Most books by Roy Chapman Andrews are interesting, but inexpensive. In his day he was a popular writer, and even early titles like Whale Hunting with Gun and Camera (!) and Camps and Trails in China are not too hard to find. Not so The New Conquest of Central Asia. As it is the record …
Tag: Asia
Found Book
Once or twice, like any person who buys and occasionally sells books, I have found a book on my shelves that I did not know I had. But only once have I found a really valuable one that I had no recollection of buying, and still don’t. It happened about two “book culls” past, when …
The Hounds
The book is done, at 44,000- plus words– I like it, very much, and hope not to have to rewrite it. As it is a very personal book it may seem quirky to some, but I hope the editors can use their judgment and let it stand, more or less as is, with its melancholy …
Image again
Here is the full image of the painting that contains the detail I blogged on below. I await the book, but as far as I know it is in Chinese, so it may still be enigmatic. It is both beautiful and sinister, and its title is “Clearing the Mountains”. Who is clearing whom out of …
Survived
Catherine and Jean Louis Lassez are back in the states, and Catherine is back at Muleshoe Ranch, after being right in the middle of the Himalayan earthquake. Much to be said, much of it serious and some harrowing, but the trip was not without its whimsical moments… UPDATE: English bird and nature writer Conor Jameson, …
Nepal Earthquake connection
The disaster in Nepal has taken a personal turn. Jean Louis and Catherine Lassez, long time “semi- native” residents of the old Muleshoe Ranch fifteen miles out of Magdalena, Asia hands, Christmas hosts, originator of the barbecue for the Old Timer’s fiesta queen; artists, art collectors, keepers of as many dogs as us; above all …
Photoblog: China, early 20th C.
A collage of sorts. Explain, improvise, interpret, or even deconstruct. UPDATE. Everyone in comments had the idea. The elements: books on China by the American Museum’s Roy Chapman Andrews, “Indiana Jones”, before he ever got to “outer” Mongolia and its fossils, and his China host, missionary, ornithologist and big game hunter Harry Caldwell. Caldwell hunted …
Overland Traveller
My sometime neighbor for almost 20 years, Rolf Magener, is sort of a professional traveler (at least when he is not stopping at the apartment of a Swedish countess in Buenos Aires, where I just sent my copy); two years ago he was sailing across the South Pacific, and he sent me my treasured photo …
My Favorite Recent Hominin Reconstruction
I suspect “WE”– call us Modern or in Europe Cro- Magnon– thought that our recently extinct fellow “hominins’”, to use the latest correct term– looked odd, as we did to them, even though we did mix genes. Most reconstructions are so steeped in reflexive egalitarianism– wrong word, but I’m looking for a synonym for sappy …
Teaser
How does this relate to Seven Years in Tibet? Or Magdalena? One flew east, and one flew west…