One of my larger appetites over the last few years has been history - I've been reading a large variety of books, and those books have been concerned with a many different periods and countries. I've read about World War I, World War II, the middle ages - and I've always been fascinated by the US Civil War.

Recently, I've focused on something that has more relevance to current events - the history of the Islamic world, and the Crusades. I haven't studied this topic in any depth, so I would hardly call myself more than passingly informed at this point. To get some feeling for the Crusades, I read "The Crusades: A History" (second edition), by Jonathan Riley-Smith. I'll have to read other sources to get a wider view - this one is an overview of Crusading within the Catholic church, starting with the First Crusade in 1097, and ending with the fall of Malta (and the Hospitaller Knights) to Napolean in 1798. It's a broad view, and the sections on the active missions to the Middle East jump around a lot. As well, following the various noble family lineages gets to be very hard - there were parts of the book I had a lot of trouble getting through.

Still, it was a good introduction, and I intend to look for more source material; I'd be interested in any recommendations. After that, I was interested in learning more about the history and ideology of Islam - I've heard good things about Bernard Lewis, so I picked up two short books:

• "The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror"
• "What Went Wrong: Westernm Impact and Middle Eastern Response"

I've gotten about halfway into that first one, and yes, I do intend to seek out other sources. I still read plenty of "trashy" action novels, mostly while flying. I've found that I like learning about history more though; I'm enjoying Grant's Memoirs right now, for instance. One thing I found interesting there - he consistently referred to the Union forces as the National Army, rather than using the terms Federal or Union. Interesting, but I have no way of knowing whether it was peculiar to him, or to the time he wrote the book (the mid 1880's). I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in the US Civil War.