2 comments about Minotaur: Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the Minoan Myth.

1. Minotaur by Joseph MacGillivray
   
   This book presents itself as a readable biography of one the great Archaeologists, Sir Arthur Evans, instead of a thoughtful biography the book is really a prolonged attack on Evans (and 19th century archaeology) by an author of dubious credentials and makes for extremely painful reading.
   
   The book is tolerable journalism when its sticks to the factual events, but it is so filled with hostility towards Evans, that the reader is quickly bogged down in a long winded and poorly researched series of ad hominen attacks and innuendo of wrong doing that the thrill of Crete and Minos is completely buried.
   
   The central claim of this bad book is that Evans created Minoan archaeology and did not discover anything. The attacks are unrelenting. The author claims variously : Evans is unscientific and concerned only with objects, stole antquities, horded valuable linear B scripts, was a repressed homosexual, took too much credit for his finds and harmed nearly all of his colleagues, was shrewd and calculating to excess in his business dealings, was a racist because his disliked Turks and personally favored European and Greek religion and culture, was a spoiled wealthly aristocrat of no ability but gifted merely by birth and social standing- who also ate very well, etc etc etc
   
   That the author has issues with Evans is an understatement and parrying all of his attacks (most of which are the authors own unsubstantiated suspicions or irelevant details) is a waste of time.
   
   Evans- the gentlemen and scholar who devoted his 90 years of life to classics, beauty in art and history, who spent his fortune to dig Knossos and who developed new theories of myth and civilization: in short a person whose name will be recalled as long as history-minded Western man is revered- is not present in this book. This book is the product of a modern academic archaeology resentful of its romantic past, that prefers digging with toothbrushes, hates coin collectors, believes antiquities dealers are evil and wishes that British, Germans and French had left everything in the ground for them to sniff about with white gloves and a microscope.
   
   
   That the author is an academic feather-weight is evident in the opening pages, where he attempts to work out his own crude thesis: Evans was not an archaeologist but a myth maker motivated by sexual demons. His analysis is so bad, reading his turns of phrase are like chewing on sand: "Archaeologists are the progenitors as well as the midwives at the birthing process we call excavation." Ugly writing quickly leads to bad analysis such as this delphic prose: " ...we must start with Evans himself, the product of his genes and his life experiences." These experiences include the alleged homosexuality of Evans which the author tries to awkwardly weave into his book perhaps hoping to increase sales, but he cannot find much and we are left with a few sentences of inane writing worthy only of a freshman trying to impress a bored teaching assistant. He writes that he suspects Evans was driven to pursue his career because of the "repressed 'beastliness' of his homosexuality..." His efforts degenerate further a few hundred pages later with innuendo about a young man Evans adopted and his association with Baden Powell and the Boy Scout movement.
   
   The author has no wit and his style wears the reader down. He makes no effort in the biography to educate the reader about the civilization of Crete and takes the excitement of the past away completely. I know of no other book on archaeology that deadens its subject matter to such a degree. The author is all over the place with his own insipid thoughts and at times contradicts his own thin analysis.
   
   For example the author continually harps on the fact that Evan's sister titled her biography of him, "Time and Chance". The author writes "Nothing could be further from what I believe about how Evans discovered Knossos..."(p.6) In his effort to bring Evans down from his perch the author continually paints Evans as simply a digger with money. At the end of his book, the author returns to this theme: "Arthur Evans did not stumble upon Knossos by some happy circumstance. He set his mind on acquiring the rights to a well-documented site.... he secured the expertise he lacked in the person of a site foreman, architects, and conservators..." (p.308) Ok this attack may work in hindsight, but on page 175 the author himself writes: "they all faced the risk that within a few hours they might have removed only a thin layer of eroded soil and exposed a solid rock outcropping scattered with worthless pot shards... Evans might learn that he had chased off the other suitors only to find the bride barren of promise and her dowry worthless. These are the risks excavators take." Which is it? Did Evans simply walk in and dig up what everyone knew was there or did chance play a role and did he finally locate the fabled city of Knossos after three and a half millenium? Clearly this writer is a moron.
   
   A good graduate student should set things right and demolish MacGillivray's shoddy research on Evans, a student of history with a sense of the classical- not one inspired while waiting to use public tennis courts in Manhattan as MacGillivray says he was. Surely some inspiration can still be found in the stones of ruined cities, a brilliant gemstone or winds of the Mediterranean.
   
   The author, in writing this extended effort to libel the dead, succeeds only in diminishing our native appreciation of history, and our myths. That is the end point of modernity.



2. Sandy MacGillivray's in depth analysis of the life and times of pioneer Cretan archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans was a pure joy to read. The author's own experiences as a professional in the field on Crete add great weight to his arguments as he finds himself coping the Evans' legacy on a daily basis. I really got the sense that the author knew Evans, both the man and the scholar, through close attention to and extensive research on the amply available primary sources. This is a wonderfully scholarly, yet very readable and highly interesting book to both the professional archaeologist and interested armchair amateur.

