“Jake Page is one of the Southwest’s most distinguished writers.”—The Denver PostA bizarre murder leaves two teenagers dead in a desert arroyo, their naked bodies side by side, face up under the New Mexican sun. Near them, etched in stone, is a symbol unlike any Native American marking. What does it signify? The puzzle is made to order for Mo Bowdre's quirky and capacious intelligence. But Bowdre, a wildlife sculptor and occasional sleuth, may be in over h...

Today, some two million American Indians inhabit the United States, less than one percent of the nation's population. Their origins have always been viewed from a 500-year-old perspective—from the point of view of the Europeans who "discovered" the New World. Yet the true story of the American Indians begins some seventeen thousand years ago—and it is past due for a telling that shows Indians as they are, rather than as westerners wish them to be.Recent archaeological findings, new...

J. M. Adovasio has spent the last thirty years at the center of one of our most fiery scientific debates: Who were the first humans in the Americas, and how and when did they get there?At its heart, The First Americans is the story of the revolution in thinking that Adovasio and his fellow archaeologists have brought about, and the firestorm it has ignited. As he writes, “The work of lifetimes has been put at risk, reputations have been damaged, an astounding amount of sil...

Headline: A peak behind the Hollywood mask by one of its foremost makeup artistsIn Hollywood’s heyday, almost every major studio had a Westmore heading up the makeup department. Since 1917, there has never been a time when Westmores weren’t shaping the visages of stardom. For their century-long dedication to the art of makeup, the Westmores were honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2008. In this lively memoir, Michael Westmore not only regales us with tales of Holly...

"This jauntily written, highly convincing analysis . . . argues that women of prehistory were pivotal in a wide range of culture-building endeavors." — Publishers WeeklyShaped by cartoons and museum dioramas, our vision of Paleolithic times tends to feature fur-clad male hunters fearlessly attacking mammoths while timid women hover fearfully behind a boulder. In fact, recent research has shown that this vision bears little relation to reality.The f...

In this marvelous collection, David Leeming and Jake Page have gathered together the great myths and legends of America, ranging from the creation stories of the first inhabitants, to the tall-tales of the Western frontier, to the legendary outlaws of the 1920s. Here is a thoroughly engaging chronicle, a book unrivaled in its scope, embracing Big Foot and Windingo, Hiawatha and Uncle Sam, Paul Revere and Billy the Kid, the Iroquois Flying Head and Elvis. The editors cast their nets widely....

Inconstant and forbidding, the arctic has lured misguided voyagers into the cold for centuries--pushing them beyond the limits of their knowledge, technology, and endurance. A Fabulous Kingdom charts these quests and the eventual race for the North Pole, chronicling the lives and adventures that would eventually throw light on this "magical realm" of sunless winters. They follow the explorers from the early journeys of Viking Ottar to the daring exploits of Martin Frobisher, Henry...

Inconstant and forbidding, the arctic has lured misguided voyagers into the cold for centuries--pushing them beyond the limits of their knowledge, technology, and endurance. A Fabulous Kingdom charts these quests and the eventual race for the North Pole, chronicling the lives and adventures that would eventually throw light on this "magical realm" of sunless winters. They follow the explorers from the early journeys of Viking Ottar to the daring exploits of Martin Frobisher, Henry...

Shaped by cartoons and museum dioramas, our vision of Paleolithic times tends to feature fur-clad male hunters fearlessly attacking mammoths while timid women hover fearfully behind a boulder. Recent archaeological research has shown that this vision bears little relation to reality. J. M. Adovasio and Olga Soffer, two of the world's leading experts on perishable artifacts such as basketry, cordage, and weaving, present an exciting new look at prehistory. With science writer Jake Page, the...

It was the Vikings, not Christopher Columbus, who made the first European discovery of America. It was the Vikings, not the Pilgrim Fathers, who were the first Europeans settlers in America, and it was probably the Vikings who first used the name America.Around a thousand years ago the Vikings crossed the North Atlantic and established their settlements on the American continent. Yet today both Europe and North America treat the Vikings in North America as if it were no more than a...

"As wide-ranging, imaginative, and revealing as the maps they discuss, these essays . . . track how maps—interpreted broadly—convey time as well as space." —Richard White, Stanford UniversityMaps organize us in space, but they also organize us in time. Looking around the world for the last five hundred years, Time in Maps shows that today's digital maps are only the latest effort to insert a sense of time into the spatial medium of maps. Historians Kären Wi...