Currently, The Book Of The Sword by Richard Burton. No, not THAT Richard Burton.... This was written in 1873 and it's a treatise on the development and evolution of that weapon.
It is at the same time tedious and interesting. Written smack in the Victorian era, by an Englishman, it is typical of academic writing of the time. Whole passages of untranslated Latin and Greek (you were supposed to know this stuff!)....Constant references to "barbarians", "savages", and typical Victorian white-guy superiority.
Burton is aghast at the suggestion that the Chinese might have developed steel production on their own... Must have taken it from the Egyptians, of course. (He admires the Egyptians...)
All of that sort of thing.....You have to understand the times.
Also, he's just tedious. He spends the first chapter explaining how the ideas for human weapons were obtained by observing the animal kingdom. That's fine....I could have done that in a couple of paragraphs. But not Burton... He spends two chapters cataloging every single biting, smiting, stinging, slashing animal in the world that he knew about....
But.... Interesting nonetheless. He's on the development of metal working and the ancient methods of producing steel right now, and although many contemporary sources indicate the secrets of "Wootz" steel-making have been lost, Burton describes the process in some detail...
So far, not a word about an actual sword... But I think I'm getting close.