Raiding versus Archeology

 Ricca, Brad.  True Raiders: The Untold Story of the 1909 Expedition to Find the Legendary Ark

         of the Covenant.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 2021.

 

These days, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is what springs first to mind when people think about the Ark of the Covenant.  But the story of the Ark of the Covenant begins long before 1981.  It goes back into ancient history, recorded in the Pentateuch, specifically Exodus.  The Ark disappears from the record during the time of kings of Judah and no one knows where it is located now.  Many folks have searched for the Ark, True Raiders is the tale of one of those searches.

While True Raiders focuses on the 1909-1911 Parker Expedition to Jerusalem, Brad Ricca includes bits of the the Charles Warren exploration conducted in 1867 and Jacob Vester's discovery in 1880.  In 1908, a Syndicate of British and Swedish businessmen was formed for the purpose of finding the Ark of the Covenant based on a cipher constructed by Valter Juvelius, a Finnish scholar and surveyor.  Monty Parker, a hero in the Second Boer War, was appointed the head of the expedition.  He recruited among others, Cyril Foley, a famous cricketer and a member of the Jameson Raid during the First Boer War.  The Expedition sailed to Palestine in a private yacht, obtained the required permits from the Turkish authorities and commenced digging in the tunnels.  They spent the summer of 1909, the summer and winter of 1910 digging before they were required to leave in 1911 due to rumors that they had infiltrated the Dome of the Rock and dug there.  They managed to clear out the tunnels that connect the Pool of Siloam, but they did not find the Ark.  What they might have found is still a question that was not really answered even when Monty Parkers's private papers were located.

Brad Ricca has written an old-fashioned history for the general public.  True Raiders provides plenty of adventure, intrigue, and twists for the reader to enjoy.  But the multitude of of viewpoints and time shifts can be off-putting to the reader while the first-person narrative seems more suitable for fiction than a history.  Thankfully, Ricca does provide sources for the reader to explore.  If the reader is looking for a quick moving archeological adventure, picking up and perusing True Raiders would be rewarding.

A Revisionist view of the Middle Ages

Gabriele, Matthew, and David M. Perry.  The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe.  

         New York: Harper, 2021.

 

 

The Dark Ages or the Middle Ages - terms which are often used to describe the time period between the "fall of Rome" and the flowering of the the Renaissance.  However,Gabriele and Perry argue in The Bright Ages that rather being a period of stagnation, dirt, and destruction, medieval Europe was a continuation of the past.  Their book provides a shifted perspective that seeks to shed light on forgotten and overlooked history.

 

In this revisionist survey of medieval Europe and its broader world, Gabriele and Perry opens The Bright Ages in the chapel of Galla Placida in Ravenna in 430CE with an examination of the ceiling filled with stars against a bright blue background.  The role of Galla Placida is explored as is the concept of Rome and empire.  The interaction of Islam and Europe is explored starting in Jerusalem, later in Egypt and Spain.  The role of the Church comes into focus both in Rome with Gregory the Great, but also in a field in Britain where a stone cross stands in Ruthwell (Scotland).  The spread of trade include the story of Charlemagne's elephant Abul-Abass who traveled from Africa to Baghdad to North Africa to finally arrive at Aachen..  Vikings play their part in the narrative of trade and cultural interaction as do the Crusades against Muslims and heretics in Europe.  Both piety, learning and intolerance, not to mention plague are all part of the tapestry of medieval Europe.  Gabriele and Perry end their survey back in Ravenna with an exiled Dante having his revenge in The Divine Comedy.

Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry have taken a different slant on the history of medieval Europe starting with the premise that Rome never fell.  How well they succeed depends upon who much of their evidence the reader accepts.  Take a chance and read The Bright Ages and see old events in a new light.

The Whatchamacallit at the Back of the Book!

 Duncan, Dennis.  Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the

          Digital Age.  New York: W. W. Norton, 2022.

Books, specifically non-fiction books,  are composed of many parts.  There is the cover, the table of contents, maybe a forward or introduction, the main body of the text, the notes or references, maybe additional sources and then, finally, the index.  The last item, the Index is what Dennis Duncan is specifically interested in.  

