SeanF

There are lots of family trees, so a hard copy would be best.

It was quite dark for a childrens' book. The 1978 film was pretty frightening in places. Overall, I think it will stand the test of time as a childrens' classic.

I think I've just read the real life A Game of Thrones; the Romanovs by Simon Sebag Monetefiore. Ever yone of them prior to the accession of Catherine the Great, seems to have been a complete monster. Each one tried to outdo the other in their appetites for alcohol, sex, and cruelty. Tsar Alexei had thousands of Old Believers burned alive; Peter the Great enjoyed torturing people to death, including his own son; he even had one of his victims wrapped in thick furs against the cold, so that he wouldn't die too quickly when he was impaled up the rectum; Anna enjoyed getting dwarfs drunk and pelting them with food; she made one of her chief ministers her fool. He had to dress up as a chicken, and entertain the court for hours on end with his clucking and squawking; she forced him to marry a giantess, and spend his wedding night in a bed and house made entirely of ice. Elizaveta ripped out the tongues of two noblewomen who criticised her fashion sense. None of them was sober (at least when awake) and Russian courtly life was one long round of drunken parties, sex and torture. Under all this, the mass of the population lived in destitution, to which their rulers were completely indifferent. Naturally, this is all immense fun to read about, and I'd recommend the book to anybody. The most entertaining periods of history are those you would not want to live in.

Fools and Mortals which was published last year was a good story, and quite unlike anything else that Cornwell has written.

Where I'd take issue is that we leave in unusually troubled times. The times we live in are the norm, even in prosperous countries, What we did have was a generation between the late eighties and the Great Financial Crash (outside Yugoslavia and the Middle East) where one could say that history was coming to an end. Everyone was gradually embracing liberal capitalism and democracy. Go back a few years before that though, into the fifties, sixties, and seventies, and things were much more bitter and violent. There were coups in France, much of Europe was ruled by dictators, the US was in the throes of Vietnam and the Civil Rights conflict, terrorists like the IRA, ETA, OAS, Red Brigades etc. were very active in Western Europe, and many countries experienced high inflation and industrial conflict. And over all this, was the risk of nuclear annihilation,. All societies fail eventually, and perhaps Western democracy is about to fail, but we have pulled through harder times during the lives of many who can still remember them.

Tolkien avoided graphic accounts of violence and rape, but Middle Earth throughout its history is as cruel and depraved as our own world.

Like 2000, we may never know who actually won Florida.

Rather a delay in replying, but, I think a fourth Shattered Sea novel is an absolute necessity. I think Yarvi would have made himself hated as well as feared, across the Shattered Sea.

The Sharpe books are formulaic, but mostly very enjoyable. And, while plenty of authors can describe a battle well from the point of view ordinary soldier, Cornwell's the only writer I know who gives a really good overview of a battle. His factual account of Waterloo is outstanding, and very clear.

The good guys are quite capable of doing bad things. I think that's pretty plain from the histories of Gondor, Numenor, Rohan, elves and dwarves.

Thanks.. Do you have a link for Arizona.

Why?

I don't know if there are any statistics by race for the 1.4 m, but I should think that most would be blue collar white voters, albeit many are also black and Hispanic voters.

Turnout may not be high among ex-felons, and probably quite a few ex-felons like Trump.

Well, they're at war. In real life, humans have treated each other far more brutally than the treatment meted out to orcs in LOTR.