I'm afraid my final recommendation of Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation : The Conquest of the Middle East is going to have to wait. I had to turn it back in to the library. There were a lot of holds on it and I couldn't renew it. A lot of the books that I have been reading are popular books and are checked out so I put them on hold. (All done from the comfort of my computer.) Some may have a waiting list of only one or two. The longest waiting list was over 90. So I put holds on a bunch of books figuring they will trickle in and I will always have a book to read. This generally works pretty well but sometimes there is a deluge of books or one book is really long. Fisk's book was really long -- over 1,000 pages. It was really hard to turn back in but I still had 200 pages to go. The book is incredible. Now I'm number 10 on the list with 3 holdable copies for The Great War for Civilisation so it won't be too bad. I now have 1491 : New Revelations of the Americas before Colombus back. I had to turn that one back in partially read. The only other book I've had to turn back unread was Zadie Smith's White Teeth but I have that one back now, too. Now I'm faced with a deluge. I have 12 checked out and 1 ready to pick up. It's so hard living in these modern times.