In my copious free time, I still try to get some reading done that is neither work, nor for school. I've been trying to alternate between serious and not-so-serious titles to keep from getting burned out.
Here's what I've finished off recently:
The Coming of the Third Reich, Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History, and Deep Six.
Deep Six is a pretty standard Dirk Pitt novel. Written in the early 1980s, it hasn't aged as well as other Pitt books - it gets a bit too involved in the whole Cold War competition, and doesn't do it all that convincingly. It was entertaining, just not up to Clive Cussler's normal standards.
The Coming of the Third Reich and Constantine's Sword go together, but not because they are designed to do so. Both books deal heavily with the issue of anti-Semitim in Europe, both examine the role of the Catholic Church and the role of Europe's political leaders in alternately comdemning and using anti-Semitism. It was a depressing combination to read, as I see some comparisons between the tactics of the Nazis and our moden political environment.
Let me be clear, though, that I am not comparing anyone to Hitler or the Nazis, I just see some problems in how different groups approach the issue of dissent, demogoguery, the passivity of moderate political groups, etc... as very similar.
Constantine's Sword also examines the development of Christianity out of 1st century divisions in Judaism, and (unfortunately) the author's oedipal complex, which also includes the Virgin Mary. This book was not as academic as it should be - the author is a journalist, not a historian.
Finally, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History explores the 1918 flu pandemic, its roots, the growth of medicine as a science in the United States and Europe from the 1860s to 1918, and why the avian flu is such a pressing issue today. This book was hard to read, but I think quite important. Unfortunately, there's no way to use it to illustrate the seriousness of an avian flu pandemic using it without causing a panic.