| 1. Mirage: Napoleon's Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt | 
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By: Nina Burleigh
Publisher: Harper Perennial
December 09, 2008
When Napoleon led 50,000 soldiers into the nominally Turkish-controlled Egypt, he brought along 151 scientists, from leading mature famous ones to students. The book details all of the things that went wrong, and quite destroyed Napoleon's image as a great military leader to me. There's too much of the military events and not enough of the actual science for me, but it does make a wonderful read... more
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| 2. Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World | 
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By: Sharon Waxman
Publisher: Times Books
September 01, 2009
When we look with amazement and wonder at the antiques in the Louvre, British Museum, Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, we seldom ponder on how they were collected and the stories behind the acquisitions of those pieces. Now in this detailed book `Loot' , Sharon Waxman tells us the fight (both legal and political) that is going on between the countries... more
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| 3. A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer | 
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By: Nina Burleigh
Publisher: Bantam
October 05, 1999
As others have said in earlier reviews, this is a tediously written book, on a deliriously fascinating subject. How one could have possibly made the subject boring is beyond imagining, yet that is exactly what has occurred in Nina Burleigh's accounting of Mary Pinchot Meyer's bigger-than-life, art and politics filled world. For those looking for a better rendering of the subject, reviews for the... more
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| 4. Belshazzar's Daughter (Felony & Mayhem Mysteries) (Inspector Ikmen Mysteries) |
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By: Barbara Nadel
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem
October 15, 2006
From the very first page, Barbara Nadel hooks you into a murder that takes place in a poor section of Istanbul, where a poor Jewish immigrant is mysteriously and hideously murdered, leaving an astonishing about of cash tucked into his blood soaked mattress. There are times you almost can't breathe as Inspector Ikmen strikes up another match to light another cigarette, sucks brandy straight out of his... more
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| 5. The Invention of the Jewish People |
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By: Shlomo Sand
Publisher: Verso
October 19, 2009
This book must has been amazing in its original language but translation has made it un-interesting and difficult to read. On top of it the font used is small an weird that gives headache after reading few lines. Looks like profit has been put ahead of customers. I hope next edition will make better translation and use a bigger and easy to read font.
Hammad... more
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| 6. Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World |
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By: Roger Atwood
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
January 10, 2006
In the area of antiquity theft this book is a tour de force, a fast-paced revelation of the dark side of the modern world of antiques. Stealing antiquities in Iraq under battleground conditions, stealing them at night with tomb robbers in Peru, stealing them by lobbying in the US capitol, and stealing them by international, high stakes illicit, money-laundering operations funded by organized crime... more
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| 7. Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization (Case Studies in Early Societies) | 
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By: Arthur Demarest
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
January 10, 2005
Reading a carefully researched, painstakingly compiled academic book is always a pleasure for me. As a former academic myself, I know what it takes---the hours, the millions of details, the checking and cross-checking of facts, the gathering of bibliography and weighing the arguments of all the authors, the mental absorption of months and years. You can never get free until it's done. So, when I... more
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| 8. The Stranger and the Statesman: James Smithson, John Quincy Adams, and the Making of America's Greatest Museum: The Smithsonian |
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By: Nina Burleigh
Publisher: Harper Perennial
September 28, 2004
People want to like this book. I definitely had it on a "to do" list for quite a while. Could there be anything more interesting than John Quincy Adams, James Smithson and the founding of America's greatest scientific institution, the Smithsonian?
James Smithson was a reclusive figure and to be fair little was known about him so the author did not have much to go on. But why fill this... more
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| 9. Thieves of Baghdad |
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By: Matthew Bogdanos, William Patrick
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
October 26, 2005
Bottom of page 15, author erroneously asserts that "Baathists" overthrew the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, whereas it was in fact a military coup led by Abd al-Karim Qasim who was a "Free Officer" inspired by the pan-Arabism of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd al-Nasr. Author's appreciation for antiquities/classics is laudable, as is his dedication to the work in Baghdad. There are some interesting first-hand... more
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| 10. The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts | 
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By: Neil Asher Silberman, Israel Finkelstein
Publisher: Free Press
May 28, 2002
Super informative, well-written, and logically put together. Blows the Old Testament myths right out of the water by way of archaeological evidence--or lack thereof. If you had the sneaking suspicion that much of the Bible was imaginative story-telling, this book will confirm your suspicions; not with rhetoric, but actual proof. And it not only gives you the how, but the why. There's a reason these... more
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Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
