The next installment of 2021's Reading Queue is a slew of history books. The first two books take place in the ancient world: a biography of Hannibal (the Carthaginian scourge of Rome, not the cannibal) and a biography of Pliny the Younger. Both were fantastic reads. Moving forward about a thousand years, the next book on the list is Dan Jones' Crusaders, a moving retelling of the Crusades from the Middle Ages. He traces the plethora of crusades, locating them within the political framework of the Middle Ages, and shows how the effects of the Crusades continue to this very day in the constant unrest in the Middle East. The next two books on the list are more sweeping historical works: Simon Jenkins' History of Europe is a quick run-through of European history, and C.S. Lewis' excellent The Discarded Image is an examination of the Medieval worldview. Fast-forward about five hundred years and you get to one of the best histories of The Napoleonic Wars I've read to-date. Not a bad gauntlet of books in the least.
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