Category: books

The New Scout on the Old Scout Trail Guide

Volkswagen obtained the trademark to the International Scout name a few years ago and, on October 24, the new Scout Motors will officially reveal an all-electric Scout vehicle. In the meantime, they have been leaning into International Harvester Scout history on their website.

Witness their recent post on the 1979 International Scout Four-Wheel-Drive Trail Guide, a thick (224 pages!) combination atlas and collection of essays on 4×4 trails across America, including, based on the photo below, at least one in New Jersey that may no longer be off-road.

Source: Scoutmotors.com

Intro to Zooarchaeology and More Free Books

Publisher Springer has temporarily made hundreds of textbooks available to download for free during the coronavirus pandemic. For archaeologists, there’s Diane Gifford-Gonzalez’s ~600 page zooarchaeology book. A sample of other free books is below, and you can find all the rest at Springer. Thanks to @jriveraprince for pointing this out on Twitter.

An Introduction to Zooarchaeology

An Anthology of London in Literature, 1558-1914

ArcGIS for Environmental and Water Issues

Mass Spectrometry: A Textbook

Cosmology for the Curious

Writing for Publication: Transitions and Tools that Support Scholars’ Success

Social Media Management: Technologies and Strategies for Creating Business Value

Of Cigarettes, High Heels, and Other Interesting Things: An Introduction to Semiotics

Violet Strange and Phoebe Daring: Girl Detectives Before Nancy Drew

Stephanie Gorton Murphy writes about the girl detectives who predated Nancy Drew. Both Daring and the more conservatively named Mary Louise were created by L. Frank Baum. Violet Strange starred in a collection of short stories by Anna Katherine Green, who had earlier created the spinster detective Amelia Butterworth.

Frontispiece to The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange, 1915. Art by A.I. Keller.

Free Books from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology

Several archaeology books from the backlist at the Cotsen Institute at UCLA are available for free download:

An Archaeologist’s Guide to Chert and Flint – Luedtke 1992

The South American Camelids: An Expanded and Corrected Edition – Bonavio 2009

Maya Zooarchaeology: New Directions in Method and Theory – Emery 2004

A Conservation Manual for the Field Archaeologist – Sease 1994

About 20 more titles on Greek, Mesoamerican, and California archaeology are available from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press.

New Book Review: Giant Sloths and Sabertooth Cats: Extinct Mammals and the Archaeology of the Ice Age Great Basin by Donald K. Grayson

Book review of Donald K. Grayson’s Giant Sloths and Sabertooth Cats: Extinct Mammals and the Archaeology of the Ice Age Great Basin is now available here.