Is this a great time to be alive, or what.......

So, I'm reading James Traub's John Quincy Adams, and a book published in 1768 is mentioned prominently.  Intrigued, the Leviathan Amazon was consulted.  Viola!  Not only was the book available, it was free to be downloaded on my Kindle.  I'm telling you, this stuff is magical.  Since the book only just arrived, the best I can do is quote you from the Preface:

     The study of profane history would little deserve to have a serious attention, and a considerable length of time bestowed upon it, if it were confined to the bare knowledge of ancient transactions, and an uninteresting inquiry into the aeras when each of them happened.  It little concerns us to know, that there were once men such as Alexander, Caesar, Aristides, or Cato, and that they lived in this or that period; and that the empire of the Assyrians made way for that of the Babylonians, and the latter fro the empire of the Medes and Persians, who were themselves subjected by the Macedonians, as these were afterwards by the Romans.

     But it highly concern us to know, by what methods those empires were founded; by what steps they rose to that exalted pitch of grandeur which we so much admire;  what it was that constituted their true glory and felicity; and what were the causes of their declension and fall.

     It is of no less importance to study attentively the manners of different nations;  their genius, laws, and customs;  and especially to acquaint ourselves with the character and disposition, the talents, virtues, and even vices of those by whom they were governed; and whose good or bad qualities contributed to the grandeur or decay of the states over which the presided.

-Charles Rollins,  The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians and Grecians

More to come..........................