 

An index plays a critical part in the book when properly done by letting the reader easily find a name, an event, or a piece of information quickly without having to reread the whole book.  Dennis Duncan opens his history with a J. G. Ballard short story entitled "The Index" which supposedly is the only remaining part of an autobiography.  It tells a story using keywords, subheadings, and page numbers to let the reader piece together the tale.This opening leads into the importance of alphabetization of the index.  Duncan then jumps to the origin of the index which came about with the rise of universities and mendicant orders of preachers and their desire to access their material easily.  And the index came in two flavors - concordance versus subject/word versus concept.  But to be truly useful, the index needs page numbers and there is a nicely done chapter on how that relationship developed.  The growth of indexing created an argument among scholars regarding what is more important - the text or the map of the text, i.e. the index.  People came to blows over this.  Not to mention that you need to be very careful who you let index your book since political disputes, not to mention scholarly  arguments have been carried out in the indexes of various volumes (Swift and Macaulay are among the luminaries mentioned in this chapter).  Then there is the crazy case of fiction with indexes which leads into a discussion on indexes for periodicals.  Print indexes lead to search engines which can act as a universal index except that not everything is digitized yet.  Also, what do you do when the electric is out?  You can always pull up your printed book and indulge yourself. 

If you are interested in the format and composition of books rather than just the contents of books, read Index, A History of the and enjoy the adventure!

POW or Terrorflieger?

Clavin, Tom.  Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival.  New York: St. Matin's Press, 

          2021.  ISBN: 9781250151261

Are you interested in WWII aerial exploits?  What about escaping pilots in the French countryside?  Nasty Nazis?  Survival by the skin of your teeth?  Well, then join Tom Clavin as he lays out the tale of Joe Moser, Lightning pilot on his 44th mission that went very wrong and what happened after.

Joe Moser grew up in Washington state on a farm who dreamed of becoming a pilot of the P-38 Lightning.  He got his dream job as a pilot with the 429 Squadron of the Ninth Air Force based in England.  He flew bomber escort missions as well as ground attack missions.  On his 44th combat mission, his plane was hit and he had to parachute out of his plane.  Some French farmers tried to help, but he and two of the farmers were caught by the Germans.  Joe ended up in Fresnes prison in the hand of the Gestapo.  Shipped out on the last train before Paris fell to the Allies, Joe and many others ended up at Buchenwald Concentration Camp as one of 168 Allied fliers accused of being Terrorfliegers.  Only due to a surprise visit by a Luftwaffe officer, did the Allied fliers escape being executed, instead they were transferred to a regular POW camp.  But then with the Russians approaching, the POWs were marched out in January on a harrowing trek to another camp in Austria where barely survived until the US Army arrived.  Joe returned back to the Bellingham, Washington area to marry and become the "local furnace guy."  He did not talk much until late in life when he started reconnecting with fellow survivors and had his story make the newspaper rounds in 1982.  In 2009, when he was almost 90, Joe collaborated with Gerald Baron to write A Fighter Pilot at Buchenwald.  Joe Moser died December 2, 2015.

 

Tom Clavin provides a narrative with plenty of asides that brings to life one of the great survival stories of WWII  in Lightning Down.  Joe Moser rose from humble roots to become a fighter pilot, survive not just Buchenwald, but also an epic trek in the January 1945 winter that almost killed him.  Yet he came back home, found a job and raised a family without fanfare. He is a true American hero that everyone should know!

Animal Patrol!

 Roach, Mary.  Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law.  New York, W. W. Norton, 2021.  ISBN: 

          9781324001935

Do you have a problem with bears rummaging in your garbage?  Elephants tramping over your garden?  Gulls dive bombing your noggin?   Or mice infiltrating your domicile?  If so, then you have had animals that broke the law!  While modern society does not put animals on trial today (see The Advocate starring Colin Firth for when they did), animals are still punished for lawbreaking - not a law of Nature, but human law.  Fuzz will help you understand what is going on and why.

