Here's the few that stood out from this year's reading pile, IMHO: Derek Howse - Greenwich Time. On why there was (is!) a need for GMT, how it evolved, how it

Here's the few that stood out from this year's reading pile, IMHO: Derek Howse - Greenwich Time. On why there was (is!) a need for GMT, how it evolved, how it was utilized - and how it was kept. Brilliant engineering porn for those of a horological bent. J.E. Gordon - Structures: Or why things don't fall down. Eminently readable on structural engineering, explaining concepts and methodology, delivered with the dry wit of a British don. Mary Elise Sarotte - Collapse. On how -hm- accidental the fall of the Berlin Wall was, telling the stories of a number of individuals who more or less inadvertently played a role in its downfall - from dissidents in Dresden to the Stasi head-of-station at the first border crossings to open as the crowds gathered. John Hackett - I was a stranger. Memoir of a British officer in hiding in occupied Netherlands after operation Market Garden, on the friendship he formed with the people who risked it all by hiding him and on the ways he found purpose to the long days spent doing essentially nothing.