Don’t worry. I’m sure today’s experts are much smarter, and there’s no way people will look back at our predictions and laugh in 2123.

Recently finished two books.

The Writing of the Gods by Edward Dolnick is a narrarive telling of the race to crack hieroglyphs. Its main protagonists are Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion. It's a good story, though Dolnick is prone to meander at times, and sometimes repeats his key points - the book lacks flow somewhat. However, it has spurred me to sort out a ticket to the hieroglyphs exhibition currently on at the British Museum...

Have also read Princes of the Renaissance by Mary Hollingsworth. This is a lavishly illustrated telling of the warring Italian city-states during the later 15th and 16th centuries, told through the lens of the key families and dynasties. It's not quite the book I was hoping to read - I was hoping for more of an intellectual history of the Renaissance, but it was more about the power struggles. I found the sheer size of the cast to be a bit overwhelming and confusing, and got a bit lost in parts. I was also surprised that there wasn't a significant chapter on Florence and the Medicis.

I believe we call that "Optimism for the future."

Baby contests were a thing when eugenics was still a popular movement in the US.

Don't think so. In the film it's pretty clear what it's about.

The Bookshop of the World is on my reading list. Did you read it in hardback, paperback or ebook? I've seen the paperback, and the print is small, but the hardback is quite expensive...

I'd also echo The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King - an excellent narrative history of the twilight of manuscript printing in Renaissance Florence.

I've posted a few posts recently about history books about books / manuscripts. Some recent examples include The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club by de Hamel, and The Lost Gutenberg by Margaret Leslie Davis

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In most developed countries, work hours have drastically decreased.

Second reading this book. It is very thorough in documenting the role many nations had in allowing things to spiral into genocide, and just how much effort was put in to trying to head it off.

Of course, fair warning it's not for the faint of heart. There aren't many books that I can say "changed me" in some clearly identifiable way, and that was one of them. Such a failure of humanity in so many ways.

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And read the book the documentary is based on.

Shake Hands With The Devil was written by General Romeo Dallaire, who was the head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda. The documentary is based on the book and him.

Another good book to read is We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families by Philip Gourevitch.

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"Everyone will be beautiful so there will be no beauty contests. Or baby contests"

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hahahahahah.....wut?

Does anyone have any suggestions about the German Freikorps after WWI (but only in English)? The only one Google has found that sounds interesting is A Brief History of the Birth of the Nazis: How the Freikorps Blazed a Trail for Hitler by Nigel Jones (also called Hitler's Heralds on kindle)

Anyway finished my first two books of the year (reviews copied and pasted) -

Caporetto and the Isonzo Campaign: The Italian Front 1915-1918 by John MacDonald, Zeljko Cimpric

>4.75/5 really good at what it sets out to do.

>Short at 187 pages plus a 2 page bibliography, all in English so good for further research. First 50 pages cover the stuff that isn't the battles, Italy's entry into the war, the terrain, the state of the armies in terms of morale and equipment then a biographical list of the main leaders on each side. Then the rest of the book covers each of the 12 battles of the Izonso, describing the main attacks, the reasons for success and failure, and what the battles actually achieved (most of the time nothing gained and at huge cost in terms of casualties). Each chapter tends to be under 10 pages but the more significant battles like the 6th battle and the 11th battle get about 15. The 12th battle, Caporetto, gets 20. 1918 and the final Italian offensives are wrote about in very broad strokes, not a lot of detail. The writing is accessible if you like military history, enough info on troop movements and locations to understand what is going on without getting bogged down with every unit. There are a lot of pictures throughout the book with mostly decent quality, but personally I wanted some more maps and for the maps to be better quality.

>I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in WWI but if you want a more indepth book (especially on the political side of things such as the Italian leadership deciding to enter the war and the cultural impact) then I'd suggest The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919 by Mark Thompson alongside this book.

Just finished today The World on Fire: 1919 and the Battle with Bolshevism by Anthony Read

>Might be a little bit harsh but 3.5/5 rounding down for Goodreads.

>Narrative and chronological history of 1919. The writing style is pretty good but more focused on the narrative than analysis. A little bit of prior knowledge of the political time period might be helpful but I don't think it is needed. The book is mostly about two topics -

>1 - The post-WWI revolutions and civil wars in Europe, particularly Germany. These parts are decent imo and I personally found them to be the more enjoyable parts of the book. Despite the book being about the Western reaction to communism there isn't that much on the Russian Civil War beyond broad details to follow what was going on. The topic of the Russian Civil War is mostly just the Western leaders and politicians arguing over whether to continue the military intervention there. The political section is very focused on Europe and to a lesser extent the USA, there is a short chapter on the colonial issues (India with Amritsar and the Third Anglo-Afghan War) but it isn't that good.

>And 2 - Industrial disputes and how the fear of the Bolsheviks and Bolshevism was used by employers and governments to smear striking unions with mostly ordinary economic concerns (wages, hours, conditions etc) as being revolutionary communists intent on bringing down the government. While this theme is covered in a range of European countries I'd say the bulk of it is on the USA and the Red Scare. The author is pretty sympathetic to the unions and the workers. There is some content on the racial side of things but it is in the context of communism, the press at the time saying things like the "the blacks are being tainted by Bolshevism" or "Lenin and Trotsky are trying to lure in black support". As I'm not American and a lot of this content is about the USA I didn't enjoy this part as much.

>Overall maybe worth a read if you are interested in the post-WWI period as you can get used copies pretty cheap on Amazon nowadays. However the dual focus means that there are better books that focus on one theme or the other. If you want the post-WWI revolutions and civil wars just read The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End by Robert Gerwarth instead. I'm sure there are plenty of books on the Red Scare and the unions in 1919 America but I haven't read any of them

Next up is probably going to be A World Undone: The Story of the Great War by G.J Meyer which should take me a while

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300 year old people would suggest there 200 year olds back then

Oh I wouldn't go as far as saying the French knew what would happen to the plane, but that they planned for an escalation of violence seems quite evident

That’s because there’s no real way to predict the future. They just look at trend data (which doesn’t really help predict most things) and their imagination to come up with ideas. In the end though, we really have nothing to go on to predict what the future will be like since the world is unpredictable.

Some of these aren't far off.

> If I give a suicide bomb to a jihadi Im not exactly blameless for what happens next

That’s a bad comparison. A suicide bomb is designed specifically to kill innocents, whereas basic weapons and training are not.

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Lab work?

*coup against the Hutu power [government].

The Hutu nationalist were in power, and the coup was against them. I don't believe there is any solid consensus in the International community about whether President Habyarimana's plane was shot by extremist elements of his own regime (who were upset with his more moderate policies) or by RPF leaders (i.e. Kagame), but it is likely that France was in no way involved in that specific powder keg element.

EDIT: coup is only an accurate term if Habyarimana's plane was shot by his own extremist party members, otherwise it would be labeled an assassination.

Most future predictions assume that energy is effectively an unlimited resource.