Planet Drum: A Celebration Of Percussion And Rhythm


Mickey Hart - 1991
    It is a stunning pictorial map of the World Beat and a dazzling companion to "Drumming at the Edge of Magic." The wisdom of thinkers such as Tsao-Tzu and Joseph Campbell mingle with the recorded thoughts of a Siberian villager and a Cheyenne shaman to provide a fascinating accompaniment.

A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek


Ari Kelman - 2013
    More than 150 Native Americans were slaughtered, the vast majority of them women, children, and the elderly, making it one of the most infamous cases of state-sponsored violence in U.S. history. "A Misplaced Massacre" examines the ways in which generations of Americans have struggled to come to terms with the meaning of both the attack and its aftermath, most publicly at the 2007 opening of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site.This site opened after a long and remarkably contentious planning process. Native Americans, Colorado ranchers, scholars, Park Service employees, and politicians alternately argued and allied with one another around the question of whether the nation s crimes, as well as its achievements, should be memorialized. Ari Kelman unearths the stories of those who lived through the atrocity, as well as those who grappled with its troubling legacy, to reveal how the intertwined histories of the conquest and colonization of the American West and the U.S. Civil War left enduring national scars.Combining painstaking research with storytelling worthy of a novel, "A Misplaced Massacre" probes the intersection of history and memory, laying bare the ways differing groups of Americans come to know a shared past."

Diné Bahane': The Navajo Creation Story


Paul G. Zolbrod - 1984
    Zolbrod's new translation renders the power and delicacy of the oral storytelling performance on the page through a poetic idiom appropriate to the Navajo oral tradition.Zolbrod's book offers the general reader a vivid introduction to Navajo culture. For students of literature this book proposes a new way of looking at our literary heritage.

The American College and University: A History


Frederick Rudolph - 1965
    Bridging the chasm between educational and social history, this book was one of the first to examine developments in higher education in the context of the social, economic, and political forces that were shaping the nation at large.Surveying higher education from the colonial era through the mid-twentieth century, Rudolph explores a multitude of issues from the financing of institutions and the development of curriculum to the education of women and blacks, the rise of college athletics, and the complexities of student life. In his foreword to this new edition, John Thelin assesses the impact that Rudolph's work has had on higher education studies. The new edition also includes a bibliographic essay by Thelin covering significant works in the field that have appeared since the publication of the first edition.At a time when our educational system as a whole is under intense scrutiny, Rudolph's seminal work offers an important historical perspective on the development of higher education in the United States.

Magicians of the Gods: The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization


Graham Hancock - 2015
    Twenty years on, Hancock returns with the sequel to his seminal work filled with completely new, scientific and archaeological evidence, which has only recently come to light...Near the end of the last Ice Age 12,800 years ago, a giant comet that had entered the solar system from deep space thousands of years earlier, broke into multiple fragments. Some of these struck the Earth causing a global cataclysm on a scale unseen since the extinction of the dinosaurs. At least eight of the fragments hit the North American ice cap, while further fragments hit the northern European ice cap. The impacts, from comet fragments a mile wide approaching at more than 60,000 miles an hour, generated huge amounts of heat which instantly liquidized millions of square kilometers of ice, destabilizing the Earth's crust and causing the global Deluge that is remembered in myths all around the world. A second series of impacts, equally devastating, causing further cataclysmic flooding, occurred 11,600 years ago, the exact date that Plato gives for the destruction and submergence of Atlantis.The evidence revealed in this book shows beyond reasonable doubt that an advanced civilization that flourished during the Ice Age was destroyed in the global cataclysms between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago. But there were survivors - known to later cultures by names such as 'the Sages', 'the Magicians', 'the Shining Ones', and 'the Mystery Teachers of Heaven'. They travelled the world in their great ships doing all in their power to keep the spark of civilization burning. They settled at key locations - Gobekli Tepe in Turkey, Baalbek in the Lebanon, Giza in Egypt, ancient Sumer, Mexico, Peru and across the Pacific where a huge pyramid has recently been discovered in Indonesia. Everywhere they went these 'Magicians of the Gods' brought with them the memory of a time when mankind had fallen out of harmony with the universe and paid a heavy price. A memory and a warning to the future...For the comet that wrought such destruction between 12,800 and 11,600 years may not be done with us yet. Astronomers believe that a 20-mile wide 'dark' fragment of the original giant comet remains hidden within its debris stream and threatens the Earth. An astronomical message encoded at Gobekli Tepe, and in the Sphinx and the pyramids of Egypt,warns that the 'Great Return' will occur in our time...

