[zephyr]

1177 B.C., The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric H. Cline, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 2014. Revised edition 2021. An interesting read by a well-known archaeologist on the collapse of several key civilizations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Bronze Age. Illustrated with maps and drawings. I found it fascinating to read about globalism in cultures, communications, and politics from such a long time ago. Here’s a brief description from the Wikipedia article: The book focuses on Cline's hypothesis for the Late Bronze Age collapse of civilization, a transition period that affected the Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, Cypriots, Minoans, Mycenaeans, Assyrians and Babylonians; varied heterogeneous cultures populating eight powerful and flourishing states intermingling via trade, commerce, exchange and "cultural piggybacking," despite "all the difficulties of travel and time."[1] He presents evidence to support a "perfect storm" of "multiple interconnected failures," meaning that more than one natural and man-made cataclysm caused the disintegration and demise of an ancient civilization that incorporated "empires and globalized peoples."[1][2] This ended the Bronze Age, and ended the Mycenaean, Minoan, Trojan, Hittite, and Babylonian cultures.[2] Available from the Seattle Public Library. ~z

[GaliWalker]

[zephyr]

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen, Random House, 2017. A terrific read on what makes the U.S. so "exceptional" starting with the Pilgrims in Massachusetts and the Virginia colonists. The 500 years refers to 1517 when Martin Luther posted his 95 theses and sparked the Protestant Reformation and how the printing press quickly spread his ideas. Quote: "However, out of the new Protestant religion, a new proto-American attitude emerged during the 1500s. Millions of ordinary people decided that they, each of them, had the right to decide what was true or untrue, regardless of what fancy experts said." The author talks about the "fantasy industrial complex" and how that Americans have a weakness for fantasy. "Each of us is on a spectrum somewhere between the poles of rational and irrational." He covers our homegrown religious movements, spiritualism, medicine shows, P.T. Barnum, show business, reality tv, political movements, conspiracy theories, virtual reality, psychedelic drugs, and much more. There was so much material in here to contemplate that I read it twice. More information here at the author's website or Penguin/Random House page here. Kirkus review here. Available from the Seattle Public Library. ~z

[Bosterson]

I just finished "Lost in the Valley of Death" - about a wandering world traveler who went missing in the Indian Himalayas in 2016 after going on a trek with a sketchy local holy man. The Parvati valley apparently has a history of many, many foreigners going missing over the years, including quite a few who decided to renounce their old lives and live under the radar in India. It ended up being a very interesting story about "searching" - not just for the lost people (most of whom are not found) but about the people themselves searching for an experience or new life.

[Malachai Constant]

Just finished Utopia Avenue by David Michael author of Cloud Atlas (good book lousy film). About a fictional English rock group in the late 60’s good read a bit bizarre.

[zephyr]

Ancient Bones, Unearthing the Astonishing New Story of How We Became Human by Madelaine Böhme, Rüdiger Braun and Florian Breier, Greystone Books, Vancouver, Berkeley, 2020. Madelaine Böhme is a professor at the University of Tübingen and founding director of the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment. Braun and Breier are two journalists who helped her write this book on her work and discoveries which take us beyond Africa to earlier fossils in Europe and Asia. Great review here at Kirkus. Here's a CBC article with photos. This book is available at the Seattle Public Library. ~z p 263 Ideas in paleoanthropology that were considered irrefutable for a long time have recently been thrown into disarray and must now be recalibrated. Numerous new finds present puzzles that are difficult to fit into the overall picture. The boundaries between the individual human species are fluid and not always easy to define. Research cannot yet show a clear, conclusive line of descent from early hominins to us. Today, the path to becoming human since we split from chimpanzees looks less like a family tree and more like a braided river delta, where some channels take their own course only to reconnect later, while others become rivulets before, at some point, disappearing completely.

[Kim Brown]

[Malachai Constant]

If you have not you must read read Keith Richards book, a miracle the guy is even alive let alone coherent. Patty Smiths books are amazing also if you are interested in the New York 70’s early 80’s scene. Grace Slick has an interesting book also. Utopia Avenue is a novel typical of the author the group of course is fictional but many characters are not. If you are looking for history it is not your cup of meat. Of course fiction can often be more real than fact. Of course as they say about the 60’s if you can remember it you weren’t there.

[zephyr]

Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America, a Recent History by Kurt Andersen, Random House, New York, 2020. Here the author of Fantasyland takes us up until the first year of the pandemic. Lots to learn here about the 70s, 80s, 90s and how various persons and entities have influenced our policies and conditions today--the Reagan era, deregulation, the culture of greed, the politics of nostalgia, class war, the digital revolution, and more. Here's the author's page with some excerpts and a short audio. There's a Wikipedia page about the book and here's a Kirkus Review. Available from the Seattle Public Library. ~z

[zephyr]

The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone by Edward Dolnick, Scribner, New York, 2021. I saw this book at Elliott Bay Book Company a few weeks ago and then found it at the Seattle Public Library. This is the story of the finding of the Rosetta Stone by some of Napoleon's troops while invading Egypt in 1798-99 and it's journey eventually to the British Museum where it resides now. By this time Egyptian hieroglyphics were a lost language and had been for centuries. The stone carried three passages one in ancient Greek, another in Demotic (Egyptian), and then the one in hieroglyphs. Copies were made and shipped to various cities and scholars set out to decipher and break the code. The effort took decades. Two main decipherers were in a rivalry to accomplish this task, an Englishman Thomas Young and a Frenchman Jean-Francis Champollion. This well-researched book is that story. The writing does have its issues and bogs down from time to time. But it is fascinating history. A Kirkus Review here. Bookpage review here. ~z

[Waterman]

Gun Fight, Adam Winkler The battle over the right to bear arms in America. Discusses court cases and gun control laws throughout our nation's history. Should be required reading for any educated discussion of the issue.

[zephyr]

David Douglas, A Naturalist at Work by Jack Nisbet, Sasquatch Books, Seattle, 2012 This book makes a great gift for the naturalists in your circle. It's beautifully printed with many well-researched illustrations. Nice hardbound with great design. The author is a writer from Spokane so he has a bit of an Eastern Washington perspective. David Douglas was a Scottish naturalist who explored all over Washington state, Oregon, and British Columbia while they still were British territory in the early 19th century. He made several visits, sailing around the Cape Horn, heading north and then crossing the bar of the Columbia River to arrive at Fort Vancouver. He worked with trappers and other employees of the Hudson's Bay Company who were interested in scientific explorations of the Northwest Territories. He "discovered", collected, and named many plants on his travels. Many plants familiar to us were named after him, e.g. Pseudotsuga menziesii, known to us as Douglas Fir. Goodreads review here. Great article in the Oregon Historical Society site. If you're a native plant lover this book is for you. The author travels around in the northwest following in Douglas's steps (or canoe paddle strokes) when he can. He interacts with different folks including First Nations people, ranchers, and other naturalists to get a sense of how plant communities have survived, adapted, or struggled during our modern era of development. ~z

[mike]

Jack Nisbet has written several other books that I found interesting. There are more that I plan to read

[Kim Brown]

I have Ancient Places. Really nice essays; interesting stuff!

[zephyr]

Thanks! The cover art on that last one really draws you in. ~z