This is an intellectual history of western civilization that makes an excellent read. It's also an important book, and I don't use phrases like that lightly. It reminds me a lot of Burke, but Barzun is both more scholarly and more readable, no mean feat. Most of us don't use it, but there are many things we do that would be easier if we thought in terms of databases. There was a time when dBase II was one of the most popular PC programs around.
Access is a more powerful database that is greatly underused.
This book is a good introduction to how to make use of a tool most of us have and do nothing with. The movie of the month is Gladiator . The battle scenes are astonishing. It's accurate in that Aurelius was followed by his son Commodus, a petty tyrant assassinated by his own guards, but there I fear the real history ends. My friend Roland speculates that this is history as it ought to have been, and I tend to agree.