16616. (Mar­i­on Zim­mer Bradley) The Mists of Avalon
16617. (O. R. Gurny, tr.) Hit­tite doc­u­ment: The Annals of Ḫattušili III 
16618. (Steve Muhlberg­er) [in blog Muhlberger’s Ear­ly His­to­ry] The World Turned Inside 
. . . . . Out [arti­cle]
16619. (Karen Joy Fowler) Wit’s End
16620. (Chris Wood) Dry Spring: The Com­ing Water Cri­sis in North America
16621. (David Rothkopf) 9/11 Was Big. This Is Big­ger [arti­cle]
16622. (Andrew J. Bace­vich) He Told Us to Go Shop­ping. Now the Bill Is Due. [arti­cle]
16623. (Richard Dawkins) The God Delusion
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August Der­leth

This is a minor mas­ter­piece by a neglect­ed Amer­i­can nov­el­ist and essay­ist who is bet­ter known as the edi­tor and advo­cate of H. P. Love­craft than for his own work. It is firm­ly in the tra­di­tion of Thoreau’s jour­nals, and simul­ta­ne­ously in that of Sher­wood Anderson’s Wines­burg Ohio, though his beau­ti­fully styled evo­ca­tions of des­per­ate lives don’t have the bit­ter­ness that Anderson’s had. Derleth’s feel­ing for nature, both the human kind and the ani­mals and plant kind, is intense and metic­u­lously obser­vant. His prose is so pre­cise and nat­ural that you don’t hear it as another’s voice, but as your own thought. It’s one of those books that you read with pro­found plea­sure on a qui­et night, with an ani­mal snooz­ing near­by and a sin­gle malt at your elbow.

Eth­nic nation­al­ism is one of the most dis­eased and obnox­ious ideas con­trived by human beings, rivaled only by Marx­ism and reli­gious fanati­cism in its poten­tial for cre­at­ing human suf­fer­ing. The stage was set for the hor­rors of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry by the pas­sion­ate eth­nic hatreds of the 19th cen­tu­ry. It was in this era that col­lec­tive loy­al­ties among Euro­peans shift­ed from obses­sions with God to obses­sions with Race and Nation. And it was in this era that most of the “nation­al iden­ti­ties”, which now seem so fixed, were concocted.
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Ténéré daféo nikchan .… yes, I’m back there again. The smells, the sounds, the wind. This col­lec­tion of arti­cles, writ­ten over a decade by a lead­ing author­i­ty on the pol­i­tics of Saha­ran nomads, was an absolute delight for me to read. It deals with the very peo­ple (not just the same eth­nic group, but the par­tic­u­lar seg­ment of them, the kel-Aïr of Niger) who first awak­ened me to the nature of pro­to-demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions. I read these arti­cles with a tremen­dous wave of nos­tal­gia. When as a naive toubab, I came to that part of Africa, many years ago, I had been led by the small amount of lit­er­a­ture avail­able on the sub­ject to believe that the Tuareg rep­re­sent­ed a strict­ly strat­i­fied soci­ety, rigid and tra­di­tion­al — the last place to look for any kind of pro­to-demo­c­ra­t­ic ele­ments. But what I saw con­fused me, and ulti­mate­ly enlight­ened me: a maze of con­cil­iar insti­tu­tions, both for­mal and infor­mal, embody­ing all the ele­ments from which demo­c­ra­t­ic the­o­ry evolved in less exot­ic places. Good and bad things, but the same stew-pot of good and bad from which our best insti­tu­tions ulti­mate­ly evolved. I also saw that much that had been writ­ten or assumed was blind to this, shaped by pre­sump­tions that desert nomads where either chaot­ic beings with­out “com­plex” polit­i­cal insti­tu­tions, or a rigid, change­less hier­ar­chy in which dis­cus­sion, rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and equal­i­ty played no part. My eyes told me that nei­ther pre­sump­tion was valid. It was this expe­ri­ence that got me inter­est­ed in the issue of the uni­ver­sal roots of demo­c­ra­t­ic prac­tice, and trig­gered decades of read­ing. Sad­ly, when Steve Muhlberg­er and I began our first work on the sub­ject, there was no pub­lished work on the Tuareg usable for our pur­pose. This book, had it exist­ed then, would have been a cen­ter­piece of our dis­cus­sion. Read more »

