Books that Inspire, or Good Reads...

I was most recently tagged in one of those social media chain letters asking to produce a number of books that make my "good reads" list. I saw someone else post it the day before as the 10 (I think) books that changed your life. I think about these whenever I see them, even if I am not tagged, but being tagged with a separate set of list instructions really put me to thinking about reading, and the books that I have.

My library. Really choose only a handful? I have read completely about 75% of these.
Most of the rest are for reference.

   For me, at least, I find it hard to not say that every book you read has changed your life. That impact may be imperceptible, but just as you can never cross the same river twice, you cannot possibly be the same person you were after finishing a book. Whether you loved it or hated it, or even didn't finish it, it has left its mark upon you in some way.

In an attempt to be reflective on my own reading experiences as well as subversive to the Facebook list chain letter that I am sure was started by a poor unfortunate Nigerian prince just before he set out on the ill-fated journey in which his car wrecked and he left a sizable inheritance to me, I will do both, but with my own rules and parameters.

There are the classics that I have read, because in my 5th grade mind, the classics were what everyone should know. I tackled Moby Dick because it was huge. (If Charlie Brown could read War and Peace, I could read Moby Dick) It was a herculean task for the summer between 5th and 6th grades. I had already read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea because my grandfather had said it was his favorite book. I have read it at least twice since then and I find myself still sympathizing with Nemo. To be honest I was in awe of Captain Ahab's blind ambition to a goal, damned the cost of life, limb, and/or money. I think that is because I never had anything that I was that passionate about. Even today, people that fuss over a certain show, a certain book series, or a certain pop culture entity both fascinate and on some basal level repulse me.

To this day The Wind in the Willows remains my favorite book. I have watched the identifiers change from the simple enjoyment of anthropomorphized animals to the underlying struggles of class and even race. But, at its heart it is really the talking animals that do it. The companion piece of animation produced by Rankin and Bass is my favorite animated feature as well, even if it does rearrange the characterization a bit. Don Quixote continues to be a favorite for Cervantes writing style and most especially for his humor and use of irony and dialogue. H. Rider Haggard's stories of Allan Quartemain and Conrad's Heart of Darkness were also books that are still floating around in my brain mixed with a more than healthy dose of Ernest Hemingway.

Once upon a time Wal-Mart ran a "complete and unabridged"series of the "classics" that were two for $1.00 in paperback. Since my mother worked there, I was able to get most of them and they certainly came in handy. Fred, Texas only has an elementary school and come jr. high and high school we were bussed about 16 miles to Warren. When school let out at 2:45 I still had an hour and a half before rolling in on our dirt road at 4:30. I read on the bus. A lot. All of them. I can distinctly remember reading Rifle's for Watie, Johnny Tremain, and the True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle as well.

One of the most influential books on my mind's eye and judging the realism (real and imagined as I later found out) was a book in this series given to me by my grandfather. It was Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage. Ever since I read it and learned more about Crane's life (what little there is to know) I have always had a kind of soft spot for him. But the vivid details he put into his writings still stands out to me. Of course, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells still come up again and again (to my utter delight) as characters influencing the history of science.

Geology AND geologic time

I made the same grown up transition that many do and read Michael Crichton starting with Sphere in 6th grade until I ran out of his books. Jurassic Park and Congo are still favorites, and forgetting the terrible movie version, Timeline is a surprisingly good book.

As far as the books that have "changed" my life in the sense that the questionnaire wanted to know so they could target my page with advertisements for things the algorithm relates to those titles there are two sets that I have that have influenced my particular path of education and study. Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, which I read not long after beginning college at Lamar was a beat up library copy of "the books that inspired Darwin." They are actually beautiful pieces of literature aside from important technological geological ideas. I recently found a very nice leather-bound set pictured with the other set that has influenced my studies greatly.

Somewhere on either side of my birthday in the year 2000 my grandmother gave me a millennial edition of the Rand McNally road atlas of America and said "use it." It took some time but I eventually took jobs that required travel, and when I finally went back to college used it all over the American southwest on geological field expeditions. Some time after that she gifted me the leather-bound set of the Lewis and Clark journals along with Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage.

I sat in the back yard this morning finishing up reading and some research on the Pacific Railroad surveys for one of the first (last) classes I will take before writing my dissertation. The challenge to list influential book has come at an interesting time as I see the list of names and contributions to American history that follow the geological pioneers that accompanied the first surveys west, including Lewis and Clark. Even re-reading Turner's Frontier Thesis brought into focus several geological analogies that I had missed the first 5 times it was assigned in American History.

The history of the United States, especially the American West, is indelibly linked to the history of geology, and almost the entire nation has an inseparable link to the history of science. Most en vogue historians of American science begin our ascent with the Manhattan Project, ignoring the vast wealth of scientific history that predates the birth of their favorite emigrant scientists. The more diverse places that I look for our history, the more often I see familiar names, Hayden, Powell, the entire Peale family, Baird, and others with government reports being the largest body of evidence for their work. We cannot break the early ties of government and scientific expeditions, and somehow through a very winding path, all roads have converged to the point where that needs to be written, comprehensively as a historical work on science, art, politics, religion, genocide, and culture. That is where these two sets have led, and why they would be some of the most important works I have read.

