I managed to pare my reading list down some while I was on the road - I finished three of the books I've been plowing through:

• Wedgwood's "The Thirty Year's War"
• Maalouf's "The Crusades through Arab Eyes"
• Vinge's "Deepness in the Sky"

The first two are part of my continued history reading - the Wedgwood book is both deeply fascinating and deeply disturbing. If ever there was a time for the phrase "All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing", it was that era in Central Europe. Throughout the petty kingdoms that then made up Germany, there were multiple possible paths to peace throughout the time of that war; none were ever taken, as there was always temporizing or possible princely advantage.

The second book was really interesting. Taken from contemporary Arab chronicles, it shows how the deeply split Arab world saw (and responded to) the crusades. The short answer is, they did not respond well, initially. The Islamic Empire had long since split up into multiple independent feifdoms, and many of them were at war when the Europeans first arrived. It's an eye opening account, especially if you've only ever seen the history from the Western side.

The third book was far lighter, but - ironically enough- I had more trouble getting into it. I first started reading it a year ago, and put it down. The story is actually quite interesting, but it's slow to develop. It picked up speed at the halfway point though, and I really liked the sections on the non-humans. There's some good commentary in the book on what can happen when you think the horizons are closed, and everything that can be discovered has been. In that sense, the book reminded me somewhat of "Infinity Beach", by Jack McDevitt.

Next up, I'm switching gears a bit - I've just received "Freakonomics", by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. We'll see how that goes.