- The Body: A Guide For Occupants, Bill Bryson. I'll read anything written by Bryson, although I maintain that Neither Here Nor There is his best work. The Body isn't intended to be funny like Bryson's earlier books but rather to be informative. Recommended.
- Political Order And Political Decay, Francis Fukuyama.
- What causes states to form, persist, and decay. Why democracy cannot simply be imposed by a foreign power (as was attempted in Iraq and Afghanisthan).
- Fukuyama convinced me that building states is very, very hard. Once built, they generally tend to persist. But to build a national identity and a strong state from scratch usually requires the right conditions and a few hundred years.
- Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The Structures of Everyday Life, Fernand Braudel.
- I'm about a 100 pages in but still struggling to consisely articulate what this book is about. This review is the best way to get a feel for if the book will interest you.