I've been reading The War of Wars: The Great European Conflict 1793 - 1815 by Robert Harvey and he starts the book off with the French revolution, obviously. Now, I bought the book primarily to learn about Napoleon and the Napoleonic wars but as I finished reading about the French revolution I found myself yearning for more information on the latter rather than the former.

So, basically, I was wondering whether anyone here could point me in the right direction.

I'm in the middle of two books, Frontiers: A short history of the American West by Hine and Faragher and Undaunted Courage by Ambrose. I've never been a non-fiction reader but both of these books have been holding my interest and, in the case of Frontiers, sending me out looking for more info.

My question is how do I differentiate good from bad when it comes to history books? Frontiers covers a lot of ground and so I've been throwing a ton of books into my Amazon wish list to review later. Is there a way, besides reviews, to vet a book for quality?

As many Friday Free-for-All readers know, I have an addiction to history books. I failed to fight this addiction yesterday and purchased the following...

• Chiefdoms, Collapse, and Coalescence in the Early American South

• Indigenous Landscapes and Spanish Missions: New Perspectives from Archaeology and Ethnology

• Into the American Woods: Negotiations on the Pennsylvania Frontier

I will try to make some headway this winter break and report back with reviews for the other history book addicts here.

Right now I'm re-reading Cook's classic Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650. I realized I need to re-read it and compare Cook's conclusions with the data Kelton presented in Epidemics and Enslavement that suggests the first real smallpox pandemic to strike the U.S. Southeast didn't occur until ~1700. Cook argues for early and devastating epidemics right after contact, and I wanted to compare interpretations of the data.