(Peter Bakker, et al.) Basque Pid­gins in Ice­land and Canada:
. . . . [——] (Gidor Bil­bao) Glos­saria Vas­co-Islandi­ca-ren aurkezpen gisakoa [pref­ace]
. . . . 16445. (Jose Igna­cio Hualde) Fore­word to Glos­saria duo Vas­co-Islandi­ca [pref­ace]
. . . . [——] (Nico­laas G. H. Deen) Glos­saria duo Vas­co-Islandi­ca [text in Basque] [arti­cle]
. . . . 16446. (Jose Igna­cio Hualde) Ice­landic Basque Pid­gin [arti­cle]
. . . . 16447. (Peter Bakker) “Las lengua de las tribus costeras es medio vas­ca” ― Un pidgin 
. . . . . . . . . vas­co y amerindio uti­liza­do por europeos y nativos amer­i­canos en Norteamérica,
. . . . . . . . . h. 1540‑h. 1640. [text in Span­ish] [arti­cle] Read more »

I would hap­pily take George Wood­cock as a mod­el for trav­el writ­ing. He him­self out­lines the sources of his style: eigh­teenth cen­tury Eng­lish mod­els of clar­ity and pre­ci­sion, the writ­ings of ear­ly nat­u­ral­ists and sci­en­tists, and the direct influ­ence of his close friend, George Orwell. Wood­cock is best known as a his­to­rian of anar­chist the­ory, and in Cana­da as a cham­pion of Cana­dian lit­er­a­ture (espe­cially that of the west­ern provinces), but for decades he put bread on the table by trav­el­ing to remote cor­ners of the Earth and writ­ing about it in his crisp, evoca­tive prose. A fine descrip­tion of Sal­ish spir­it dance, for which he only had to trav­el a few miles from his doorstep, and a keen­ly obser­vant tour of the Cana­dian arc­tic show that he didn’t have to leave the coun­try to cre­ate the sense of won­der. But the strongest stuff is when he writ­ing about India, espe­cially the Tibetan Exile com­mu­ni­ties that he him­self helped fund and orga­nize, and in the jun­gle tem­ples of Cam­bo­dia. Read more »

This work brings me up to date on the cur­rent state of evi­dence and the­ory con­cern­ing the tran­si­tion to agri­cul­ture. Graeme Bark­er sum­ma­rizes many reports that I haven’t seen, includ­ing for­eign lan­guage ones that I couldn’t have. On the whole, it is grat­i­fy­ing to me, as it shows that both the weight of evi­dence and the weight of opin­ion have been grad­u­ally shift­ing towards my own views. The genet­ic, pale­ob­otan­i­cal, and pale­oiso­topic evi­dence is all push­ing it in that direc­tion. I’m hap­py to see that fish­ing is now accord­ed the promi­nent posi­tion that it deserves. In the long run, I think that fur­ther evi­dence will force the pro­fes­sion­als to make the “leap” that I feel is nec­es­sary. Cur­rently, pre­his­toric trade net­works, while rec­og­nized, are still seen as inci­den­tal, or irrel­e­vant to the tran­si­tion. A few the­o­rists posit that they play a role in fos­ter­ing elites and seden­tarism ― with the assump­tion that acqui­si­tion of “pres­tige goods” was the essence of such trade. I believe, on the oth­er hand, that the process of sub­stitut­ing goods for­merly import­ed through this trade sys­tem by local pro­duc­tion, is the heart of the mat­ter. Pre­his­toric trade, I think we will dis­cover, was over­whelm­ingly con­cerned with food sta­ples, wide­ly used prod­ucts, and “mass mar­ket” tech­nol­ogy, with “pres­tige goods” mere­ly a side-effect. The spread of agri­cul­ture was mere­ly one aspect of an ongo­ing macro-eco­nom­ic process that has its roots in the ear­ly devel­op­ment of homo-sapi­ens, and not a dis­rup­tion of a sta­tic or “non-eco­nom­ic” pre-agri­cul­tur­al soci­ety, com­ing out of the blue. None of the pre­vail­ing “push” or “pull” visu­al­iza­tions of the adop­tion of agri­cul­ture rec­og­nize the impor­tance of this process. The archae­o­log­i­cal evi­dence, espe­cially in north­ern Europe, screams out to be inter­preted in this way. It will mere­ly take a small con­cep­tual shift to make it hap­pen. I would real­ly love to sit down with some of the peo­ple who are close to mak­ing the leap, and argue them into it.

