&quot;Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol&quot;, which I talked about in a thread recently: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10146846" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10146846</a><p>Before that, it was &quot;Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II&quot;. I decided to read it because I saw a kinda not great movie about the period immediately after surrender, and I realized it was something I knew almost nothing about. It&#x27;s good, but relatively academic; I cared about how the Japanese publishing industry and their literature changed over the time period, but not <i>that</i> much. It is worth it, though, as I knew very little about Japan in this period. Something that drives this home is that for Japan, &quot;the war&quot; for the Japanese people essentially lasted from 1931 (when Japan invaded Manchuria) to 1952 (when the US occupation of Japan ended) - I had never thought of it that way before.