Art of the Andes: From Chavin to Inca


Rebecca R. Stone - 1995
    Their impressive cities, tall pyramids, shining goldwork, and intricate textiles constitute one of the greatest artistic traditions in history.For the second edition, Rebecca Stone-Miller has added new material covering the earliest mummification in the world at Chinchorros, wonderful new Moche murals and architectural reconstructions, the latest finds from the Chachapoyas culture, and a greater emphasis on shamanism. Throughout, Stone-Miller demonstrates how the Andean peoples adapted and refined their aesthetic response to an extremely inhospitable environment.

Brave Companions: Portraits in History


David McCullough - 1991
    Here are Alexander von Humboldt, whose epic explorations of South America surpassed the Lewis and Clark expedition; Harriet Beecher Stowe, “the little woman who made the big war”; Frederic Remington; the extraordinary Louis Agassiz of Harvard; Charles and Anne Lindbergh, and their fellow long-distance pilots Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and Beryl Markham; Harry Caudill, the Kentucky lawyer who awakened the nation to the tragedy of Appalachia; and David Plowden, a present-day photographer of vanishing America. Different as they are from each other, McCullough’s subjects have in common a rare vitality and sense of purpose. These are brave companions: to each other, to David McCullough, and to the reader, for with rare storytelling ability McCullough brings us into the times they knew and their very uncommon lives.

The Kings of Big Spring: God, Oil, and One Family's Search for the American Dream


Bryan Mealer - 2018
    But his luck soon runs out. Beset by drought, the family loses their farm just as the dead pastures around them give way to one of the biggest oil booms in American history. They eventually settle in the small town of Big Spring, where fast fortunes are being made from its own reserves of oil. For the next two generations, the Mealers live on the margins of poverty, laboring in the cotton fields and on the drilling rigs that sprout along the flatland, weathering dust and wind, booms and busts, and tragedies that scatter them like tumbleweed. After embracing Pentecostalism during the Great Depression, they rely heavily on their faith to steel them against hardship and despair. But for young Bobby Mealer, the author’s father, religion is only an agent for rebellion.In the winter of 1981, when the author is seven years old, Bobby receives a call from an old friend with a simple question, “How'd you like to be a millionaire?”Twenty-six, and with a wife and three kids, Bobby had left his hometown to seek a life removed from the blowing dust and oil fields, and to find spiritual peace. But now Big Spring’s streets are flooded again with roughnecks, money, and sin. Boom chasers pour in from the busted factory towns in the north. Drilling rigs rise like timber along the pastures, and poor men become millionaires overnight.Grady Cunningham, Bobby's friend, is one of the newly-minted kings of Big Spring. Loud and flamboyant, with a penchant for floor-length fur coats, Grady pulls Bobby and his young wife into his glamorous orbit. While drilling wells for Grady's oil company, they fly around on private jets and embrace the honky-tonk high life of Texas oilmen. But beneath the Rolexes and Rolls Royce cars is a reality as dark as the crude itself. As Bobby soon discovers, his return to Big Spring is a backslider’s journey into a spiritual wilderness, and one that could cost him his life.A masterwork of memoir and narrative history, The Kings of Big Spring is an indelible portrait of fortune and ruin as big as Texas itself. And in telling the story of four generations of his family, Mealer also tells the story of America came to be.

Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia


Stephen Oppenheimer - 1998
    At the end of the Ice Age, Southeast Asia formed a continent twice the size of India, which included Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Borneo. In Eden in the East, Stephen Oppenheimer puts forward the astonishing argument that here in southeast Asia—rather than in Mesopotamia where it is usually placed—was the lost civilization that fertilized the Great cultures of the Middle East 6,000 years ago. He produces evidence from ethnography, archaeology, oceanography, creation stories, myths, linguistics, and DNA analysis to argue that this founding civilization was destroyed by a catastrophic flood, caused by a rapid rise in the sea level at the end of the last ice age.

