Hollandazed: Thoughts, Ideas, and Miscellany — China

When I was growing up, history was a list of wars. This was partly the fault of games. From an early age I played any game I could find and hunted for more. At yard sales I would rifle through stacks of Milton Bradley to dig up a tattered copy of Third Reich or Wooden Ships & Iron Men. These games shaped my understanding of history. At the school library I tended to ignore the books that didn’t concern armed conflict. History was a list of battles and all the rest was window dressing. Of course, this was also partly...