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Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis9/26/2019
Image: A cover of the audiobook using one of Curtis’s spectacular photos.
Image: Salish Men Near Tipis (1903 Flathead Reservation, MT). Public domain.
Image: Acoma massacre. Original lithograph for report of J.W. Abert of "His Examination of New Mexico in the Years 1846-47" to the Secretary of War. Public domain.
Image: Havasu Falls near Supai, Arizona. The water is blue/green due to high concentrations of dissolved lime picked up as the water runs through the sedimentary rock of Havasu Canyon and the Grand Canyon. Permissions*: see (User:Moondigger)
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis Audible Audiobook – Unabridged, Timothy Egan (Author), David Drummond (Narrator), Dreamscape Media, LLC (Publisher) How a lone man's epic obsession led to one of America's greatest cultural treasures: Prize-winning writer Timothy Egan tells the riveting, cinematic story behind the most famous photographs in Native American history -- and the driven, brilliant man who made them. Edward Curtis was charismatic, handsome, a passionate mountaineer, and a famous photographer, the Annie Leibovitz of his time. He moved in rarefied circles, a friend to presidents, vaudeville stars, leading thinkers. And he was thirty-two years old in 1900 when he gave it all up to pursue his Great Idea: to capture on film the continent’s original inhabitants before the old ways disappeared. An Indiana Jones with a camera, Curtis spent the next three decades traveling from the Havasupai at the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the Acoma on a high mesa in New Mexico to the Salish in the rugged Northwest rain forest, documenting the stories and rituals of more than eighty tribes. It took tremendous perseverance - ten years alone to persuade the Hopi to allow him into their Snake Dance ceremony. And the undertaking changed him profoundly, from detached observer to outraged advocate. Eventually Curtis took more than 40,000 photographs, preserved 10,000 audio recordings, and is credited with making the first narrative documentary film. In the process, the charming rogue with the grade school education created the most definitive archive of the American Indian. His most powerful backer was Theodore Roosevelt, and his patron was J. P. Morgan. Despite the friends in high places, he was always broke and often disparaged as an upstart in pursuit of an impossible dream. He completed his masterwork in 1930, when he published the last of the twenty volumes. A nation in the grips of the Depression ignored it. But today rare Curtis photogravures bring high prices at auction, and he is hailed as a visionary. In the end he fulfilled his promise: He made the Indians live forever. . https://www.amazon.com/Short-Nights-Shadow-Catcher-Photographs/dp/B009NOT8XY/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1569037710&sr=1-1   AMAZON Every year a general meeting occurs for experts devoted to exploring the latest technological findings devoted to 'Mummies'. Its called 'The Mummy Congress'.
Heather Pringle is a journalist devoting her life to examining how technological achievements help advance our understanding of ancient civilizations. Her famous book, 'The Mummy Congress' was written to exemplify the achievements of those who devote their time and effort to reclaiming sound understanding of archaic civilizations. Amazon.com Review Mummies fascinate us. As we peer at their withered flesh, we are glimpsing a type of immortality. Heather Pringle tells the stories of some of these "frail elders"--and the scientists who study them--in The Mummy Congress.Pringle details the tension between the preservationists, who want to protect the ancient dead and refuse to unwrap them, and the dissectionists, who see mummies as a repository of scientific data waiting to be studied. She also introduces the reader to the preserved dead from around the world--from the bog bodies of northern Europe to the mysterious Caucasian-looking mummies from China's Tarim Basin, from Egyptians in linen shrouds to incorruptible Christian saints, and from Lenin in his Moscow mausoleum to Incan children found on Andean mountaintops. Peppered with fascinating snippets of information--for example, for centuries artists were sold on a pigment called "mummy," a transparent brown made from ground-up mummies--The Mummy Congress makes for lively, if somewhat ghoulish reading. Highly recommended. --Sunny Delaney From Publishers Weekly Pringle's mummy experts are livelier than a crypt full of stacked corpses. This is high praise given how successfully the author animates the dead in this delightfully macabre piece of mortuary globe-trotting. The trip begins at the World Congress on Mummy Studies, held last in arid Arica, Chile. Arica's climate makes it the ideal place to bring your mummy as eccentric scholars do, by the busload. From South America, Pringle, a frequent contributor to magazines like Discover and Islands, departs for the global ateliers of this weird profession, from the makeshift morgue of Art Aufderheide in Egypt, where