Reprise: Late Night Reading (a.k.a. Nostalgia for Roy Macridis)

Your late night reading shouldn't be a thriller. After all, you want to fall asleep. It shouldn't be any book that you cannot put down. Whenever I see a book reviewer announce "This book kept me up until two in the morning," I think, "Do I really want
that book?"

I have to confess, however, that the only book that invariably put me to sleep - and I mean within ten minutes - was Roy Macridis's book on comparative government. When I was a young and alert student of government at the University of Arizona, I had to take a comparative government class. The class was challenging and interesting but packed with little drills such as comparing the Swiss government to that of the Italians or the Chinese. For some arcane reason, the Macridis book was part of the required reading. Regardless of the time of day, it was the equivalent of chugging a gallon of ZQuil.

Now, of course, there are nights when I regret having given it away.