This Land Was Theirs: A Study of Native North Americans


Wendell H. Oswalt - 1966
    Ranging from the Netsilik hunters who straddle the Arctic Circle to the Natchez farmers of the lower Mississippi River area, the tribes represent each culture area and various levels of socioeconomic complexity among Native Americans. Each chapter focuses on a specific group and culture area, providing students with a detailed portrait of the geographical and cultural adaptations of that region.As he has done for previous editions, author Wendell H. Oswalt has visited virtually all of the extant groups discussed in the text to ensure an accurate and complete picture of the contemporary situation. Updates and major changes featured in this edition include:* A new chapter on the Western Shoshone--a Great Basin tribe centered in Nevada--including a discussion of the 2004 partial resolution of their long-standing major land claim against the federal government * A description of how in recent years some Pentecostal church congregations among the Crow and Tlingit have rejected their Indian backgrounds * A discussion of how the discovery of vast diamond deposits in northern Canada may dramatically change the lifeway of some Chipewyan and the Netsilik * Coverage of timely issues for Native Americans, including the management of individual trust accounts by the Bureau of Indian Affairs; the disposition of Kennewick Man; and the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Lara case in 2004, which centered on an aspect of Indian sovereignty * A more detailed examination of Indian casinos, including typical non-Indian reactions to themThis Land Was Theirs, Eighth Edition, incorporates more than 150 photographs and illustrations, and each chapter-opening offers pertinent text about the subject matter covered in that chapter. Abundant pedagogical aids include maps of each region discussed, a glossary, a pronunciation guide, and two appendixes: a guide to the various artifact types discussed in the text and an extensive list of additional resources for learning about Native Americans.

Native North American Art


Janet Catherine Berlo - 1998
    The richness of Native American artis emphasized through discussions of basketry, wood and rock carvings, dance masks, and beadwork, alongside the contemporary vitality of paintings and installations by modern artists such as Robert Davidson, Emmi Whitehorse, and Alex Janvier. Authors Berlo and Philips fully incorporate substantivenew research and scholarship, and examine such issues as gender, representation, the colonial encounter, and contemporary arts. By encompassing both the sacred and secular, political and domestic, the ceremonial and commercial, Native North American Art shows the importance of the visual arts inmaintaining the integrity of spiritual, social, political, and economic systems within Native North American societies.

Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide


Amanda Claridge - 1998
    This text consists of an illustrated guide to all the major sites in twelve main areas in central Rome, and four in Greater Rome, including the Capitoline Hill, Roman Forum, Colosseum, Mausoleums of Augustus and Hadrian, the Circus Maximus, Catacombs, Ostia, and Tivoli.

How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A Step-by-Step Guide to Teach Yourself


Mark Collier - 1998
    When standing before an ancient tablet in a museum or visiting an Egyptian monument, we marvel at this unique writing and puzzle over its meaning. Now, with the help of Egyptologists Mark Collier and Bill Manley, museum-goers, tourists, and armchair travelers alike can gain a basic knowledge of the language and culture of ancient Egypt. Collier and Manley's novel approach is informed by years of experience teaching Egyptian hieroglyphs to non-specialists. Using attractive drawings of actual inscriptions displayed in the British Museum, they concentrate on the kind of hieroglyphs readers might encounter in other collections, especially funerary writings and tomb scenes. Each chapter introduces a new aspect of hieroglyphic script or Middle Egyptian grammar and encourages acquisition of reading skills with practical exercises. The texts offer insights into the daily experiences of their ancient authors and touch on topics ranging from pharaonic administration to family life to the Egyptian way of death. With this book as a guide, one can enjoy a whole new experience in understanding Egyptian art and artifacts around the world.

The Native People of Alaska: Traditional Living in a Northern Land


Steve J. Langdon - 1987
    Completely revised for 2002.

Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art


Rebecca Wragg Sykes - 2020
    She reveals them to be curious, clever connoisseurs of their world, technologically inventive and ecologically adaptable. Above all, they were successful survivors for more than 300,000 years, during times of massive climatic upheaval.At a time when our species has never faced greater threats, we’re obsessed with what makes us special. But, much of what defines us was also in Neanderthals, and their DNA is still inside us. Planning, co-operation, altruism, craftsmanship, aesthetic sense, imagination... perhaps even a desire for transcendence beyond mortality.It is only by understanding them, that we can truly understand ourselves.