There are signs of spring in the air—a certain extra warmth coming from the sun, longer days, and we're going to roll the clocks forward shortly.

What are you reading to while away the first few days of spring? Share it here!

I'm currently reading "Guns, Germs, and Steel," by Jared Diamond.

It examines the historical factors that lead to a civilization's dominance over another; it attempts to provide an answer to the question of European dominance.

Diamond's central thesis is that over the long run, improved food production is the determining factor in cultural dominance. Improved food production lets a society accrue food surpluses, which can be used to employ specialists who don't need to generate their own food.

These can be professional soldiers who conquer land or elites who develop technologies. This leads to germs which develop from the increased population densities made possible with better food production. Expose those germs to indigenous peoples and...

I'll spare you further details, but suffice it to say that this book is pretty interesting.

I really enjoyed Guns, Germs and Steel a few years back, so I thought I’d pick up Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. It’ll contain bad news, I’m guessing, I haven't dug into it yet. Jared Diamond's great. I just saw him deliver a lecture on PBS a few months ago.

I just finished Freakonomics by Steven Levitt. It's quite interesting. Quite a few passages in it made me uncomfortable but it certainly shows that cause and effect are not always clear and that the actions we take can have a lot of unintended consequences. It gets a thumbs up, too.

I just finished reading You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers, finally, after falling in love with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius about 3 or 4 years ago.

I saw the documentary version of Guns, Germs and Steel on PBS. It made me add the book to my hold list at the library. Jared Diamond seems balanced, accessible, yet scholarly.

I just finished reading You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers, finally, after falling in love with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius about 3 or 4 years ago.

I haven't read any Eggers, but am familiar with McSweeney's and its focus on books made, crafted things themselves -- something thats lost on presses of large or moderate size.

I seem to remember a book they did where the author hand-illustrated the cover of each of the 10,000 copies of the book's first hardcover printing. That speaks volumes about how McSweney's is different I think.

Must get around to reading some Eggers, though.

"If on a winter's night a traveler" by Italo Calvino is such an amazingly wonderful book that I had to take a break from reading anything else for a while. But when I do otherwise read, which is often, I enjoy Jorge Luis Borges, J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, C.S. Lewis, Graham Greene, George Orwell and many others. I also read large books of theory and history for fun.