plastic bags full of brittle corpses are piled by the dozens; to the Peruvian mountaintops, where an American adventurer's discovery of a beautiful Inca girl named "Juanita," an ancient and flawless sacrifice to the gods, ignites a media frenzy; to the subterranean caverns beneath Red Square, where a team of mausoleumists tended to Lenin's lifelike remains, and freelanced their skills out to fellow communists wanting to see their own dead leaders under glass. Pringle's gifts as a writer and a journalist are evident on every page. In brisk, vivid prose she delivers the secrets of the mummy trade: mummies as medicine; the self-preservation techniques of Japanese monks; and the Vatican's modern-day practitioners of the temple priest's art. Pringle's mummies and the men and women who love them make for fascinating and lively reading; this book is sure to have, as they say, a very long shelf life. Agent, Anne McDermida. (June)Forecast: A five-city author museum tour and undoubtedly many positive reviews will help the book reach its potentially wide audience, way beyond the usual gallery of science fans. http://heatherpringle.com http://amzn.com/0786884630 
AMAZON
AMAZON
CSI meets Jurassic Park in a fascinating, revelatory look at dinosaurs and their world through the million-year-old clues they left behind. What if we woke up one morning all of the dinosaur bones in the world were gone? How would we know these iconic animals had a 165-million year history on earth, and had adapted to all land-based environments from pole to pole? What clues would be left to discern not only their presence, but also to learn about their sex lives, raising of young, social lives, combat, and who ate who? What would it take for us to know how fast dinosaurs moved, whether they lived underground, climbed trees, or went for a swim? Welcome to the world of ichnology, the study of traces and trace fossils―such as tracks, trails, burrows, nests, toothmarks, and other vestiges of behavior―and how through these remarkable clues, we can explore and intuit the rich and complicated lives of dinosaurs. With a unique, detective-like approach, interpreting the forensic clues of these long-extinct animals that leave a much richer legacy than bones, Martin brings the wild world of the Mesozoic (Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous) to life for the twenty-first century reader. Sedimentation and Stratigraphy The Mesozoic Era- The Australian Museum Mesozoic Fossils 
   AMAZON  AMAZON Fredrick Catherwood's drawings/etchings (called lithographs) of lost Mayan Civilization is worthy of great study, his work is unmatched in detail and historical accuracy providing contemporary fields with unmatched recordings of indigenous archeological finds. Prior to discovering lost Mayan Civilization, Catherwood spent a decade traveling, drawing Egyptian, Greek, Ottoman civilization. Catherwood remains the only westerner to draw the 'Temple Mount' in Jerusalem providing us with rare details on ancient architecture. Only one artist remotely resembles the rigor of Catherwood, the famed Italian draftsman Piranesi.
When Catherwood broke open the discovery of Mayan Civilization, he touched a nerve in advocating that Central/South American Civilizations were indigenous and therefore unrelated to Near Eastern Civilizations. His work and genius would require others to ratify what he first saw and believed, namely that Mayan, Incan Civilizations were sui generis (latin for 'of its own kind' pronounced 'Sue-ee Gen-ER-Rus'). Landing in British Honduras in 1839 for a year of exploration, he pursued finding and marking lost Civilization's of the Americas. His first discovery was the ancient city of Copan in 1839, his lithographs of sacrificial altars, empty temples devoted to astronomy and calendric memory were the first known representations of the New World. His work was published in 1841 titled Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chipas and Yucatan. His work represents an original casting of groundbreaking archeological sites known as Copan, Palenque, Uxmal, Las Monjas, Chichen Itza and Tulum. He would die an unfortunate death aboard a steam vessel bound for New York from Liverpool, England after resuming life in San Francisco during the gold rush. Born in 1799, he was lost at sea in 1854. For Further Reading: Brief article detailing his travels throughout Central America http://www.ancient.eu/article/419/ All lithographs referenced here http://www.casa-catherwood.com His personal papers are located at the Pennsylvania State University & Stanford University Rare Manuscripts Division http://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/5713307 Originally reproduced digital copies of his first publications here http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015038660737;view=1up;seq=11 His best biographer is Victor W. von Hagen's publication F. Catherwood: Architect-Explorer of Two Worlds. 
On an Irish Island tells the remarkable story of a remote outpost nearly untouched by time in the first half of the twentieth century, and of the adventurous men and women who visited and were inspired by it.
