Hooked on books

Hooked again. Every whipstitch I stumble onto a book I just can’t get enough of. Oddly enough, they are often on my own bookshelf. One I had to borrow was Fukuyama’s 2 volumes on social order, another was Jane Jacob’s Dark Age Ahead. Both will find their way onto my blog in bits and pieces. Right now, it’s Hugh Thomas’ magisterial (that means it’s really a thick book) The Slave Trade, by which he means the Atlantic Trade of the African Diaspora. Good lord, it’s fascinating and I’m not even to the part about the Atlantic slave trade. He covers the occurrence and practice of slavery in the classical world and the Islamic and Christian lands. Fascinating detail, upending all the stereotypes about slavery extant in our unbooked world. Classroom textbooks and movies are the primary sources of information on slavery available to most Americans without a library card. In fact, that’s why I pulled the book off my shelf along with others, to check on some facts and figures as I thought about how to explain African slavery in the Diasporan sense to people whose only knowledge of it comes from the above mentioned sources as well as 60s and 70s Black consciousness and empowerment movements.
So what’s my next hooked on books selection? Who knows? Something on the Hanseatic League? The role of sugar in world trade and diet? Ergative languages? Tsunamis on the northern West Coast of the U.S.? The weakening of ties between California and the federal government-lite aka Calexit?

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