The Reads of 2009 - Part 2

Here's the second half of the list:

1. Collapse, J Diamond (June 7): Yet another engaging and thought-provoking book by Diamond. Here, he explores human societies which collapsed to the point of annihilation or experienced significant degradation of material standards. I found the story of the Viking colony in Greenland especially touching. The underlying warning that the global human society might be hurtling towards the abyss is of course terrifying and sobering (most surveyed societies collapsed rather rapidly after attaining their peaks).
2. The First World War, J Keegan (June 7): Keegan's masterly account of The Great War is very readable. I was most impressed to discover how the lead up times required to mobilize conscripted armies and bring them to the borders, coupled with the fears of each army that the other might strike first, led to an inexorable momentum from the Habsburg Archduke's assassination on June 28, 1914 to the declaration of war by Britain on Germany on Aug 4, 1914.
3. The Second World War, J Keegan (July 12): Expectedly insatiated, my next read was Keegan's history of the Second World War :) Since the duration, dynamism and scope of this war is much more than that of the First, Keegan has used an interesting structure to contain the book's length. The account remains comprehensive however, and very illuminating. The big surprise (for me) here was learning how German communities in central and eastern Europe were ethnically cleansed out in the wake of the Wehrmacht's retreat and defeat, in grim payback for the Nazi regime's horrors in the Eastern theatre.     
4. Sophie's World, J Gaarder (July 17): A gift from a friend. I love receiving gifts that invite me out of my ordinary boundaries to explore new interests. In this novelised history of philosophy, the protagonist Sophie receives just such an invitation which leads to a curious adventure and a surrealistic ending. It's not a bad book, but think that I would have appreciated it more had I read it as a teenager.
5. Dialogues of Plato, Plato (Aug 22): Sophie's World kindled my interest in philosophy, a subject I have generally avoided (apart from Betrand Russell's "Unpopular Essays" and "Sceptical Essays"). This is a collection of five of Plato's dialogues: Apology, Crito, Phaedo (the triad giving an account of Socrates' trial and execution), Symposium (a discussion about love) and Republic (an exposition of the ideal state). While the text is brilliant at times, on the whole, I was not impressed. The arguments are often more sophistry than logical, I think, and the only thing that made me finish the book was the knowledge that the author has been read for over two millennia by people much smarter than me.
6. India's Partition, edited by M Hasan (Aug 22): This book took me back to the Indian freedom movement, a subject I hadn't touched for 4-5 years. It's a good collection of essays, chronicling the development of the two nation theory in the 1940s, though making for grim reading as Indians moved haphazardly towards the most grizzly massacres and ethnic cleansing in our history.   
7. Mughal Romance, C Verma (Aug 22): A compilation of some romantic, some lascivious and some tragic stories in late medieval India. The book is poorly edited and replete with typos, but couplets by the likes of Khusrau and Firdausi (and stories like the one about the octogenarian Sultan of Malwa, who had 16000 damsels in his harem!) make it worth a read.   
8. Remarkable Creatures, S Carroll (Aug 22): The author has presented short narratives about the exotic journeys made by explorers and scientists which led to significant biological discoveries like Darwin's (and Wallace's) discovery of evolution by natural selection. It's a good read, striking a good balance between readability and informativeness.
9. The War of the Worlds, HG Wells (Aug 22): I like this classic science fiction novel, even though it makes for slightly laboured reading at times. The author's understanding of the likely manner in which we might encounter intelligent alien life (in the form of a violent invasion) strikes me as essentially correct. 
10. Empires of the Indus, A Albinia (Nov 14): After "City of Djinns" last year, I bought another travelogue written by another young Brit in South Asia. And this narrative of the history (and prehistory) of events along the mighty Indus river does not disappoint. From its mouth near Karachi (and stories of post-Partition Pakistan) to its source in Tibet (prehistoric rock-painting cultures), with Afghan Taliban in between, the author's journey in space and time is a compelling read.    

So this was 2009. Pretty good, on the whole :)