I just finished reading Jack Weatherford's Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World and really enjoyed it. I felt that he was stretching a bit with some of his claims about Mongol impacts on later European society but overall it was a really good book and very well written.

Now that I've finished it I'm going to to go back and hopefully finish the biography of Saladin I've been reading on and off for the past few months.

Edmund Morris' trilogy on Theodore Roosevelt is chock full of quality reading. It's written in the way of a narrative, interspersed with an almost textbook description of events. I'd highly recommended it.

I just finished reviewing a book where multiple times per (short) chapter the author speculates about what someone "probably" was thinking or what "probably" was talked about in a conversation, on the basis of no evidence. I am debating whether to mention this in the review. I generally try to avoid nitpicking narrative choices because everyone has their own cup of tea in that respect, and there are bigger fish to fry when writing a review. But it happened so often (again, multiple times per chapter, every chapter, many chapters) that it began to feel like one of the big problems with the author's approach to the past, which does feel like a bigger problem. Any thoughts? I don't want to be petty in reviews, but the sheer magnitude of this behavior struck me as worth calling out.

Would anyone be able to recommend me any books on Italian history, specifically the unification and their part in the scramble for Africa? So 19th century up to WW1, although anything post-Roman Empire would be appreciated.

I've been working on a term research paper for my historical methodologies class. The paper is on Cicero's opinions and actions regarding the Triumvirs leading up to the announcement of there alliance (and, to some degree, up until the civil war in 49.) This week I've read "Cicero, Pompeius, and Rullus" by G.V. Sumner, claiming that the view that Crassus and Caesar were behind Rullus' agrarian bill in 63 may be incorrect, and "Cicero's fight against Crassus and Caesar in 65 and 63 B.C." by Allen M. Ward arguing against Sumner's paper.

I thought Ward's paper pretty effectively fought Sumner's view. This week I'm going to read several more articles focused on Caesar and Cicero, and probably gonna read Cicero's "de Lege Agraria" speeches.

I've been working on researching a bronze Hathor mask, which presents a puzzle because it has no close relatives. It is bronze but has glass inlaid eyes. So I have three areas of research -- bronze, hathor, and glass.

First off, Hathor. Hathor is the mother goddess of Egypt, often represented as a cow. It was quite a pervasive cult. In the Hathor mask, she is represented with cow ears, and is wearing the Hathor wig. There are two possible types of objects I think this mask could be from. It could be from a hathor sistrum ([https://cowofgold.wikispaces.com/file/view/sistrum4.jpg/240653519/sistrum4.jpg] (like this)) or a decoration from a hathor column/architectural element. There are points both for and against both. The sistrum: It's common for them to be found in bronze, there are similar figures, but I cannot see any marks of where it has been removed. The column: No parallels, but there are possibilities from other nearby cultures.

Second of all, the glass. There has been a suggestion that the glass on this object is modern, which I think is possible, because all the parallels I can find are for full eyes instead of just around the eyes. One way to tell might be testing the adhesive. The glass is blue, probably meant to simulate turquoise. It was probably cast, by crushing up glass and then putting it into a mold and then heating it.

Finally, bronze. This is the hardest avenue to follow, because we don't know exactly what time period the mask is from or exactly where egyptians got their bronze. One thought -- one place where bronze was excavated was also a shrine to Hathor. A tenuous connection, but an interesting one.

Sources: Pinch, Geraldine "Votive Offerings to Hathor" 1993

Wright, Karol "Molten Color: Glass Making in Antiquity" 2011

Shaw, Ian and Paul T Nicholson, eds. "Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology" 2000

Hello, I'm always looking for good military histories to read, things hopefully in the vein of Chandlers "Campaigns of Napoleon" are my most ideal. I like long books that take me awhile to get through so don't hold back on any suggestions please.