Came across some interesting books recently. They're outside my usual stream of reading, but they look interesting in different ways: The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness Naval Battles by Richard Russell Lawrence, For the End of Time: The Story of the Messiaen Quartet, by Rebecca Rischinand Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear by Jim Steinmeyer.

The first one is supposed to have lavish graphics on the most famous battles from Greek-Roman times on; the second is the story of the composition of a classical piece, one which was composed by a Frenchman in a German POW camp in 1941; the last purports to tell magicians secrets, and apparently discusses one famous trick performed by Houdini.