This is a stu­pid book. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s also been a very influ­en­tial one.

Hunt­ing­ton starts out by play­ing the old “civ­i­liza­tions” game, pop­u­lar from the late 19th cen­tu­ry onward. Nobody any longer takes you seri­ous­ly if you talk about nation­al­i­ties in a sil­ly, anthro­po­mor­phic way (“The Dutch are cheese-eat­ing, prac­ti­cal peo­ple, but they are doomed to fail­ure as nation because they smoke too much mar­i­jua­na and their feet must hurt from wear­ing wood­en shoes”). But if you shift the dis­cus­sion to “civ­i­liza­tions”, big seg­ments of the globe defined by arbi­trary cri­te­ria, you can get away with it. Read more »

This is a bril­liant book. Ochsen­schlager was engaged in an impor­tant archae­o­log­i­cal project in Iraq, start­ing in 1968. The site was the Sumer­ian city of Lagash. Puz­zled by some unglam­orous, but intrigu­ing arti­facts, he start­ed look­ing for analo­gies among the local peo­ple to inter­pret them. The local peo­ple includ­ed Bedouin tribes, the agri­cul­tur­al Beni Hasan, and the famous Mi’­dan [Marsh Arabs] who lived in the reed-filled swamps at the con­junc­tion of the Tigris and Euphrates. Read more »

I’m revis­it­ing this lit­tle-known nov­el, which I read as a kid. I did­n’t remem­ber much detail, only a few of the odd­er inci­dents in the sto­ry, and its creepy atmos­phere. Damon Knight first made a rep­u­ta­tion as an acer­bic crit­ic, and was extreme­ly crit­i­cal of A. E. van Vogt’s work. So it’s iron­ic that this nov­el struck me as dis­tinct­ly “van Vogt­ian”. It cer­tain­ly has that author’s ten­den­cy to jerk you from one plot devel­op­ment to anoth­er, and to con­stant­ly shift its frame of ref­er­ence. There’s also a bit of a Philip K. Dick feel to it. The sto­ry starts with a pro­tag­o­nist with mem­o­ry loss, a dubi­ous iden­ti­ty, enig­mat­ic events, mur­der, aliens mas­querad­ing as humans, and soon drifts into time-trav­el, wan­der­ing about an emp­ty space ship after the human race is extinct, and even has the main char­ac­ter fall through the earth like a yo-yo. The stuff is just piled on. And yet, it’s read­able. Read more »

17662. (Arthur Conan Doyle) The Mus­grave Rit­u­al [sto­ry]
17663. (Alan Dean Fos­ter) Starman
17664. (John Lor­inc) The New City: How the Cri­sis in Canada’s Urban Cen­tres is Reshaping 
. . . . . the Nation
17665. (Rus­sell Shorto) Going Dutch [arti­cle]
17666. (Katha Pol­litt) Bet­ter Liv­ing Through Tor­ture [arti­cle]
17667. (Steven McKen­zie) The Lit­tle Ice Age and Scot­land [arti­cle]
Read more »

This is a well-writ­ten mys­tery nov­el, with a very lean prose style and direct, sequen­tial plot­ting. Mur­der and may­hem in a Vien­nese mil­i­tary acad­e­my, 1903. Detec­tives improb­a­bly using psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic tech­niques to solve the mys­tery, but, hey, that’s the con­ceit of the tale. Music every­where, pas­tries, waltzes, and absyn­the bub­bling on the spoon. Tallis’ inser­tion of piquant his­tor­i­cal details is care­ful­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to please the read­er — nev­er too much at a time, nev­er too didac­tic. The decay­ing poly­glot Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire is the per­fect back­ground for the thriller and mur­der mys­tery writer, espe­cial­ly with our ret­ro­spec­tive fas­ci­na­tion with its sex­u­al and psy­chopath­e­l­og­i­cal obses­sions. Even old Kraft-Ebbing turns up in a toast.

17371. (Alexan­der Macken­zie) Voy­ages from Mon­tre­al on the Riv­er St. Lau­rence through the 
. . . . . Con­ti­nent of North Amer­i­ca to the Frozen and Pacif­ic Oceans In the Years 1789 
. . . . . and 1793 with a Pre­lim­i­nary Account of the Rise, Progress, and Present State 
. . . . . of The Fur Trade of That Country
17372. (Arthur Conan Doyle) The Final Prob­lem [sto­ry]
(Christo­pher S. Beek­man & William W. Baden –ed.) Non­lin­ear Mod­els for Archae­ol­o­gy and 
. Anthro­pol­o­gy ― Con­tin­u­ing the Revolution:
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The Province of Alber­ta has two superb muse­ums asso­ci­at­ed with out­door sites. One, of course, is the famed Tyrell Muse­um of Pale­on­tol­ogy. The oth­er is Head-Smashed-In Buf­fa­lo Jump, declared a World Her­itage Site by UNESCO in 1981, with its Inter­pre­tive Cen­tre. For a peri­od of five thou­sand years, native peo­ples of the region drove herds of buf­fa­lo over this cliff. The beasts were dri­ven and herd­ed to their deaths with aid of a com­plex sys­tem of cairns, fences, and cor­rals, and orga­nized team-work. The bod­ies were butchered and processed into pem­mi­can (a spoilage-resis­tant con­cen­trat­ed food) and hun­dreds of oth­er prod­ucts, which were trad­ed across the region. It was vir­tu­al­ly an indus­tri­al-scale enter­prise. Head-Smashed-In was only one of many such sites in the region, but it is the one most thor­ough­ly inves­ti­gat­ed. Read more »

17244. (Arthur Conan Doyle) The Adven­ture of the Speck­led Band [sto­ry]
17245. (Hen­ry C. Clark) Com­pass of Soci­ety: Com­merce and Abso­lutism in Old-Regime France
17246. (Gra­ham Wat­son) The Reifi­ca­tion of Eth­nic­i­ty and Its Polit­i­cal Con­se­quences in the North 
. . . . . [arti­cle]
17247. [2] (Verne Dusen­ber­ry) Wait­ing for a Day that Nev­er Comes: The Dis­pos­sessed Métis of 
. . . . . Mon­tana [arti­cle]
17248. (Peter Armitage & John C. Kennedy) Red­bait­ing and Racism on Our Fron­tier: Military 
. . . . . Expan­sion in Labrador and Que­bec [arti­cle] Read more »