Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

Fall of the Roman Empire and the end of civilization

I agree that it would make a fantastic miniseries.

If you read books about Native American history, Texas tribes and their interactions with Anglo settlers, northern plains tribes I can recommend a few titles.

Frontier Blood - Jo Ella Powell Exley : Tells the history of the Parker family clan. Their small fort in central Texas was raided by Comanches in 1836 and one of the children kidnapped was Cynthia Ann Parker who gave birth to Quanah Parker, the last great Comanche war chief. The book covers Parkers who helped shape the doctrine of the Baptist church too. It's a good read.

Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870-1879 - Herman Lehmann : This book was written by a man who was kidnapped by Apaches in 1870 and raised as Apache. He later left that tribe for the Comanches after he killed an Apache medicine man. In 1879 he was repatriated with his family in central Texas on the advice of Quanah Parker. He, like many others who spent time living with Native American tribes, preferred their way of life to that of his blood family. He talks about the challenge of reintegrating. He had to relearn to speak English and German and to adapt to all the technology and lifestyle changes encountered. It's a great book.

The Heart of Everything That Is - Bob Drury/Tom Clavin : This is Red Cloud's story told using his autobiography. Red Cloud was probably the greatest Native American war chief. It's an epic story.

I just finished reading a book that according to a NY Times book review is "The single best book I have ever read on Native American history". You may have heard of it.

Indigenous Continent - The Epic Contest for North America -- Pekka Hamalainen/Evin Rias

I almost want to say don't bother. This is a classic case of an attempt to condense a complex subject into a book that can be digested in a few days of casual reading. The book must leave out so much in order to cover so many things that it ends up almost unreadable.

There are formatting problems that should've been corrected by the publisher. Several maps that should fit on one page have parts of the map cut off and printed at the top of the next page. That is ridiculous.

Another thing that contributes to unreadability and leads to confusion in telling this epic tale is that the narrative jumps from one time period to another with no subheadings to warn that you are stepping back in time for context. Consecutive paragraphs describe events in different regions with no effort to tie them together or to make them fit. There is so much information that it feels that things the authors thought important are just worked in whether they fit or not so that interesting tidbits are told. Unfortunately this ends up creating a stew of a story where the author stirs the pot a little and instead of the beefy broth in the spoon you end up with potato chunks and a random bay leaf. The bay leaf flavoring their story is the history that they couldn't fit somewhere else so they just tossed it in there.

There is a lot of slavery in the book. This was a real thing historically so it is a very interesting treatment of that subject and for those who are under the impression that Anglo colonists started the institution of slavery in North America it will be enlightening for them to read about Native American treatment of captives.

All in all, there is so much history to cover that many events and characters have their own stories feel like Reader's Digest footnotes.

The best way to treat this book is to use it as a springboard for deeper study because it feels shallow. The physical book also could be improved by cleaning up the typesetting, adding headings, moving paragraphs around into more coherent narratives, and fixing the maps.

Anyway, this got long and I know you probably read some of these. Have fun.

Leo Africanus by Amin Maalouf -- I was approached in an airport by a lovely old gentleman who essentially told me to read this book and insisted I take a photo of it so I wouldn't forget. Half a year later, I'm out of things to read and looking for a change (I never read historical fiction before) and gave it a shot. It has opened a world of a completely new genre for me.

Wow it’s crazy how he didn’t add a disclaimer to his original post.

EDIT: Did he really change his mind? Still seems like he thinks that book is pseudoscience, just that sleep is more important than he originally gave it credit for.