No comments about Locating Bourdieu (New Anthropologies of Europe).

No comments about Georg Simmel and the American Prospect.

No comments about An Unmastered Past: The Autobiographical Reflections of Leo Lowenthal.

2 comments about Taxi from Hell: Confessions of a Russian Hack.

1. This is a true view behind the yellow curtain of the taxi staging lot at any major airport in the states. And how owners and drivers interact.



2. I've read this book in Russian (Russian version is called "Yellow Kings"), and now eager to read it in English. Book is very interesting and author's style is perfect. And, more important - book describes real life, with it humorous and sad moments. I'm Russian and when I first went to NYC - I saw the city the same "way" as the author did...

2 comments about The Amazing Story of the Tonelli Family in America: Twelve Thousand Miles in a Buick in Search of Identity, Ethnicity, Geography, Kinship and Home.

1. I discovered this only because my youngest cousin, who goes to Harvard, read it in a course and came home insisting that I read it too. I take a strong interest in my ancestry (I'm Italian American, the grandson of immigrants) and this book hit me right between the eyes. It is one man's search for the meaning of his ethnicity and all the goodness that comes with it, before it all slips away. Tonelli writes in a funny, quirky, totally absorbing style that's never dry or ponderous. But he's writing about some of the most deeply meaningful, even sometimes sad aspects of being part of a genuine community in a time when community in American seems (to me) to be on the wane. This is the kind of book that could (and should) have become a minor classic of literary nonfiction, and also a book that every ethnic American would want to read, but I gather it did not back in '94 when it came out. But if you can find a copy today, grab it fast and get ready for a thrill.



2. Spett.le Redazione, Questo Ente desidera entrare in contatto con lo scrittore Statunitense di origini italiane Bill TONELLI. Mr. Bill TONELLI h radattore di Esquire ed autore de "La sorprendente storia della Famiglia TONELLI in America ". Il volume citato dovrebbe essere stato pubblicato dalla Casa editrice americana"PERSEUS BOOKS ". La ricerca del contatto con lo scrittore h tesa ad uno scambio culturale da realizzare prossimamente. Lo scrittore Bill TONELLI ha antenati provenienti dall'Italia, piu' particolarmente dal nostro paese, Nereto. Qualsiasi informazione sullo scrittore Bill TONELLI h gradita alla e - mail: comunenereto@itol.it oppure al numero di telefono 0861 / 855779 ove h sempre disponibile il Dott. Lucio ADDARII che sta curando la pratica riguardante lo scrittore italoamericano. Con l'occasione, distinti saluti. Lucio ADDARII

No comments about Rethinking Race: Franz Boas and His Contemporaries.

No comments about The Life of Jean Jaures.

5 comments about On Fire: A Personal Account of Life and Death and Chocies.

1. As a lover of Southern fiction (Faulkner, O'Connnor, Styron, etc), I just don't get the praise for Larry Brown. To me, he writes like an imbecile. I do not exagerrate: I see an embicile in my head when I read each line, like maybe Carl Shivers from Sling Blade. His memories are so inane that they should hardly be shared (I watched a man jog past the firestation...)and his writing is so basic and abscent of color. Like bad Hemingway more than anything.
   Skip it and go read some Cormac MCcarthy.



2. I also purchased Billy Ray's Farm and Facing the Music, Amazon is a great place to buy from online. They always ship very fast and products are as expected at a great price.



3. I thought this author would share his experiences of life as a firefighter; I thought wrong. He shares more about his dog not being able to produce puppies than he does about the various accidents and fires he has been a part of. I was shocked by how much he digresses, over and over again he talks about animals which have absolutely nothing to do with firefighting or even his life! The author has written a book that will put the most astute reader to sleep. I wish it had been a bit more interesting, but alas, it was not.



4. I did not know of Larry Brown until I saw the film "Big Bad Love," based on one of his stories. I wasn't crazy about the film but was fascinated by the imagination it emerged from, and gave one of his books a try. For starters, I read his memoir "On Fire," about his years as an Oxford, Mississippi, fireman. I thought it would be about fighting fires, responding to emergencies, and what goes on in the firehouse in between. I expected some reflection on the world of firemen, which I understand to be a social order of its own, like policemen.

   There is all of that and considerably more in this wonderful collection of short essays, many of them dashed off during those off hours in the firehouse, often recounting an experience Brown and his compatriots just had, rescuing someone trapped in a smashed car, putting out a fire, or just screwing around. You learn something of the process of firefighting as Brown reconstructs the events of several fires, including one in the top floor of a building at Ole Miss. He explains how they use the Jaws of Life. You learn about the daily routines of checking equipment for readiness, as well as continual training in CPR and different kinds of fires.

