In 1860 William Brewer; a young Yale-educated teacher of the natural sciences and a recent widower; eagerly accepted an offer from Josiah Whitney to assist in the first geological survey of the state of California. Brewer was not a geologist; but his training in agriculture and botany made him an invaluable member of the team. He traveled more than fourteen thousand miles in the four years he spent in California and spent much of his leisure time writing lively; detailed letters to his brother back East.These warmly affectionate letters; presented here in their entirety; describe the new state in all its spectacular beauty and paint a vivid picture of California in the mid-nineteenth century. This fourth edition includes a new foreword by William Bright (1500 California Place Names) and a set of maps tracing Brewer's route.
#1423520 in Books Johannes Fabian 2000-06-13 2000-06-13Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 8.97 x .84 x 6.11l; 1.10 #File Name: 0520221230335 pagesOut of Our Minds Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Three StarsBy Flavius MokakeGood14 of 16 people found the following review helpful. Farcical and saddeningBy Nathanael RobinsonFabian works industriously to get behind the "Indiana Jones"-type figures who opened Africa up to European enterprise. His general thesis is obvious if correct: that explorers were not the rational beings who used scientific reason to conquer the wild African landscape and the wilder Africans. They were scared; drunk; pompous; open to seduction; tied to creature comforts ... . They resemble the late 20th-century American who cannot imagine living without civilization. What makes the book entertaining is the encyclopedia of sensual experiences that Fabian offers: how they saw; herd; felt Africa; how they interacted with people and the world; how they established their authority and leadership. Fabian thereby produces an extensive and detailed image of the personalities of explorers as they worked their way across Africa. Perhaps the most amusing image is of heavy phonographs and bottles of wine carried along jungle paths that they followed rather than discovered and the extent they relied on native Africans as guides; porters and interpreters to learn about the "dark" continent. Some sense of Central African exploration might help; but it is by no means necessary.
