"The Assassination of Julius Caesar" by Michael Parenti was quite good. I liked the point he kept reiterating that we cannot judge historical characters on today's standards and morals. I like that in a history book. I like the facts told, plain and simple. I can interpret for myself, thank you. I am always leery of judging people from eras long ago (except Henry VIII. The man was a tyrant). Who knows? In a hundred years, blogging about the books you enjoy reading might be socially unacceptable behavior. :-0
"Not the Girl Next Door" by Charlotte Chandler examined the life of Joan Crawford. It wasn't as good as I'd hoped. Chandler used a strange, first person style to tell Crawford's story, and didn't really flesh it out. Apparently she interviewed Crawford before she died (over 30 years ago--Jesus, what took you so long?) as well as people who knew her, and just slapped the interviews together verbatim without exercising any editing control. As you know, older people (as most of the people she interviewed were) tend to ramble off topic, and Chandler saw no need to correct this. Too bad, because it could have been an interesting book.
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