title: Merge multiple dictionaries conditionally
body: <p>I have N dictionaries that contain the same keys, with values that are integers. I want to merge these into a single dictionary based on the maximum value. Currently I have something like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>max_dict = {}
  for dict in original_dict_list:
      for key, val in dict.iteritems():
          if key not in max_dict or max_dict[key] &lt; val:
              max_dict[key] = val
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there a better (or more "pythonic") way of doing this?</p>