am not a fan of Bujold’s other series. I enjoyed the main character, the different setting, and the reason-based mechanics of magic in this world. Will read more from this author.

**History’s Dictionary ** History is an excellent teacher, with few pupils. * After finishing this book I can understand why. 10 volumes into the Story of Civilization, the Durants have struggled to find narrative thread in the haystack of personalities and surviving documentation. While this book begins and ends with Rousseau, it is not a biography, and it certainly does little to tell about the epoch defining French Revolution, analysis left for book 11. Yet is also not a history of civilization nor even a history of Europe. It overlaps with volume 9 in timeline, and only vaguely splits the political and economic history of the times. Instead, the fundamental building block of this book is short biographies proto-wikipedia style entries of the great thinkers, politicians and artists of the time. ...

**2022 in Books ** If I had hoped that 2022 would be a return to a new normal, I was wrong. My wife and I went from 2:1 parenting to 1:1 parenting, moved houses, closed a record of real estate deals, and changed jobs four times. Yet through late-night Chinese dictionary pulls and pre-dawn audiobooks, reading continued, even more than last year. The year started off finishing out last year’s project of big history with the somewhat disappointing tomes of Durant in Age of Napoleon and Ruosseau and Revolution. Feeling at least comfortable with the wide arc of history, I was more prepared to enjoy bites of history and put them in context, such as Roger Crowley’s discovery-era naval history and long overdue biographies such as Malcom X, Nelson Mandela, and Che Guevara. ...

So far my son has learned to ask for three books by name, and this is one of them. To be precise, he doesn’t know the title, and instead asks for the tractor book (拖拉机书) Despite owning at least 10 ‘point and name’ books, this one garners by far the most interest due to the variety of namable vehicles, high production value, and enough every day words to keep him engaged. We are reading mostly in translation, and while I have no idea how to figure out what to call a knuckle-boom loader, I am amused when he learns words enthusiastically that even my wife doesn’t know. (i.e. excavator 挖掘机) ...

Turns out that when combined with strep throat induced insomnia, even this book can give you nightmares. That aside appreciated the small tidbits of advice on how to combine mindfulness with action. there were many things I would like to include in my practice.

Snackable ‘misfits in space’ book with a more modern take on gender and sex but the rest of sci-fi tropes intact. I’ve just read this story one too many times to get too excited.

This is your dads sci-fi. Best read paired with forever war, links to enders game are clear. An only slightly post-fascist fascist work. Not painful like Stranger in a Strange Land. I’m glad I was exposed to Enders game and the movie first but how did this ever get made into a movie in the first place?

Having worked with three nannies this year, I found the content surprisingly unuseful. The vast majority goes about how to hire a nanny and run an interview process, which while important, is the same as hiring any employee at any company. Managers or small business owners won’t find anything useful here. There is no discussion of how working with a Nanny is different than a typical employee employer relationship, or how to be a good employer, both areas that I would have hoped to see in a book like this but didn’t.

**Mathletes v. Machos ** I used to be good at math. Not ‘A student’ good, I mean win the competitions, calculate faster than friends with a calculator good. As part of a young math team, and as competitions progressed through 8 years of scholastic competition, I watched as the trajectories of the mathletes diverge. The girls drifted away from math team, and focused on areas outside of STEM. The boys prided themselves on calculus grades, picked up video games and code, and went straight into tech. ...