On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers.

  According to the back of the book this novel was used as the basis of the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but it bears little resemblance. If you like a good pirate story, this one is really good.

   This month, I've been delving back into past history once again with Empires And Barbarians, a rather intensive study of the situations involving the decline of the Roman empire and the origins of our modern European nations by Peter Heather.  As a modern historiography, it goes into detail about current theories on whether or not the primary factors in the 1st millenium CE events were political and economic revolutions, or a mass migration of Germanic and Slavic tribes across the empire's frontiers.

   Apparently, there has been a sort of blowback against the migration theory due to its being used by Nazi Germany for propaganda purposes, especially amongst the East European intellectuals and former Soviet Russia, who suffered at the hands of Hitler's armies.  Heather presents this without wholly subscribing to it, citing archaeological evidence which supports the migration theory (while cautioning against using the Roman and German histories which were presented in a purely nationalistic light).  It's a very fascinating subject which I could agree has parallels with our own modern relations between the developed countries and those of the Third World (specifically Africa, South Asia, and Latin America).

   I had also read the afterword part of Agenda 21 written by ultra-conservative commentator Glenn Beck, skipping over the main fiction novel written by his "team member" Harriet Parke.  It was a gift from my brother (a Beck listener), so I felt some obligation to at least give it a look.  Needless to say, I kind of feel that Beck is reading too much into the articles referred to in his commentary, although I can agree that there is a point where one has to question the authorities who support some of the projects being proposed.  (For my part, while I'm not keen on figures like George Soros, looking for "codewords" in United Nations documents that might imply turning citizens of the United States into inmates in concentration camps is a bit too extreme.  Beck has made a career out of making men like Soros, Cass Sunstein, and President Obama into boogeymen in his biblical worldview.)