I had a very pleasant MLK day reading through “Untaming The Frontier in Anthropology, Archaeology, and History”:http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/books/bid1624.htm. The concept of ‘frontier’ is deep background for my own research, and I try to keep my hand in on the work done in this area. However, it has also been a while since I caught up on the topic, so this edited volume was a lot of fun for me — a lot of interesting papers from all over the place (from the Qing to the Inka) and a helpful bibliography as well as a lot of good contributors. I wasn’t aware of the work of editor “Lars Rodseth”:http://www.anthro.utah.edu/people/faculty/lars-rodseth.html but it looks quite good and now I am interested learning more about his work.

The other thing I like about this collection is the approach to social science that it espouses — each author combines a love of the details of their individual cases with an interest in comparison and generalization. Its sorta… Weberian in a pleasant sort of way. Anyway I had fun reading it so maybe you will too.