I'm currently working my way through The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans by Lawrence Powell, a history professor at Tulane. It's occasionally dry in its recounting of names, but the history of New Orleans as a city that kept itself as independent as possible from the various 17th and 18th century colonial powers is an interesting one. I'm almost up to the Louisiana Purchase.

On deck, I have Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War by Susan Southard, so I have a little mini theme of city-based historical books going on right now.

What are you reading?