Personification of America(s)

During the Golden Age of Exploration, maps conveyed as much personality of a place as it did the detail about its physical layout. The continents were usually personified in art, (think Rubens in the early 17th century, among others)

Rubens has the four continents embraced by their four respected rivers, Africa-The Nile, Europe-The Danube, Asia-The Ganges, and America in the back with The Rio de la Plata. Which for those unfamiliar with South American geography is the "Silver River" that empties into the Atlantic at Buenos Aires. As there was more colonial success in South America at the time, and Rubens was a diplomat in service of the Spanish crown (among others) it is natural that he is more familiar with South America than El Norte, the symbolism remains the same though. 

Europeanized or not, the personification of America began as a Minerva figure, but quickly took on the guise of an Indian Princess usually seen with, often times riding, some dangerous reptile. As in this frieze on a German building. 

My favorite really is Adrien Colleart II's mid-18th-century version where she, armed with bow and ax is riding a giant armadillo. 

As for the subtle warnings to explorers, Henry Popple included some hard to miss "here be dragons" moments. The ever present alligator is near the princess, as well as a monkey, and and armed warrior. In case that wasn't explicit enough (apparently Popple, knew his audience), she has her foot on a (ver European-looking) severed head that has been pierced with an arrow. To be fair, this map is the west coast of British Honduras and not specifically the North American continent, but the allusion is the same. 

As relationships deteriorated (read as the Europeans lost control), the Princess grew ever more threatening, until she was at least replaced by a male indian warrior. This wasn't just artistic license and/or personal choice as a religious edict called for the replacement of the female figures with that of a male.

When the West was North

It is probably better to speak of the West at this point as simply the Frontier. On the American continent the East was even at once considered West. But it is more than a direction. Colonial frontiers such as New York and Ohio, are almost laughable as "West" by the standards of the Montanans and any of the video game characters that you managed to get to the end of the Oregan Trail without dying of dysentery or starving to death. Even the idea of West as being westerly falls into disarray when you look at it from the perspective of New Spain and Mexico. For them the West was North, into Texas (and even farther).

This notion goes overlooked by many because there are not the copious amounts of art that depict encounters between the Spaniards and the Indians and/or Mexicans, or the Mexicans and Spaniards against the Indians, or Mayan, Aztec, and Incan civilizations. The bulk of European (or at least European style) art depict the French and Indian Wars that ravaged the colonial holdings of France and England in what is now the northern United States and southern Canada. Even literature followed this suit. I still do not know of a spanish equivalent of "The Last of the Mohicans."

There are a few things that we do have, however and they paint a vivid picture of the American Southwest, or the Mexican Northwest depending on your point of view. One (or really, two) is the Segesser Hide Paintings that are housed in the New Mexico History Museum in downtown Santa Fe. 

The other is a piece of religious and historical art. "The Destruction of Mission San Saba in the Province of Texas and the Martyrdom of the Fathers Alonso de Terreros, Joseph Santiesteban" was completed in the 1760s. To have room for the subjects and the title, the piece is an enormous 83 by 115 inches (6'11" x 9'7") and tells the story of the destruction of a Spanish Mission. So, there's that. 

Learning to See

       The beauty of finally making it to the "build your own" portion of a PhD program is the ability to make connections outside your department. Having "mastered" the basic foundations of your discipline it is now time to build onto it using materials and tools from far and wide. This is where you carve out your academic niche and bring the history, perspective, and baggage that only you possess. The plan here is to share some of the highlights, links, and images from my foray into Art History of the American West. Hopefully these will be short(er), and entertaining if not illuminating. Plus rehashing what we went over for you will help me remember things.

I have always enjoyed art. I hasten to add "good" just to bother those people that think art is completely subjective and that a geometric abstract is just as "good" as a perfectly represented landscape or natural history painting. For me, it is not. I enjoy realism, and allegory. But I am aware that there are artists who have shaken off the fetters of artistic confinement and have collectively given the art world a raspberry. Images and imagery are now, and mostly forever been important. They exist on millennia old cave walls for instance, and they are still important today. The impact their manipulation and broadcast from general photoshop to official propaganda cannot be understated.

Art history should be required courses for whatever subject you are studying and at whatever level you are working. At the very least it should be strongly suggested as electives. It is nearly impossible to understand the modern money flow in science and research without understanding early scientific patronage. That, in turn, is almost impossible to unravel without understanding the patronage system of art--that is official, high-class, royal, courtly art.

For this quick installment I want to share two videos and some thoughts on Art in the American West. You may or may not be aware that Western art has been held to a higher standard of accuracy than any other genre. It was imperative that the artists accurately represent what was "out there" so those wanting to start a new life would have at least some idea of what was going to kill them.

In "The Death of General Wolfe" Benjamin West broke with the tradition of painting modern subjects in classical dress and poses. West kept the posing and dramatics but but everyone in period dress.

The biggest argument over this painting was the infamous moccasin incident. West had failed to put moccasins on the Indian (never mind the fact that the only Indian there fought against General Wolfe). In subsequent versions West painted a pair near the figure. Also forgivable was the inclusion of all his top ranking officers close by his side when he died. As mentioned in the video, this was no way to run an engagement. There is a lot going on to this, and it is useful to understand the period not only that the battle took place, but when the scene was painted and what politics were influencing the artist, was it a commission of some sort, etc. All these questions will help you learn to see a painting in contrast to simply looking at one.