16395. (Thomas T. Allsen) The Roy­al Hunt in Eurasian History
16396. (Philip K. Dick) The Zap Gun ― Being that Most Excel­lent Account of Tra­vails and
. . . . . Con­tayn­ing Many Pretie His­to­ries By Him Set Foorth in Come­ly Colours and
. . . . . Most Delight­ful­ly Dis­coursed Upon as Beau­ti­fied and Well Fur­nished Divers
. . . . . Good and Com­mend­able in the Gesi­ht of Men of That Most Lam­en­ta­ble Wepens
. . . . . Fasoun Design­er Lars Pow­derdry and What Near­ly Became of Him Due to
. . . . . Cer­tain Most Dread­ful Forces
16397. (Charles Allen) God’s Ter­ror­ists ― The Wah­habi Cult and the Hid­den Roots of 
. . . . . Mod­ern Jihad
16398. (Peter Ack­royd) Thames ― Sacred River
16399. (Michael H. Shu­man) The Small-Mart Rev­o­lu­tion ― How Local Busi­ness­es are 
. . . . . Beat­ing the Glob­al Competition
16400. (Robert McCloskey) Homer Price
16401. (David K. Wyatt) Thai­land, a Short History
16402. (Edward Schneier) Craft­ing Con­sti­tu­tion­al Democ­ra­cies ― The Pol­i­tics of Institutional 
. . . . . Design
16403. (Jana Švábová & Tomáš Rygl) Prague
16404. (Jonathan Jar­rett) [in blog A Cor­ner of Tenth-Cen­tu­ry Europe] Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary
. . . . . Con­ver­sa­tion: Veg­etable Barter [arti­cle]
16405. (Steve Muhlberg­er) [in blog Muhlberger’s Ear­ly His­to­ry] The Pennsic War [arti­cle]
(Rich Coad –ed.) Sense of Won­der Sto­ries ― Issue Zero, Feb­ru­ary 2007 [zine]
. . . . 16406. (Rich Coad) What This Coun­try Needs [pref­ace]
. . . . 16407. (Bruce Town­ley) Mod­el Cit­i­zen [arti­cle]
. . . . 16408. (Rich Coad) The Built a Crooked Uni­verse [arti­cle]
. . . . 16408. (Rich Coad) Spung! [arti­cle]
. . . . 16409. (Ian Maule) I Dood It ! [arti­cle]
(Rich Coad –ed.) Sense of Won­der Sto­ries # 1, 2007 [zine]
. . . . 16410. (Rich Coad) Won­der­to­r­i­al [pref­ace]
. . . . 16411. (Randy Byers) The Ear­ly Days of a Bet­ter Genre [arti­cle]
. . . . 16412. (Bruce Town­ley) The Shad­ows Out of Space [arti­cle]
. . . . 16413. (Robert Licht­man) Love­craft In The Real World [arti­cle]
. . . . 16414. (Bill Burns) Thomas Edi­son and the Elec­tric Pen [arti­cle]
. . . . 16415. Let­ters from Chris Gar­cia, Mark Plum­mer, Har­ry Bell, John Pur­cell, Jerry 
. . . . . . . . Kauf­man, Claire Bri­a­ley, and Cy Chau­vin [let­ters]
(Rich Coad –ed.) Sense of Won­der Sto­ries #2, July 2008 [zine]
. . . . 16416. (Rich Coad) Won­der­to­r­i­al [pref­ace]
. . . . 16417. (Bruce Gille­spie) The Good Sol­dier: George Turn­er as Com­bat­ive Crit­ic [arti­cle]
. . . . 16418. (Bruce Town­ley) A Dream Flight [arti­cle]
. . . . 16419. (Peter West­on) Heresy, Maybe? [arti­cle]
. . . . 16420. (Gra­ham Charnock) J. G. Bal­lard, A Jour­ney of Infer­ence [arti­cle]
