This is getting hard to read.

The book starts off with this quote: ““History which does not inform present-day concerns amounts to little more than self-indulgent antiquarianism”

Of course, what this really means is that the author is going to use his vanity pop history book to rant about something he doesn’t like from modern times.

It starts with a whole thing about Saddam Hussein. It chills out, spends many chapters actually being useful and informative about day-to-day life and mythology. Now he’s driving hard that Uruk 3 was like the Soviet Union and comparing ziggurats to some skyscrapers Stalin built after the war. Let’s see if I can squeeze a little more useful info out of this before I give up…