I finished Benjamin Franklin: An American Life at the airport last week. Walter Isaacson is a really great biographer, and Franklin as a subject is all one could ask for: interesting, quotable, exhaustively well-chronicled due to his contemporary fame, but certainly nuanced enough for Isaacson to provide a fresh take. I have talking points out the wazoo on Franklin. Did you know he pioneered the measuring of the Gulf Stream? He realized that it might behoove sailors to catch a ride going to England, and avoid it if possible on the return journey. Franklin was also curious how deep the "river on the ocean" was, so he corked an empty weighted bottle, dropped it a hundred feet down so the pressure would uncork it, then reeled it up and took the water temperature. History underestimates Franklin, is the lesson to take away. He hadn't the formal training to become a Hume or a Newton, but he came damn near to being both despite.
I was also wondering if anyone has read one of Isaacson's two newest books, on Steve Jobs and the tech industry. I don't know if they're worth it.
Next on my list in the vein of biography will be McCullough's corollary book John Adams. Won the Pulitzer but I've only ever paged through it. More and more I find biography an ideal way to learn history; not because of the Great Man phenomenon, just since facts stick more easily.
I also found a copy of the good old Maltese Falcon in a bargain bin for a buck the other day. To intersperse.
Roll call! lil thenewgreen mk b_b humanodon etc