1. Elizabeth Buchanan, So You Want to Own Greenland?  A useful and dispassionate overview of the relevant history and issues.  The author is from Australia.  I had not known that Norway unilaterally claimed parts of eastern Greenland in the early 1930s, though gave it back to Denmark following a Hague adjudication and ruling.

2. Andrea Wulf, The Traveler: One Man’s Epic Quest for Discover Our Shared Humanity.  This book meets her usual high standards.  In this case the traveler is George Foster, who sailed with Cook to the South Seas and had relatively sympathetic attitudes toward the indigenous peoples there.

3. James Hawes, The Shortest History of Ireland.  From a useful series, even if some of the claims are wrong and the judgments intemperate.  Such books force you to think through your own views and interpretations, they serve as refreshers for the basic history, and they do give you conceptual frameworks of a sort.  You are more likely to remember the core histories when you read books like this, but caution typically is in order as well.

4. Simon Warrack, Monumental: Great Buildings of the World Through the Hands and Eyes of a Stonemason.  An engaging book about the beauties of stonemasonry, with case studies of Venice, Angkor Wat, Lalibela, Zimbabwe and other locales.

5. Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light.  Yup.  “Earth is long since dead.  On a colony planet, a band of men has gained control of technology, made themselves immortal, and now rule their world as gods of the Hindu pantheon.”  First published in 1967.

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