   But much in the book is unexpected. There are pieces about dogs, hunting, lost kittens, cookouts, practical jokes, watching hawks, petty thefts, driving, drinking beer, and S and V on HBO. Essays that will stay in my memory include his account of a trip to New York to appear on the Today show when one of his books is published and learning while he's there that his wife and son have been hurt in a car accident, then discovering when he finds out they are OK that his dog Sam has died. The mental image of him crying in the airport is vivid and moving.

   On a more hilarious note is an account of a long day's drive to a training exercise in the Delta, where they arrive late and drunk. On a more literary note, there's his account of setting up a hose to provide fake rain for a documentary film at William Faulkner's home, just down the road from the firehouse. His reflections on Faulkner sitting in the house and writing novels are full of awe and respect for a giant of letters, a giant who had a cup of coffee every night at a local restaurant where he always left a dime tip for the waitress.

   If you've read or you're thinking of reading Brown's fiction, I recommend this book. It's a wonderful introduction to the man and his world, and you get a sense of the raw material that feeds his imagination.




5. I don't know how this book ever got published. It was a rudderless account of unrelated stories about nothing. Many stories revolved around actions you probably warned your kids never to try... and Mr. Brown seemed to be pretty proud of that.

5 comments about Wildlife Wars: My Fight to Save Africa's Natural Treasures.

1. No one should dispute Leakey's dedication to the wildlife and people of his native Kenya. This book, however, is a rather dull account of the political intrigue and manouvering Leakey faced from 1989 to 1994 when he was involved with Kenya's various wildlife services. Those in the field may value his insights and perseverance, but the average reader may find his grandstanding and, at times, painstaking defensiveness a bit hard to stomach. I'd much rather read a book by those out in the field (such as rangers) who saw the elephants every day and who would have many a tale to tell about fighting off poachers and dealing with tourists and natives. Leave this book for the bureaucrats in world wildlife agencies.



2. Dr. Richard Leakey has authored a compelling account of his time at the helm of Kenya Wildlife Services. The book recounts the bush war against poaching, and contains a very vivid description of Kenyan political life. Sadly - and ironically - the success of Dr. Leakey's management of KWS created a long list of political adversaries that eventually forced Leaky to resign from the post.

   There can be no doubt that Dr. Leakey has been the chief architect behind the saving of the African elephant from extinction by the hands of poachers. Dr. Leakey's work stands as one of the most important wildlife conservation achievements of all time. Finally, I believe Dr. Leakey is one of the - perhaps last? - great Kenyan patriots. This story inspires. If there were ever a Nobel Prize for bravery and commitment, surely it would be his.




3. Anyone who has ever been to Kenya's extraordinary game parks to see the elephants, or dreamed of doing so, will be fascinated by this story of how these parks came to be the refuges they are and not the corrals for government-sanctioned poaching that they were. When paleontologist Richard Leakey took over the Department of Wildlife and Conservation in 1989, rampant corruption, theft, absenteeism, and a don't-care attitude were hallmarks within the department.
   
   The Kenyan government lacked a real commitment to conservation, and the burgeoning population exerted pressure on national park borders, clearing land for farming and threatening wildlife, unimpeded. Poaching, patronage, a general ripoff mentality, and collusion between park rangers, politicians, blackmarketeers, and smugglers, were so interconnected and seemingly so ineradicable that the department resembled a many-headed hydra. Tribal rivalries within Kenya, a porous border through which Somalian thieves made forays, and a lack of agreement between Kenya and neighboring African countries about the best way to conserve animals made this one of the most daunting management challenges imaginable.
   
   In prose that is as direct and to the point (and sometimes as self-congratulatory) as he is, Leakey tells how he managed a multimilliondollar corporation in a country in which everyone wants a piece of the pie, usually under the table. As Leakey tells of cleaning up the department and conserving the elephants, the reader also learns about the economics of the ivory trade, the tug-of-war between immediate political realities and long-term goals, the role of the World Bank in African development, and the politicking involved in deciding what is an endangered species under the U.N.'s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). It's a fascinating tale, equally intriguing to the lover of wildlife, the student of management, and the East African history buff. Mary Whipple



4. Anything with the names Richard Leakey and Virginia Morell on the cover is guaranteed to be a worthwhile read. Like his equally brilliant and famous father Louis, Richard Leakey is not without controversial opinion. Though generally in agreement with the authors, I found this book challenging some of my basic assumptions about conservation. To that end the book provides an excellent point of departure for classroom discussions on major conservation issues of the day such as community roles in conservation, the effectiveness of National Parks in protecting wildlife and biodiversity, and the interplay between international, national and local needs and strategies. The book is an exhilarating, easy read and will appeal to a broad range of ages and cultural backgrounds.



5. The text of the book,the determinatoin of the writer in combating poarching,the fight against corrupt elements within the industry i.e tourism and wildlife and above all the success of bringing this fight to the attention of the world all gives me the pleasure of praising this book.