Book picks similar to
After Modernity: Archaeological Approaches to the Contemporary Past by Rodney Harrison
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archaeology
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Close Encounters with Humankind: A Paleoanthropologist Investigates Our Evolving Species
Sang-Hee Lee - 2018
Through a series of entertaining, bite-sized chapters that combine anthropological insight with cutting-edge science, we gain fresh perspectives into our first hominin ancestors and ways to challenge perceptions about the traditional progression of evolution. With Lee as our guide, we discover that we indeed have always been a species of continuous change.
DEEP: The Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow
Porter Fox - 2013
It covers a sport that has inspired millions and the mountains and snowfall that make it possible. It is not a tale of the end. It is a beginning - a reminder of how dynamic and fulfilling the skiing life is. And a wake-up call regarding what needs to be done to save it. The narrative follows the unlikely rise of skiing from prehistoric Norwegian hunters to nobility in the Alps in the 1800s to present-day freeriders on the vaunted slopes of the Rocky Mountains. On his global tour of the most celebrated peaks in the Northern Hemisphere, from Washington’s Cascade Range to Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, Fox talks to alpinists about the allure and mysticism of the sport and to scientists about climate change and its effect on snow—ultimately finding a story that is far larger than the impending demise of skiing.For the seven million skiers in America who dedicate their winters to tracking storms and waking up at dawn to catch the first chairlift, the lifestyle change will be radical. It will likely be far worse for the rest of the world. Fox uses primary evidence and interviews, mixed with groundbreaking scientific studies, to explain exactly how and when the Great Melt will play out, the vital importance snow and ice have to Earth's climate system and the tremendous groundswell that is rising up to fight climate change. DEEP goes on to map a way to mitigate global warming, reduce human impact on our planet and repair the water cycle. As it turns out, the efforts to save snow and ice might end up saving the world."
The Templar Mission to Oak Island and Beyond: Search for Ancient Secrets: The Shocking Revelations of a 12th Century Manuscript
Zena Halpern - 2017
Two of history’s great mysteries—the fate of the Knights Templar and the truth about the Oak Island treasure—reveal themselves in this fascinating saga of hidden history. "The book we've all been waiting for!" says Rick Lagina, star of History Channel's Curse of Oak Island.
Somebody Told Me: The Newspaper Stories of Rick Bragg
Rick Bragg - 2000
In Somebody Told Me, he offers the best of his work as a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist writing the remarkable stories of others.For twenty years, Bragg has focused his efforts on the common man. So while some of these stories are about people whose names we know-such as Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother who drowned her two sons-most are people whose names we've never heard, people who have survived tornadoes and swamps, racism and bombs. In incisive, unadorned prose that is nonetheless strikingly beautiful, these pieces rise above journalism to become literature and show the triumph of the human spirit.
The Ascent of Man
Jacob Bronowski - 1973
Bronowski's exciting, illustrated investigation offers a perspective not just on science, but on civilization itself. Lower than the angelsForewordThe harvest of the seasons The grain in the stoneThe hidden structure The music of the spheresThe starry messanger The majestic clockworkThe drive for power The ladder of creation World within world Knowledge or certainty Generation upon generationThe long childhoodBibliographyIndex
Submerged: Adventures of America's Most Elite Underwater Archeology Team
Daniel Lenihan - 2002
Adventure nonfiction at its best by the co-author, with Gene Hackman, of Wake of the Perdido Star.Submerged is Daniel Lenihan's remarkable story of 25 years as founder and head of the Submerged Cultural Resource Unit (SCRU)—ranging from ancient ruins covered by reservoirs in the desert Southwest to a World War II submarine off the Alaskan coast; from the Isle Royale shipwrecks in the frigid Lake Superior to the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor; from the HL Hunley, the first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship, in Charleston Harbor to the ships sunk by atomic bombs at Bikini Atoll, and much more.
Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times
Eyal Press - 2012
In the Balkans half a century later, a Serb from the war-blasted city of Vukovar defies his superiors in order to save the lives of Croats. At the height of the Second Intifada, a member of Israel's most elite military unit informs his commander he doesn't want to serve in the occupied territories.Fifty years after Hannah Arendt examined the dynamics of conformity in her seminal account of the Eichmann trial, Beautiful Souls explores the flipside of the banality of evil, mapping out what impels ordinary people to defy the sway of authority and convention. Through the dramatic stories of unlikely resisters who feel the flicker of conscience when thrust into morally compromising situations, Eyal Press shows that the boldest acts of dissent are often carried out not by radicals seeking to overthrow the system but by true believers who cling with unusual fierceness to their convictions. Drawing on groundbreaking research by moral psychologists and neuroscientists, Beautiful Souls culminates with the story of a financial industry whistleblower who loses her job after refusing to sell a toxic product she rightly suspects is being misleadingly advertised. At a time of economic calamity and political unrest, this deeply reported work of narrative journalism examines the choices and dilemmas we all face when our principles collide with the loyalties we harbor and the duties we are expected to fulfill.
