Summer Reading II - June

Reading for June: The pace began to pick up although I was still doing office work and working on various research projects.

4. The Excellent Empire by Jarislav Pelikan. The first of my ‘fall of Rome’ summer and the first book I’ve read by Pelikan who has a reputation as a scholar of the early history of Christianity. I’ve already written about it here.

5. The Human Diasporas by the Luigi and Francesco Cavalli-Sforsas. Luigi Cavalli-Sforsa pere virtually founded the technique of tracing the history of populations genetically. In this work Luigi and his son give an explanation of how they do this and a narrative account of how humans spread out of Africa. The genetic tracings indicate that the humans who left Africa seem to have crossed the Red Sea at the southernmost tip of Arabia and from there, probably using seagoing craft of some sort, traveled along the coast to India and beyond. When some came to the end of Asia, they simply took to their seagoing craft and sailed to Australia. Others may have done the same to reach America. A remarkable story.

6. The Dark Tower: VII by Stephen King. This one probably deserves a long review. I listened to the Recorded Book version read by George Guidall (who replaced Frank Mueller who was doing the series until suffering severe brain damage in a motorcycle accident). King is a great story teller who can set a scene and populate it with finely cut, complex characters, but this falls just short of being the great work he wanted. But that is for another review.

7. The End of the Past: Ancient Rome and the Modern West by Aldo Schiavone. A wonderfully conceived and written book. Takes a close look at the economic underpinnings and the labor regime of ancient Roman society to explain why, with all its wealth, power and diversity, the Roman world never made it into modernity. Makes a great companion volume to read along with Pelikan’s Excellent Empire. Schiavone’s erudition is impressive. Some of his points are so good I want to return to them soon.