I read this in college, with a fantastic professor (RIP) who also assigned Huizinga's "Homo Ludens." I loved it ...if only the rest of academic history was so free-thinking and human-centric, I might have stayed.

"Night Battles" is amazing too. And the fact that some of the scholarship in both books is contested adds to the interest - he really rattled some cages and wasn't afraid to take an idea and run with it.