Barbary Terrorists and other topics

I skimmed Joshua London's NRO piece on the Barbary Pirates in which he compared them to modern-day Islamic terrorists, but have put off a closer reading until sometime later. I've written about the Barbary Pirates--though in a different context--before (see "Christianity as a 'Founding Religion' Disavowed: What DID the 1796 Treaty with Tripoli Say (and when did it say it)?" so it's an area of History with which I'm somewhat familiar. However, London has taken it a step farther and, at the suggestion of The Remedy's Matthew Peterson, I suppose I'll have to dig deeper into the topic soon. So, I'll move it from the back- to the front-burner...but don't hold your breath.

Here's some other stuff that piqued my interest:

Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire.

Lawrence Goldstone's Dark Bargain: Slavery, Profits and the Struggle for the Constitution.

Matt Steinglass examines the "clear and hold" strategy and whether it links Vietnam and Iraq.

Andrew Busch's Reagan's Victory:The Presidential Election of 1980 and the Rise of the Right

Greg James Robinson has moved to Quebec and asks what it means to be an immigrant amongst francophones.