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The Glory of the Empire: A Novel, a HistoryBook

by Jean d'Ormesson

Who uses, recommends or left The Glory of the Empire: A Novel, a History, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

1 person

Cosma Rohilla Shalizi
Statistics professor at Carnegie Mellon University who writes the long-running blog Three-Toed Sloth and the Bactra Review of books.
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This must be one of the strangest and most brilliant of alternate histories, covering thousands of years in the life of "The Empire", its people and its rulers. I can only try to convey its effect by means of a figure. Imagine the real histories of ancient Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the Sassanians, and many other countries depicted on intricately-decorated ceramic pots and vessels.

His monthly "Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur" post for April 2017 — the books he read that month and feels he can recommend.

2017-04-30·bactra.org ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.