I FINISHED NEAL STEPHENSON’S THE CONFUSION the other night. I liked it a lot, and my reactions were very similar to Eugene Volokh’s, though I liked its predecessor volume, Quicksilver, more than Eugene did. You can see a lot of narrative threads being pulled together, not only from Quicksilver, but from Cryptonomicon. I very much look forward to the next volume, The System of the World, which I’ve already pre-ordered from Amazon.