In a love letter to a vanished way of life, Robert Kanigel brings to life this wildly beautiful island, notable for the vivid communal life of its residents and the unadulterated Irish they spoke well into the twentieth century. With the Irish language rapidly disappearing, Great Blasket became a magnet for scholars, linguists, and writers during the Gaelic renaissance. As we follow these visitors—among them John Millington Synge, author of The Playboy of the Western World—we are captivated both by the tiny group of islanders who kept an entire country’s past alive and by their complex relationships with those who brought the island’s story to the larger world. “Wonderfully vivid . . . A remote setting, a handful of young visitors, a collection of colorful locals, an ancient language and a story that spans half a century: These are but a few of the elements that make Robert Kanigel’s On an Irish Island an exuberant and delightful book. . . . It can be read as an erudite primer to the [literary] works of the islanders; as a beautifully assured ensemble biography; and as a large-scale portrait of a remarkable time in the history of the Great Blasket and the wider world. Yet it is, above all, a compelling tale of ordinary—and often enviable—lives in an extraordinary setting.” —Karin Altenberg, The Wall Street Journal “Deliciously hones in on the ‘singularly severe glory’ of the Blasket Islands off the west coast of county Kerry.”—Katharine Whittemore, The Boston Globe “Tells a fascinating piece of history . . . [Nowadays], what’s gone is the whole concept of village life, without television, iPads or Beyonce. There’s no point in posing questions about where such a life went, or whether we can get it back. But now, at least, we’ve got this lovely book.” —Carolyn See, The Washington Post “It is the interaction of the natives and the visitors that fascinates Kanigel, and he tells the story of the community’s last decades through the succession of visitors, beginning with the playwright John Millington Synge. . . Affection for the place and its culture is something Kanigel first admires and then comes to share, and he makes his reader envy those tough, resourceful islanders.” —Malcolm Jones, The Daily Beast “Kanigel avoids pushing any thesis about the advantages of premodern life, and instead points out the glories of the island and its inhabitants.” —Rachel Nolan, The San Francisco Chronicle “Robert Kanigel has written a tender paean to a lost world that called him out of his own time. On a bleak, treeless island, he unearths a buried linguistic treasure.” —Dava Sobel, author of Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter “A mesmerizing interplay of lives and socio-historical contexts . . . The portraits in this book are classic Kanigel: lively, sympathetic and thoroughly engaging. Yet what makes the narrative so affecting is the loss that permeates the text. As cultures like those on Great Blasket continue to be destroyed by the march of progress, so too are our connections to a simpler, more personally fulfilling way of living.” –Kirkus Reviews, (starred) “[An] impressively researched , greatly inviting history of the curious-minded men and women who, in the early twentieth century, came from mainland Ireland and elsewhere to reside on the Great Blasket for a while, to absorb the slower way of Irish customs before the advent of electricity and other aspects of fast-paced contemporary life.” —Brad Hooper, Booklist Review “Kanigel avoids pushing any thesis about the advantages of premodern life, and instead points out the glories of the island and its inhabitants.” —Rachel Nolan, The San Francisco Chronicle About the Author ROBERT KANIGEL is the author of six previous books. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Grady-Stack Award for science writing. His book The Man Who Knew Infinity was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Harvard Magazine, and Psychology Today. He has just retired as Professor of Science Writing at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and now lives in Baltimore. From The Washington Post “Tells a fascinating piece of history . . . [Nowadays], what’s gone is the whole concept of village life, without television, iPads or Beyonce. There’s no point in posing questions about where such a life went, or whether we can get it back. But now, at least, we’ve got this lovely book.” —Carolyn See, The Washington Post 
AMAZON
By the mid-1960s, Che Guevera had become famous for his outspoken criticism of the United States and his support for armed Communist insurgencies. He had been one of the architects of the Cuban Revolution, and was attempting to repeat his success throughout Latin America. His guerilla tactics and talent for proselytizing made him a threat to American foreign policy - and when he turned his attention to Bolivia in 1967, the Pentagon made a decision: Che had to be eliminated.
Major Ralph "Pappy" Shelton was called upon to lead the mission to train the Bolivians. With a hand-picked team of specialists, his first task was to transform a ragtag group of peasants into a trained fighting force who could also gather intelligence. Gary Prado, a Bolivian officer, volunteered to join the newly formed Bolivian Rangers. Joined by Felix Rodriguez, a Cuban exile working for the CIA, the Americans and Bolivians searched for Che. The size of Che's group and when they would strike were unknowns, and the stakes were high. If Bolivia fell, it would validate Che's theories and throw South America into turmoil. Hunting Che follows the exploits of Major Shelton, Felix Rodriguez, and Gary Prado - the Bolivian Ranger commander who ultimately captured him. The story begins with Che's arrival in Bolivia and follows the hunt to the dramatic confrontation and capture of the iconic leader in the southeastern village of La Higuera. With the White House and the Pentagon secretly monitoring every move, Shelton and his team changed history, and prevented a catastrophic threat from taking root in the West. The hunt for Ernesto “Che” Guevera was one of the first successful U.S. Special Forces missions in history. Using government reports and documents, as well as eyewitness accounts, Hunting Che tells the untold story of how the infamous revolutionary was captured—a mission later duplicated in Afghanistan and Iraq. WIKIPEDIA- CHE GUEVARA 
AMAZON
This groundbreaking book presents a new perspective on three of cosmology’s essential questions: What came before the Big Bang? What is the source of order in our universe? And what cosmic future awaits us?
