I'm binge eating popular non-fiction this week. I'm reading Gang Leader for a Day
today and plan on reading Bobos in Paradise
tomorrow.

Last week, I asked my buddy Suze why history books sell well, but not politics or other disciplines. She has been in publishing for twenty years and knows these sorts of things. She said that history books may be selling well, but nobody is reading them. People buy those books, because they look good on a coffee table. Or maybe they have really good intentions. They think they want to read a biography of John Adams, so they buy the book, but it ends up gathering dust somewhere. She said a book on feng shui is another story. They sell and people read them.

Steve buys history books and actually reads them. He gives five stars to his latest read, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America

And congrats to Dan Nexon for the release of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics).