What’s Your Favorite Recent Book?

Besides non-stop coverage of politics, one of my biggest interests with TPM over the years has been books — reviewing them, discussing them with readers and so forth. And we’re planning a new section of the site to do that in a more compelling and on-going way. But for today, I have a more specific question.

As I’ve told you many times before, my own free time reading is almost 100% popular history. No politics. No fiction. Just history — what I’d call high-end popular history. And I’m constantly scrounging for the next book I can dig my teeth into. One I just finished was Roger Crowley’s history of City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas.

I was feeling sort of at sea when I finished that one but then noticed that just yesterday a new book for another favorite of mine Tom Holland came out: In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire. The first book I read of Holland’s was Rubicon, which was great. And I’ve loved the rest of the ones I’ve read of his. So I started this one last night with very high hopes.

Now, what’s the most engrossing — I mean, you couldn’t put it down — work of history you’ve read in the last six months? Send me your best and I’ll share your comments with you and other readers.