The true war

I finished Pursuit of Power:  Europe 1815-1914.  This book was the first that I started reading in my Stuff People Recommended project, but it took me a long time to finish both because of length and density.  If you intend on reading it I suggest investing in steel toe boots - if you drop the book you will need them.

This book is the story of Europe from the Napoleonic Wars to WW1.  It covers a vast range of topics from political intrigue to wars and lines of control through to labour disputes, technology, and economics.  Pursuit of Power is incredibly well researched and the author clearly knows his stuff.  You will come out the other side with a dizzying array of facts, should you make it through.

The trick is making it through.  The book is not light reading.  Every mention of a person includes their birth and death date.  There are endless lists of things and odd tangents with highly specific details that don't fit well into a narrative.

Speaking of which, the book doesn't have a narrative.  That isn't necessarily a criticism or a form of praise, just a fact.  You do see trends of course as you go through all the data, but the author isn't trying to push a particular viewpoint or tell a story.  He is presenting well researched facts, that is all.  If you want an arc, or characters about which you know something, you will not find it here.  If what you want is a wild flurry of interesting tidbits of knowledge though, you will find exactly what you are looking for.

I did come away from reading this book with a few insights that I think are worth sharing.  First off it is clear from reading it that our current way of discussing and viewing history as a story of nation states battling one another is deeply flawed.  For example, many of the rebellions in Europe in this period ended when the rebels ousted their monarch and then another country invaded, destroyed the rebels, put a new monarch in place, and left.  The key battle wasn't country vs. country, but aristocrats vs. peasants.  The aristocrats in Germany wouldn't abide a rebellion in a nearby country because those uppity peasants can't be allowed to get ideas!  It was common to see other countries simply install a random noble as king in a newly minted country and then walk away, all to keep the lower classes under control.

The peasants were often tricked into thinking that the real war was them vs. some other country, when in fact they should have been seeing it as a war of all peasant vs. all the upper classes.  The writings of Marx make a lot more sense to me now that I see this more clearly.

I also acquired a new appreciation for the effects of economics and business on societies with much more primitive science.  Reading about how railways affected the price of wheat and thus dramatically changed farmers lives in nations far away was fascinating.  A railway in France that allows a French farmer to sell crops at a much lower cost because of lower shipping prices can destroy the life of a Russian peasant when their crops now aren't worth selling.

Additionally I have come around to a new way of thinking about why democracies with substantial freedom and rights for individuals have become so successful. The liberties of a modern democracy improve the efficiency of a country dramatically over a oppressive dictatorship.  I think the reason we see so many countries moving in that direction over time is simply because a country run like that gets rich.  We aren't living in a more democratic, free world because that is righteous... we are living that way because societies like that *win* on the battlefield of money.

Reading Pursuit of Power will teach you many things.  It will take a lot of time and it will sometimes feel like a slog, but you will come out the other end with a great deal of insight, and more than a few interesting facts you can spit out at parties.  

Feathered scaly critters

The next book in my 'stuff people recommended' series is The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs.  Unlike many other books in this series it did not cause me to rethink my opinions on humanity or consider becoming a full on communist.  The book was a fun, straightforward description of what we know about dinosaurs at this point, starting when the dinosaurs first emerged and moving through time until their extinction.  

The author mixed in some anecdotes about fossil hunting and archaeologists throughout, providing some amusing moments.  Certainly when I think about scientists studying dinosaurs now I imagine careful dig sites with lots of regulations and structure, but back in the day competing scientists hired mercenaries and troublemakers to fight and rob each other trying to collect bones - quite the contrast.

Much of what I learned about dinosaurs as a kid was wrong.  It is neat to take a body of knowledge that I hadn't questioned and find out how many things have changed.  Movies like Jurassic Park are now quite dated because they don't show many of the dinosaurs having feathers - though these aren't feathers like modern birds have, but rather something halfway between a feather and a thick hair.  Also our understanding of how fast dinosaurs can move, what they eat, and how they behave has changed over time.

Mixed in with dinosaur facts are descriptions of environmental changes during the dinosaur period, covering things like climate change, plate tectonics, and other factors.

This is a good book for any age.  I imagine kids would get a kick out of the random stories, but they would also get a solid education about dinosaurs in particular and general scientific topics of many kinds.  I think most adults would enjoy learning about dinosaurs anew to update their knowledge, and the book is extremely accessible to anyone without any background required.

If you want a quick to read, well written book that gives a broad overview of many scientific topics with a focus on dinosaurs, this is a great book to pick up.