Reading Still Matters

Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China by Evan Osnos is a 2014 non-fiction book exploring China's rapid transformation into an economic superpower, focusing on the tension between individual aspirations and authoritarian control. Based on eight years of reporting for The New Yorker, Osnos highlights how the chase for money, truth, and faith shapes modern Chinese life. I took me a little while to get into this one, but that’s pretty typical for me when starting a new read.   The thing that is different about this one is that it’s written and presented anecdotally through the stories of a number of different individuals acquainted with Osnos.  And I am not really used to a book on contemporary issues that is presented in that kind of style.  Regardless, each of the individual’s stories represents something of the paradigm shift in China as the country moved beyond the period of Maoist totalitarianism towards an authoritarian, but mostly fre...

There is a group of people out there who really do feel the history of a place while traveling. I am not sure how big that group of people is, but I do know that I consider myself among that tribe. You may be a member if you sit down on old stones to soak in the feel of an ancient place, hear the voices of old as you walk beneath decaying fortifications, or pause as you realize that you just walked down a path that Roman emperor may have strolled on his way to the Coliseum.        Hiking through History: Hannibal, Highlanders & Joan of Arc is a book written by Kirk Ward Robinson which will appeal to anyone in this tribe of history oriented travellers. Hiking through History was originally written in the early 2000s and released in 2011.  More recently, the Highland Home publishing house has released an updated anniversary edition, and this updated 2026 release is the edition that I was fortunate enough to read.       Robinson is an Amer...

A History of Ancient Rome in Twelve Coins is a fantastic look into Roman history by author Gareth Harney.  This is the kind of book that any history lover can get into, regardless of whether they are interested in ancient or Roman history or not.  Why? Because it brings together two awesome subjects – Rome and ancient coins.  History nerds unite!      Like the title suggests, Harney takes twelve different coins and then creates a separate chapter for each coin and goes into the historical subject of the chapter, how the coin relates to the subject of the chapter, and in many cases the way the coin is used as modern evidence of the thing being discussed.      We basically cover the 1,200-year history of Rome, from its legendary founding to the fall of the Western Empire.   I loved the entire concept of building a book about Rome and coins because, as Harney, argues in the book, coins were one of the primary tools used in ancient times...