The forgotten author thanks you for your review.

Great imagery on archaeological sites. Flight into Yesterday is a must for anyone interested in geography or aerial photography.

Having traveled and trekked in Nepal, we found the Tharu MAHABHARATA very informative. To most travelers, the indigenous Tharu Tribes and their customs are totally unknown. We enjoyed reading the rather archaic version of the well-known story.

A must have for anyone wishing to participate in the archaeology of Illinois and to better understand the development of archaeology in America, this publication covers the pioneering archaeological investigations of the University of Chicago in the Central Illinois River Valley undertaken during the early 1930's. It presents the results of the first scientific, problem oriented, archaeological exploration to be undertaken in the eastern U.S., the undertaking that set the stage for a new era of archaeological thinking. So innovative and important was this early work that the University of Chicago field school project in Fulton County has come to be considered by many as the Birthplace of American Archaeology. The roster of students attending these early field schools contained the names of a plethora of individuals who would later form the backbone of American archaeology. Among these were Braidwood, Cross, Driver, Jennings, Nash, Setzler, Brew, DeJarnette, Eggan, Morgan, Neumann, Walker, and James B. Griffin. Thus, this publication is valuable not only as a historical document, but it set forth a model for prehistoric cultural sequences for the Illinois region that remains functional eight decades later.

This labor of love by Dr.Leo Deuel was published by Knopf 1965. If you care about books, the thrill implicit in palaeography or archaeology, and about what the ancients kept written records of, this book is for you.
It is long out of print, so if you chance upon a copy, hug it, buy it, devour it, relish it.

The author's undertaking is daring. His scope may be judged from the following BOOKS within a book:
BOOK ONE: A RENAISSANCE PRELUDE
BOOK TWO: THE PERMANANCE OF PAPYRUS AND CLAY a) CLASSICS b) THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST
BOOK THREE: THE PREVALENCE OF PARHCMENT a) THE NEW TESTAMENT b) HEBREW WRITS
BOOK FOUR: A PROFUSION OF SILK, BARK, AND PAPER a) INNER ASIA b) THE NEW WORLD.

With so wide a scope, the author has created a book that beckons (I found it by accident at The Strand, NY. I am a non-specialist in thsi subject). 590 pages, BW Plates 16 in number, five maps, and figures, woodcuts and facsimiles of scripts and symbols far too numerous to tally. (Examples include Aramaic, Syriac to Brahmi to the Dresden Codex pictograms of Mexico).

Even in the instance where decoding might have progressed since the author laid pen to paper, the humor, the flow and the narrative keep the reader in thrall.

I will give only one example to whet the appetite. A certain Sir Aurel Stein(1862-1943) after Oxford, the British Musuem, was stationed as Registrar of the Punjab University in British India(1888). He persuaded, says the author, the bureaucratic red tape to let him undertake in the reverse direction Marco Polo's travel. He then routinely traversed high mountain passes several times, exploring, surveying, seeking the Silk Route, written records of any kind from peoples past. He once lost his toes (amputation after the Kunlun mountains took their toll), several times cracked his collarbone. But he was outclimbing assigned helpers at the age of 60.

The retold story of his archeological exploits in the arid desert of Taklamakan, his two digs there (in winter perforce where temperatures at night reached 0 degrees F), his challenging in some outlands a forger whose products had found a place in European Museums as genuine records, and the adventure story of arriving at Tun Huang (some one thousand miles across desert) and of his dealing with the "keeper of the scroll library" in the "Thousand Buddha Caves (grottoes)" are greatly amusing.

Tantalizing little drawings of character sets and pictograms abound. Not photographs but illustrations or facsimiles.
Enjoy scripts uncial, scripts miniscule, and letters ligatured!

Having recently read Nicholas Basbanes' "A Gentle Madness" and "Patience and Fortitude",(both excellent reading for post-papyrus, book-form bibliomania as you will ever see,) the book under review compares very favorably for including writing materials of every sort known to mankind over centuries and all civilizations.
It also compares favorably for the thrill and pull of the narrative.

Lest I should have mischaracterized the quintessence of the book, here is the author in his own words in foreword piece:
"....The books and documents not only of remote and forgotten peoples but of all ages and cultures even beyond the invention of printing have vanished. THe ancient Hebrews registered the loss of the Book of Jasher; most of the literature of the Anglo-Saxons has disappeared; there are gaps in the Elizabethan drama; today we possess but a fraction of the works of Hellenic and Latin authors.//....This is, in short, a book about books and about the scholars who searched for and discovered lost manuscripts and who interpreted and deciphered them."

I grew up two miles and one generation away from the setting of this story. It brought back childhood memories of familiar locations and names. The author uses an interesting technique of telling the story with different points of view in each chapter. It makes for enjoyable reading even though it's a mostly fiction story based on real characters. The author's POV is used often enough to bring out the emotions of a coming-of-age story and the social aspects of mid-Thirties farm life. There are many similarities between this Hidewood memoir and mine, "A Farm in the Hidewood: My South Dakota Home."