Mary Roach delves into animal lawbreakers with glee and gusto.  She attended WHART (Wildlife-Human Attack Response Training) to learn how to tell who or what killed the human lying on the ground.  She patrols the back alleys of Aspen (CO) to see the bears feasting on garbage cans not properly bear-proofed.  She visits India for the roaming elephants, the man-eating leopards and the breaking-and-entering monkeys.  Back in the US of A, cougars, mountain lions, and panthers are on the agenda in regard to where they roam and what they eat.  Then a trip to Canada for some killer trees and their crime and punishment.   Mary takes a walk around our gardens filled with poisonous plants and visits farmers and other victims (which includes The Pope!) of pillaging and harassing birds. The last few chapters deal less with the animal offenders and more on how humans try to discourage animal "misbehavior" and keep houses, work places, and food stores pest free.  

Mary Roach manages to find another off-beat topic to entertain and inform her readers in Fuzz.  Even if you do not get her quirky sense of humor, you will enjoy this book.

Is Speech Free?

 Rosenberg, Ian.  Free Speech Handbook: A Practical Framework for Understanding Our Free 

          Speech Protections.  Art by Mike Cavallaro.  New York: First Second, 2021.  ISBN:     

          9781250619754 

How much do you know about free speech?  The First Amendment?  What speech is actually free and what is not?  In 2021, Ian Rosenberg wrote The Fight for Free Speech: Ten Cases That Define Our First Amendment Freedoms which as been adapted into a graphic format by First Second Books as the first volume in a series about the US Constitution.

 

In both The Fight for Free Speech and Free Speech Handbook, Ian Rosenberg takes up current events to use as a lens on particular aspects of free speech.  Chapter one opens with the Women's March of 2017 and focuses on the marketplace of ideas.  Chapter two takes kneeling during the Pledge of Allegiance and the history of the Pledge of Allegiance in First Amendment case law.  Chapter three covers the concept of libel vs actual malice and the role this played in the Civil Rights Movement.  Chapter four walks out of school with student speech from the Vietnam War until now.  Chapter five talks Stormy Daniels, prior restraint and the Pentagon Papers.  Chapter six has a flipped-off President and the Draft.  Chapter seven brings up the role of the FCC with Samantha Bee, seven dirty words, and indecency.  Chapter eight powers up parody, Saturday Night Live, and Hustler.  Chapter nine listens to speakers we dislike or hate, the freedom of assembly, and funeral protests.  Chapter ten dives into social media, public parks, and "the Vast Democratic Forums of the Internet."  

 

In these ten chapters, the Afterword, and list of sources, Ian Rosenberg provides a very understandable summary of First Amendment right that we all, I hope, hold dear.  Take a look, pay attention, and practice your free speech rights! 

Why are Cities Abandonded?

 Newitz, Annalee.  Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.  New York: W. W. Norton, 

          2021.  ISBN: 9780393652666

What does the phrase "lost cities" conjure in your mind?  Does Indian Jones hacking through the jungle only to stumble upon a vine covered ruin come to mind?  Or does careful excavation of mounds of dirt in the Middle East trigger your interest?  In Four Lost Cities, the reader gets to travel to three continents and participate in examining four urban centers and try to figure out what was going on before people walked away from these hubs of civilization.

Annalee Newitz opens with Catalhoyuk (Turkey), one of the earliest urban centers in the world.  After about a thousand years, the city was abandoned, gradually.  Her next stop is Pompeii (Italy) where a volcanic eruption put an end to a city in the midst of urban renewal.  The third stop is Angkor Wat (Cambodia) where expansionism and poor engineering led to the dwindling of the city into villages.  The final stop is Cahokia (United States) where the Mississippian culture flourished, built pyramids, and then pulled up stakes and left.  While visiting each city, Newitz concentrates on how the typical city dweller lived in each city.  Another of her focuses is on what attracted folk to the city and what eventually led them away.

Four Lost Cities is a bit of a misnomer as Newitz points out in her introduction.  People living around each of these cities knew about them even if the European elites did not.  Then there is "a secret history" phrase in the subtitle!  Newitz is using this term to stoke interest in looking not at the monuments found in these locations, but rather at the ordinary lives of the citizens.  If you enjoy learning about ancient civilizations, you are likely to enjoy this title.