The Reindeer People by Piers Vitebsky. Account by an anthropologist of his life and times spent with the Eveny, a reindeer herding native people in Siberia. On Steve's recommendation.
Purity of Blood by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Historical novel set in 1620s Spain and sequel to his earlier "Captain Alatriste." An enjoyably literate swashbuckler with a rare Spanish perspective. The title comes from, and the plot turns on the fact that in Hapsburg Spain, anyone of prominence had to prove pure Christian ancestry with no Moorish or Jewish intermarriage - something tough to do in a country largely run by the Moors for several hundred years.
Desert Dreams: The Art and Life of Maynard Dixon by Donald Hagerty. Maynard Dixon (1875-1946) was a talented but under-recognized artist of the American West. If you are like me, you'll leaf through the plates in this book and recognize lots of paintings and drawings that you never connected to this artist. Something I learned from this book: Dixon was good friends with artist Gottardo Piazzoni, grandfather of, and inspiration to artist and Bodio friend, Russell Chatham. Chatham's portrait of Betsy Huntington is on the cover of "Querencia."
Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland by Bryan Sykes. Interesting story of a genetic survey of the British Isles.
UPDATE
In response to Jerry Blake's comment I have loaded a scanned image of Maynard Dixon's "Cloud World."
4 comments:
No one conveys the immensity of sky and scale in the American West like Maynard Dixon. Especially my favorites "Cloud World" and "Red Butte With Mountain Men"
Brigham Young University, which evidently owns the majority of his work, held an exhibit back in 2001 called "Escape to Reality: The Western World of Maynard Dixon." The accompanying exhibit book is excellent.
They also held a small side exhibit for Dixon's wife, the photographer Dorothea Lange of "Migrant Mother" fame.
As I remember Tom McGuane has a beauty of a Dixon with clouds...
I should add in this set of "Six Degrees " trivia: "artist and Bodio friend" Russ Chatham introduced me to Libby.
That Libby's mother and Betsy's older sister were raised together in China in the 1920's-- a fact we did not know when we met-- is a topic for another time.
That was interesting I thought you'd like to see an article to be written by Donald Hagerty
found here.
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