Latte, Life, and Lore

Most authors use dates, dynasties, and military campaigns to retell history. Gareth Harney used coins. Those round metal things that passed through countless hands while quietly carrying messages of power, legitimacy, and identity.

And in many ways, the book is genuinely enjoyable.

I enjoyed learning about the different coins minted across Rome’s long timeline, from its early foundations through successive emperors to the empire’s eventual collapse.

Gareth Harney is a confident storyteller, and his descriptions are vivid and easy to follow. The prose flows smoothly, making a sprawling subject feel approachable rather than overwhelming. Even without prior knowledge of numismatics, the book never feels exclusionary.

But they mind not feeling necessary. Imagine being surrounded by people and still feeling lonely!

So, I picked up Tribe because people had good things to say about it — the kind that clarified something they’d been feeling for a while. I was already thinking about community and belonging when I started reading, which made the book feel uncomfortably timely.

Junger opens with a deceptively simple idea:

Humans don’t mind hardship; what they mind is not feeling necessary.

Modern society, he argues, has become very good at making people feel unnecessary. We are safer, more independent, more materially secure, and increasingly disconnected.

War has a way of making us believe that cruelty evolves alongside technology. Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs by Adrienne Mayor quietly dismantles that illusion.

So I've been reading some really unusual stuff. By this book, I mean it's really unusual. The kind of weapons of mass destruction being used during ancient times made my eyebrows go up so high I thought I'd never be able to bring them back down.

According to Adrienne Mayor, ancient warfare was already inventive, pragmatic, and uncomfortably modern in spirit.

This is not a book about swords and shields. It’s about:

Flamethrowers powered by bellows

Ceramic bombs packed with burning pitch

Unmanned ships turned into floating fire weapons

Arrows dipped in venom

Food and drink were deliberately poisoned

Fear is used as a strategic tool. Ancient armies observed what terrified animals, what spread sickness, and what caused chaos, and they weaponised it. Even things like these:

Elephants terrified horses

Pigs terrified elephants

Beehives were dropped on enemies

Poisoned honey incapacitated soldiers long before anyone understood neurotoxins

The author's background as a folklorist shapes the book in noticeable ways. Mythology is treated not as fantasy to be dismissed, but as a possible echo of lived experience. Stories of poisoned arrows, plague-bearing objects, and divine punishment are examined as cultural memories that may have originated in real practices.

But here's where I get a little petty, if you don't mind. There is this phrase “in antiquity” that she uses so often throughout the book that it becomes distracting. It felt less like clarification and more like a habit I couldn’t unsee.

Still, the book succeeds where it matters most. It refuses to sanitise the past. It reminds us that ingenuity has always had a darker twin, and that war has never been bound by honour in the way we like to imagine.

I’m ending 2025 with Hero of Two Worlds by Mike Duncan, a book that found its way to me through a neat convergence of voices I trust.

It was first recommended by the YouTube book reviewer KistReads, whose enthusiasm for historical biographies has been a reliable green flag for me. Then two friends separately nudged me toward it, both saying some version of: “You can’t really talk about the American Revolution without Lafayette.” That was enough to seal the deal.

I've only just started reading the book but so far, this doesn’t read like a dry march through dates and declarations.

Duncan portrays Lafayette as a young idealist caught between ambition, principle, and history, which is moving faster than anyone can control. What’s immediately compelling is the in-between-ness of it all — nations in upheaval, identities still forming, loyalties tested long before they’re fully understood.

What’s immediately compelling is the in-between-ness of it all:

Nations in upheaval.

Identities still forming.

Loyalties are tested long before they’re fully understood.

This feels like a book about becoming, rather than arriving.

And that idea has been quietly echoing through my life this year. Healing hasn’t been a finish line so much as a practice. Learning hasn’t resolved itself into certainty. Friendships, too, have remained in motion: some forming gently, while others end not with drama but with clarity. There haven’t been many neat conclusions, only ongoing shifts.

Like history itself, I seem to be living in the middle of things — shaping meaning before I know how the story will eventually be told.

So, it’s fitting, somehow, to end the year with a book about someone standing between two worlds. Not just geographically, but morally and historically.

It’s not the woman-erasing disaster Goodreads made it out to be. Here are my thoughts about the book:

1. It’s not nearly as male-focused as people claimed.

Once you get past the introduction and into the chapters, Mortimer does talk about women quite a bit, actually. Clothing, laws, social expectations, health, hygiene, and personal conduct… all covered for both men and women.

A few examples:

Chapter 5 (on clothing) has pages devoted to what women should and shouldn’t wear — pages 128, 132, 138.

Chapter 6 touches on how women travelled in the 14th century (page 159).

Later chapters discuss medicine, cleanliness, religious roles, and legal rights for both genders. He even includes royal women when relevant.

2. But yes, Mortimer can be… long-winded.

At some point, I found myself thinking, “Sir, I didn’t ask for the entire inventory of a medieval butcher’s stall.” He listed everything. Gemstones, meat cuts, fabric types, market stalls! It’s like the medieval IKEA catalogue. Very detailed but also pretty exhausting.

3. Mortimer vs Goodman — the perspective gap is real.

Ruth Goodman has lived the Tudor life. She’s scrubbed the floors, worn the wool, cooked the meals, slept in the straw, and probably questioned her life choices while churning butter at 5 AM. So when she writes, she writes from inside the experience. Mortimer, meanwhile, has not:

not lived as a 14th-century traveller

not worn medieval fabric

not walked medieval roads on medieval horses

Hence, his writing combined evidence-backed statements with educated guesses. And he leaned into doom-and-gloom quite a fair bit — plagues, bad omens, discomfort, terrible food, worse hygiene. Overall, the vibe was: “Medieval England was amazing, if you ignore the part where you might die horribly.”

4. The last two chapters were a bit of a drag.

His wit becomes very dry, very sarcastic, and very “professor who’s been lecturing for two hours without water.” It's neither academic nor groundbreaking. But surprisingly enjoyable once you tune into Mortimer’s wavelength. I’m still glad I read it. It was fun if you treated it exactly as what it was meant to be — a detailed, slightly overexcited guidebook to a world none of us can visit. It was exciting while it lasted.