Pop history indeed. I didn't quite throw it across the room, as I did with William Manchester's A World Lit Only by Fire--a stupid title for a book about the medieval Europe, since the entire world, not just Europe, was lit only by fire, up until Edison--except, you know, also by sunlight. I only skimmed the last few chapters. Unfortunately I bought two books by Norman Kantor. The other is a survey of antiquity, a period I'm not quite as attached to, so its unsupported conclusions, red herrings, and convenient glosses (meaing both elisions and definitions) might not piss me off as badly.
I had never read any Nancy Farmer before and picked her up only because she's won Newbery honors. I started with this because the other I borrowed, A Girl Named Disaster, looked more appealing (it starts out better than House starts, continues, or ends). House wasn't awful, but in the way of The Giver, I am too old. It might be a fine jumping-off point for kids to debate certain ideas, but it lacks cohesiveness for the adult reader.
I went along with opium and coca being grown in unsuitable climates; but it lost me when drug lords ruling a thin strip of country between post-Mexico and the U.S., farming narcotics and blocking illegal emigration, were granted their sovereignty in return for promising not to sell their crops to either country but only abroad.