Books

Whenever I am going on vacation to a place I try to read a few books about its history first. It gets me psychologically situated for what I’m going to experience and I also find that people appreciate it and are even touched to find that you know a bit about their history.

Reading deepens your enjoyment of life. I don’t know if I’d enjoy travel so much if I wasn’t aware of all the layers of history beneath a place that I was visiting. I’m planning to travel through a few countries in southern Europe later this year and am reading books in anticipation.

Big fan of this approach. 

After leaving Coinbase in 2019, I spent 8 months traveling. Logged off from Twitter for a good chunk of it. Ended up reading a bunch of books.

First time in Middle East — Jordan, Egypt, Israel — and I really enjoyed these two books while there:

https://www.amazon.com/Arabs-History-Eugene-Rogan-ebook/dp/B007TV0PJE

https://www.amazon.com/Crusades-Through-Arab-Eyes-Essentials-ebook/dp/B008SBXGCW

https://danromero.org/2019-booklist.html

The Crusades Through Arab Eyes does a great job of illustrating how Europeans took a vibrant thriving culture and pushed them towards leaders that were religious zealots by just murdering the shit outta everyone for hundreds of years

Crusades were violent, yes. 

But… 🧐

Crusades were violent, yes. 

But… 🧐

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests

They’ve made it hard to criticize Islam, but ask any Iranian how they feel about those early conquests and how it contributed to their misery today. They make crusaders look like humanitarian workers.

Yeah the Muslim chronicler UsÁmah Ibn Munqid observations of the Crusaders. He actually developed friendship with some of the Templars, Crusaders, while still looking at the Franks as uncouth barbarians