Full title: The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh. This book was excellent, just the sort of archaeological history that I like. Damrosch does a nice job of painting all the major players, from Smith and Rassam in the 1800s to Ashurbanipal, whose passion for literature and ancient library made the rediscovery of ( Read more... )

Full title: The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mysteries of the Earliest Peoples from the WestI started this book at the end of April and finished it in mid-October. Don't let that fool you, though: the only real problem with this book is that it's too large and heavy to take on the train, and so (for someone like me, anyway) the only time to ( Read more... )

The subject matter of this book was fascinating - how the people of London have handled the burial/disposal of the dead over many centuries - but the book left me a little flat. The chapters are in roughly chronological order, but within each chapter, I thought the material could have been organized a little better. There were some spots where ( Read more... )

I've been a fan of Lindsay's for a while, but I absolutely loved this poetry collection and it appealed to me even more than her older work. As an archaeology geek, the long middle section about the Kingdom of Nab got me both excited and teared up. Lindsay gets right to the heart of so many of the issues I love about archaeology: who were the ( Read more... )

Full title: Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures. This book was a lot of fun. Wittman has plenty of fascinating stories from his years as an art crime specialist for the FBI, and Shiffman does an excellent job of helping Wittman shape those stories into a cohesive, entertaining, and well written memoir.

This was really good, well written and incredibly well researched. Grann explores the mystery behind Colonel Percy Fawcett's disappearance into the Amazon in 1925; he tells not only Fawcett's story, but also the tales of the searchers who went looking for him, many of whom also never returned. Finally, Grann goes into the jungle himself looking ( Read more... )

This was pretty awesome. I particularly liked the article about Maya conceptions of beauty, but all the articles were really interesting!

I wanted to reread this for my honeymoon, and it definitely helped to refresh my memory about the glyphs and Mayan vocabulary. I was able to recognize the Tikal emblem glyph and a few verbs when we were at the various sites, I was so excited.

Full title: The Lords of Tikal: Rulers of an Ancient Maya CityI sometimes wonder if I'm the only person in the world who does research before her honeymoon--not travel research, research on archaeology. This book was pretty good. Harrison is one of the original University of Penn researchers who excavated at Tikal, and this book draws on his own ( Read more... )

This book presents a good general overview of Maya history and culture, including geography, architecture, linguistics, diet, mythology, and calendar. It's nicely illustrated as well, mostly with black and white photos, but there were several pages of color inserts as well. Coe doesn't delve too deeply into any one city's history but builds a ( Read more... )