Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbons. 2nd time through recently. Read it when I found out the founding fathers were obsessed with it while fighting the revolution. Even if Roman history is mostly fake, it’s sensational. 

Letters from Cortez. Correspondence from Cortez back to Spain during his expeditions in Mexico. Including a fun bit on Charles the 5th not understanding inflation when the gold market is flooded in Europe. 

My favorite two old books from last year. 

 Roman history is mostly fake? 

 Not sure. Seems credible that a lot of the Renaissance era manuscripts found that are the basis of everything we know outside of architecture were forgeries. There was a big market for Roman stuff, so a lot was faked. Many have subsequently been found out, including some of Gibbons sources. But there’s forgery questions even around things like Tacitus. 

 Wow. I’d never heard that though I’m not surprised. Seems like things have taken various forms of propaganda along the way. Victors and frauds write history - that’s why Bitcoin and nostr are so important