Author Robert Caro’s personal archives will go to the New York Historical Society. Caro is still writing the final volume of his Lyndon B. Johnson biography.
Time equals Truth: Robert Caro’s Archives
Tag: books
Massive and Free Archaeology Book on the Onondaga Iroquois
The New York State Museum has just published James W. Bradley’s new book, Onondaga and Empire; An Iroquoian People in an Imperial Era. The book is available to freely download from the museum. At over 800 pages, it is a truly massive work and focuses on the Onondaga Iroquois and their interactions with Europeans over a fifty-year time span (c. A.D. 1650-1701).
Link to download: Onondaga and Empire
Featured image: Figure 7.16. from Onondaga and Empire depicts shell pendants and effigy figures from Indian Hill.
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
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
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.
The Video Rental Store/Passenger Pigeon Connection
It’s just a passing simile, but reviewer Joe Hill compares video rental stores, ubiquitous just a decade or two ago, with passenger pigeon flocks in his review of the book Universal Harvester, a mystery of sorts by lead Mountain Goat John Darnielle.
Was the disappearance of video rental stores from the American landscape a sudden, overnight event, or were there clues that their demise was coming? That question played out on a smaller scale in the first episode of Starlee Kine’s first episode of the Mystery Show podcast, which itself now appears to be as extinct as the passenger pigeon. What is not extinct, however, is the video rental store. In fact, the largest video rental store is thriving, with 759 stores in the Midwestern U.S. and in Canada.
Select Archaeology Books Available for Free Download from Springer
Edit: Or not. Either it was a glitch on Springer’s part, or an extremely short term offer. The books no longer appear to be free. It was nice while it lasted.
Springer has made a big chunk of its catalog of archaeology and other scientific and technical books freely available for download. There are almost 400 archaeology and anthropology books available, including Dent’s Chesapeake Prehistory, Odell’s Lithic Analysis, most/all volumes of the Encyclopedia of Prehistory, and many more. Titles include underwater archaeology, geoarchaeology, historical archaeology, and biological anthropology. See the books at Springer.
Reading the Cowboy Way: Ranger Doug Finishes all 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Guitarist and lead yodelist Ranger Doug of the band Riders in the Sky just completed a five year odyssey reading all the books on the 1,001 Books you must read before you die list, according to an article in The Tennessean by Tony Gonzalez.
Why? “It’s just something you do on the road. You get in that bunk and you’ve got nothing to do until it’s your turn to drive.”
How does a cowboy round up all those books? He uses his local public library, scouts out used book stores, and occasionally resorts to using the internet.
Ranger Doug is both a reader and a writer, having authored several books including Singing in the Saddle: The History of the Singing Cowboy. Read the original article to see which books he recommends, and which he recommends you avoid.