What's Open Now: Nonfiction

1/24/2009: Have abandoned Pliny/Vesuvius for Austerity Britain, David Kynaston, a scholarly work on the privations Britains continued to experience, 1945 to 1951. Changes in architecture and city planning as Britain  sought to rebuild bomb-scarred cities, and the dramatic social repercussions of the war in the workplace, at home, in governement and in schools. Includes notes from the impressive Mass Observation studies and makes references to fiction books that recount the various aspects of post-war Britain.  

1/15/2009: Ghosts of Vesuvius, Charlie Pelligrino. Pelligrino is the author of one of my favorite science fiction/science speculation books, Dust. At the same time I also have open Natural History by Pliny the Elder. Try the light Juvenile Roman Mystery #2 The Secrets of Vesuvius by Caroline Lawrence that has as one of the characters, Admiral Pliny.