Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD<\/a>. The author, Peter Brown, is the modern day eminence on ‘Late Antiquity’<\/a>. I’ve read many of his earlier works, and always found his exposition enjoyable. But I’m re-reading The Fall of Rome<\/a> in part to have a good counterpoint in my head to Brown’s arguments, which are subtle and difficult to box in (for what it’s worth, I think Brown makes a bit too much of Late Antiquity, but to some extent this is a normative<\/em> judgement).<\/p>\n The Founders of Evolutionary Genetics: A Centenary Reappraisal<\/a>. This is an exciting time to be interested in evolution and genetics (see Haldane’s Sieve<\/a> and prepare to be overwhelmed!). But I also think it is useful to have some historical perspective. Science is a human<\/em> enterprise, and it is critical to step outside of the flowing river, and observe the parameters which shaped its past course and trajectory, and therefore where it may be going.<\/p>\n With that, an “open thread” for what you are reading, and why.<\/p>\n Note:<\/strong> The comments systems should be improved in the near future. Or so I’m told.<\/p>\n Christmas is a time when I accelerate my reading, and catch-up for lost time. Here’s my three books I plan to get through: The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization. I’ve read this twice already. This short book has been one of the most influential works in my own personal thinking. Even if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75757,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75634\/revisions\/75757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.razib.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"