Currently reading The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan. I'm about 1/4 into it, and it's a great book so far: very well-researched and rich with history. I'm continuously getting distracted and having to put it down, which is frustrating, but it's a very readable book and isn't too hard to get back into after picking it up again with weeks in between.
A similar book I read a few years ago was From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman, which lays out the origins of the Israel-Palestine conflict. This book was very much a retrospective of Friedman's time in the region, however, which worked for and against it: while it's a great primer, I recall feeling the book lacked scope.
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