Death in Glacier National Park: Stories of Accidents and Foolhardiness in the Crown of the Continent
Randi Minetor - 2016
Glacier National Park's death records date back to January 1913, when a man froze to death while snowshoeing between Cut Bank and St. Mary. All told, 260 people have died or are presumed to have died in the park during the first hundred years of its existence. One man fell into a crevasse on East Gunsight Peak while skiing its steep north face, and another died while moonlight biking on the Sun Road. A man left his wife and five children at the Apgar picnic area and disappeared on Lake McDonald. His boat was found halfway up the west shore wedged between rocks with the propeller stuck in gravel. Collected here are some the most gripping accounts in park history of these unfortunate events caused by natural forces or human folly.
Called to Coach: The Life, Faith and Career of College Football's Most Popular Coach
Bobby Bowden - 2010
With his recent retirement, Bowden is ready to give fans and readers the behind-the-scenes story of his 55-year career and the path that helped him become one of college football's most successful coaches and patriarch of the sport's most famous coaching family. In this book, Bowden will reveal never-before-published details of the moments and events that have defined his life, including: * The tragic death of his grandson and son-in-law in a 2004 automobile accident.* The details of his retirement as FSU's coach at the end of the 2009 season.
The Man in the Ice: The Discovery of a 5000-year-old Body Reveals the Secrets of the Stone Age
Konrad Spindler - 1993
A classic of scientific discovery that reveals to us the fullest picture yet of Neolithic man, our ancestor.
Lost City of the Incas
Hiram Bingham - 1948
With a combination of doggedness and good fortune he stumbled on the perfectly preserved ruins of Machu Picchu perched on a cloud-capped ledge 2000 feet above the torrent of the Urubamba River. The buildings were of white granite, exquisitely carved blocks each higher than a man. Bingham had not, as it turned out, found Vilcabamba, but he had nevertheless made an astonishing and memorable discovery, which he describes in his bestselling book LOST CITY OF THE INCAS.
The Incas and their Ancestors: The Archaeology of Peru
Michael E. Moseley - 1992
Described as a "masterly study" and an "outstanding volume" on its first publication, The Incas and Their Ancestors quickly established itself as the best general introduction to the cultures and civilizations of ancient Peru.Now this classic text has been fully updated for the revised edition. New discoveries over the last decade are integrated throughout. The occupation of Peru's desert coast can now be traced back to 12,000 BC and ensuing maritime adaptations are examined in early littoral societies that mummified their dead and others that were mound builders. The spread of Andean agriculture is related to fresh data on climate, and protracted drought is identified as a recurrent contributor to the rise and fall of civilizations in the Cordillera. The results of recent excavations enliven understanding of coastal Moche and Nazca societies and the ancient highland states of Huari and Tiwanaku. Architectural models accompanying burials provide fresh interpretations of the palaces of imperial Chan Chan, while the origins of the Incas are given new clarity by a spate of modern research on America's largest native empire.
The Old Straight Track
Alfred Watkins - 1925
His investigation convinced him that Britain was covered with a vast network of straight tracks, aligned with either the sun or the path of a star.Although traces of this network can be found all over the country, the principles behind the ley system remain a mystery. Are they the legacy of a prehistoric scientific knowledge which is now all but lost? And was their purpose secular or religious?
A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters
Henry Gee - 2021
Gee’s grand tour enthusiastically details the narrative underlying life’s erratic and often whimsical exploration of biological form and function.” —Adrian Woolfson, The Washington PostIn the tradition of Richard Dawkins, Bill Bryson, and Simon Winchester—An entertaining and uniquely informed narration of Life's life story.In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place—in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in rocks, where boiling hot jets of mineral-rich water gushed out from cracks in the ocean floor.Although these membranes were leaky, the environment within them became different from the raging maelstrom beyond. These havens of order slowly refined the generation of energy, using it to form membrane-bound bubbles that were mostly-faithful copies of their parents—a foamy lather of soap-bubble cells standing as tiny clenched fists, defiant against the lifeless world. Life on this planet has continued in much the same way for millennia, adapting to literally every conceivable setback that living organisms could encounter and thriving, from these humblest beginnings to the thrilling and unlikely story of ourselves.In A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, Henry Gee zips through the last 4.6 billion years with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual rigor. Drawing on the very latest scientific understanding and writing in a clear, accessible style, he tells an enlightening tale of survival and persistence that illuminates the delicate balance within which life has always existed.
Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger
Fintan O'Toole - 2009
The success story was phenomenal: a doubling of the workforce; a massive growth in exports; a GDP that was substantially above the EU average. Ireland became the world's largest exporter of software and manufactured the world's supply of Viagra.The factors that made it possible for Ireland to become prosperous - progressive social change, solidarity, major State investment in education, and the critical role of the EU - were largely ignored as too sharply at odds with the dominant free market ideology. The Irish boom was shaped instead into a simplistic moral tale of the little country that discovered low taxes and small government and prospered as a result.There were two big problems. Ireland acquired a hyper-capitalist economy on the back of a corrupt, dysfunctional political system. And the business class saw the influx of wealth as an opportunity to make money out of property. Aided by corrupt planning and funded by poorly regulated banks, an unsustainable property-led boom gradually consumed the Celtic Tiger. This is, as Fintan O'Toole writes, 'a good old-fashioned jeremiad about the bastards who got us into this mess'. It is an entertaining, passionate story of one of the most ignominious economic reversals in recent history.