Penrose shows how the expected fate of our ever-accelerating and expanding universe—heat death or ultimate entropy—can actually be reinterpreted as the conditions that will begin a new “Big Bang.” He details the basic principles beneath our universe, explaining various standard and non-standard cosmological models, the fundamental role of the cosmic microwave background, the paramount significance of black holes, and other basic building blocks of contemporary physics. Intellectually thrilling and widely accessible, Cycles of Time is a welcome new contribution to our understanding of the universe from one of our greatest mathematicians and thinkers.-AMAZON
Babylonian destruction found in the City of David. @elalusa Report w/Malcolm "Indiana" Hoenlein @conf_of_pres. @thadmccotter
During the excavations, concentrated on the eastern slope of the City of David (Jerusalem) structures dating back more than 2,600 years were unearthed after being delicately extricated from collapsed layers of stone, the authority said Wednesday. “Nestled within the collapse, many findings have surfaced, including: charred wood, grape seeds, pottery, fish scales and bones, and unique and rare artifacts,” it said in a statement. “These findings depict the affluence and character of Jerusalem, capital of the Judean Kingdom, and are mesmerizing proof of the city’s demise at the hands of the Babylonians.” Notable among the findings were dozens of storage jars, used to contain both grain and liquids, with stamped handles depicting the seal of a rosette. According to the excavation’s directors, Ortal Chalaf and Dr. Joe Uziel, the seals are characteristic of the end of the First Temple period and were used for the administrative system that developed toward the end of the Judean realm. “Classifying objects facilitated controlling, overseeing, collecting, marketing and storing crop yields,” the researchers said in a joint statement. “The rosette, in essence, replaced the ‘For the King’ seal used in the earlier administrative system,” they explained. “The wealth of the Judean Kingdom’s capital is also manifest in the ornamental artifacts surfacing in situ. One distinct and rare finding is a small ivory statue of a woman. The figure is naked, and her haircut, or wig, is Egyptian in style. The quality of its carving is high, and it attests to the high caliber of the artifact’s artistic level, and the skill par excellence of the artists during this era.” Chalaf and Uziel added that the excavation’s findings illustrate that Jerusalem had extended beyond the line of the city wall before its destruction. “The row of structures exposed in the excavations is located outside, beyond the city wall that would have constituted the eastern border of the city during this period,” they said. “Throughout the Iron Age, Jerusalem underwent constant growth, expressed both in the construction of numerous city walls, and the fact that the city later spread beyond them.” Moreover, they said excavations carried out in the past in the area of the Jewish Quarter have shown how the growth of the population at the end of the eighth century BCE led to the annexation of the western area of Jerusalem. “In the current excavation, we may suggest that following the westward expansion of the city, structures were built outside of the wall’s border on the east as well,” the researchers said. The excavation was funded by the Ir David Foundation (Elad). http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Evidence-of-Babylonian-destruction-of-Jerusalem-unearthed-in-City-of-David-500786   Topkapi Palace  Topkapi Palace is on the bottom of the map, on the green colored peninsula, where the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, and the Marmara Sea meet.  Established in 1478 the Topkapi (Gates of Cannon) Palace, was the political heart of the Ottoman empire until the building of the Dolmabahce Palace, also in Istanbul, in 1853. For nearly four centuries, the Ottoman sultans dwelt amid the secret splendors of Topkapi Palace. Access to the Grand Seraglio--which served as the empire's administrative, legislative, and judicial center and an academy of fine arts, as well as the ruler's home--was jealously guarded, even after the sultans ceased to reside there in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1936, a distinguished scholar of Orientalism, Norman Mosley Penzer (1892-1960), was afforded a rare opportunity to step inside the Grand Seraglio; in this eagerly embraced and much-consulted volume, he reveals what he found.
Constructed between 1459 and 1465 at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, Topkapi Palace stands in present-day Istanbul, near the confluence of the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, and the Marmara Sea. Penzer surveyed the entire palace from end to end during numerous visits over the course of two years, and he presents photographs and floor plans that provide a comprehensive view of Topkapi's structure. Penzer's illustrations of the opulent gardens, chambers, and pavilions come to imaginative life with his explorations of day-to-day palace life--particularly among the women of the harem and their eunuch guards. His evocative accounts of the manners, dress, and politics of Turkish court life continue to influence the scholarly work of the twenty-first century, and this classic history remains indispensable to studies of harem life. |
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