Books off topic
I'm going to start recommending fiction books that are slightly off-topic for classes, but raise some of the issues that are brought up in my courses.
Today's suggestion is Iain M. Banks The Player of Games. Prof. CivPro's discussion today of how society has decided to put together a group of rules in order to allocate social burdens, and her discussion over the last week of the roles of the state, reminded me of Bank's view a world in which power is allocated on the basis of skill at a certain game of strategy. Indeed, the clash of two very different views of allocation of power, and the strategies of one view in dealing with the other, reminds me a lot of Civ Pro so far.