. . . . 16421. Let­ters from Robert Licht­man, John Pur­cell, Eric May­er, John Nielsen-Hall, Jim 
. . . . . . . . Lin­wood, Mog Decarnin, James Bacon [let­ters]
16422. (Eric L. Jones) Cul­tures Merg­ing ― A His­tor­i­cal and Eco­nom­ic Cri­tique of Culture
(Robert A. Hein­lein) The Unpleas­ant Pro­fes­sion of Johnathan Hoag:
. . . . 16423. [3] (Robert A. Hein­lein) The Unpleas­ant Pro­fes­sion of Jonathan Hoag [sto­ry]
. . . . 16424. [3] (Robert A. Hein­lein) The Man Who Trav­eled in Ele­phants [= The Elephant 
. . . . . . . . Cir­cuit] [sto­ry]
. . . . 16425. [4] (Robert A. Hein­lein) “All You Zom­bies—” [sto­ry]
. . . . 16426. [2] (Robert A. Hein­lein) They [sto­ry]
. . . . 16427. [2] (Robert A. Hein­lein) Our Fair City [sto­ry]
. . . . 16428. [2] (Robert A. Hein­lein) “—And He Built a Crooked House” [sto­ry]
16429. (Mar­jorie Man­del­stan Balz­er) The Tenac­i­ty of Eth­nic­i­ty: A Siber­ian Saga in Global 
. . . . . Perspective 
(Yaron Matras, Peter Bakker & Hris­to Kyuchukov –ed.) The Typol­o­gy and Dialec­tol­ogy of Romani:
. . . . 16430. (Peter Bakker & Yaron Matras) Intro­duc­tion [pref­ace]
. . . . 16431. (Peter Bakker) Ath­e­mat­ic Mor­phol­o­gy in Romani: The Bor­row­ing of a 
. . . . . . . . Bor­row­ing Pat­tern [arti­cle]
. . . . 16432. (Vik­tor Elšik) Towards a Mor­phol­o­gy-based Typol­o­gy of Romani [arti­cle]
. . . . 16433. (Yaron Matras) The Typol­o­gy of Case Rela­tions and Case Lay­er Dis­tri­b­u­tion in 
. . . . . . . . Romani [arti­cle]
. . . . 16434. (Vít Bubeník) Object Dou­bling in Romani and the Balkan Lan­guages [arti­cle]
. . . . 16435. (Nor­bert Boret­zky) Sup­ple­tive Forms of the Romani Cop­u­la: “ovel / avel”
. . . . . . . . [arti­cle]
. . . . 16436. (Mile­na Hüb­schan­nová & Vít Bubeník) Causatives in Slo­vak and Hungarian 
. . . . . . . . Romani [arti­cle]
. . . . 16437. (Bir­git Igla) The Romani Dialect of the Rhodopes [arti­cle]
. . . . 16438. (Petra Cech & Mozes F. Hein­schink) The Dialect of the Basket-Weavers 
. . . . . . . . [Sepečides] of Izmir [arti­cle]
. . . . 16439. (Vic­tor A. Fried­man) Lin­guis­tic Form and Con­tent in the Romani-lan­guage Press 
. . . . . . . . of the Repub­lic of Mace­do­nia [arti­cle]
. . . . 16440. (Ian F. Han­cock) George Borrow’s Romani [arti­cle]
16441. (Steve Muhlberg­er) [in blog Muhlberger’s Ear­ly His­to­ry] Excit­ing Views on Scholarship
. . . . . [arti­cle]
16442. (Michael Drout) [in blog Wormtalk and Slugs­peak] A Mod­el ―But Would it Work if it 
. . . . . Were Gen­er­al­ized? [arti­cle]
16443. (Michael Drout) [in blog Wormtalk and Slugs­peak] Method: Push the Metaphor Until it 
. . . . . Breaks ― or, Mock­ing “Imbri­cat­ed” Yet Again [arti­cle]
16444. (Tu Thanh Ha, Bill Cur­ry & Anne McIl­roy) Inspec­tors Failed to Adopt More Rigorous 
. . . . . U.S. Mea­sures [arti­cle]