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A Good Read: Book Suggestions & Recommendations

I read The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley many years ago, and it remains in my bookcase as a well-thumbed edition.
I must admit that I've never read any MZB.
Reading about her just now makes me doubtful that I will.
 
Oh God. I'd never heard that stuff. I'll just crawl back into my corner and rock for a while.

l’ve never read any Bradley, but a quick look at the relevant part of her Wikipedia article leaves me suspicious: Her daughter accuses her of sexual molestation beginning in the later Sixties (?), yet waits almost fifty years until 2014 - fifteen years after MZB’s death - in order to do it?

Hmmm

maximus otter
 
I would like to recommend a book, I have nearly finished reading it and I have enjoyed every bit of it, it is called, The Best of John Keel, got it off of Amazon KindleUnlimited, It has never once bored me, Fort is mentioned quite a bit, is Keel a Fortean? anyway a very interesting read, there are some things in there i have not seen before, and I love the fact there is no technobabble in it, I understood what he said.
 
Try Aurora. A generation ship, finally approaching its destination. There are problems, shortage of trace elements, people not having a choice about which ship habitats they live/work in. The story is mostly told by the ship's AI who is asked to construct a narrative of the voyage. In doing so it may have achieved consciousness.

An article about traversing the Sierras with Kim Stanley Robinson, his SF novels, his upcoming memoir and climate change.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels envision the dire problems of the future—but also their solutions.
By Joshua Rothman

Many of Robinson’s twenty-one science-fiction novels are ecological in theme, and this coming summer he will publish “The High Sierra: A Love Story,” a memoir that is also a rich geological and cultural history of the range. After returning from Deadman, he updated the manuscript to include the vanished glaciers. He told me about them a couple of weeks later, while we were driving through California, toward our own backpacking trip in the Sierras. Tan and trim, with silver hair and wire-rim eyeglasses, Robinson rode in the back seat of the car, looking out at wildfire smoke. ... Shelves were dedicated to volumes about Galileo, which Robinson had read while writing “Galileo’s Dream,” a highly detailed historical novel, published in 2009. Mario Biagioli, a historian of science and a Galileo expert who’d helped Robinson with the research, was the third member of our backpacking party; an accomplished giant-slalom skier, endurance cyclist, and transatlantic sailor, he drove us expertly, hugging the curves. ...

His now classic “Mars” trilogy, published in the nineteen-nineties, describes the terraforming of the Red Planet by scientists seeking to create a “permaculture,” or truly sustainable way of life. A typical Robinson novel ends with an academic conference at which researchers propose ideas for improving civilization. He believes that scholarly and diplomatic meetings are among our species’s highest achievements.

Climate change has long figured in Robinson’s plots. “Antarctica,” a novel from 1997, revolves around glaciologists at a fictional version of McMurdo Station, the principal U.S. outpost in Antarctica. (Robinson researched the book there, exploring ice cathedrals and helping to take the first G.P.S. reading of the South Pole.) In the two-thousands, climate started to become his central subject; his wonky brand of sci-fi turned out to be well suited to a reality in which the future depends on fast, unlikely, and coördinated global reform. “Science in the Capital,” a trilogy of novels published between 2004 and 2007, follows administrators at the National Science Foundation as they fight climate change through grants; “New York 2140,” from 2017, is set in a Venice-like Big Apple and explores efforts to reform the financial system on ecological grounds. With each book, Robinson has revised his deeply researched climate-change scenario, focussing not just on environmental havoc but on solutions that might stop it.

His most recent novel, “The Ministry for the Future,” published in October, 2020, during the second wave of the pandemic, centers on the work of a fictional U.N. agency charged with solving climate change. The book combines science, politics, and economics to present a credible best-case scenario for the next few decades. It’s simultaneously heartening and harrowing. ...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/...p-to-our-climate-reality-kim-stanley-robinson



 
I'm currently reading Children of Dune, the third installment in Frank Herbert's lauded series, the one that's getting something of a fresh reappraisal with the recent release of a film adaptation of half of the first book (which is as unsatisfactory as that sounds).

I'll come clean and admit that, with notable exceptions, I don't really like much American fiction from the 50s and 60s; to paint with a very broad brush, I (a non-American) feel so much of it is a) tiresome in its uninteresting experiments with form, perspective and voice (the cream of the modernists did so much more), and b) ultimately, insular—it speaks more to Americans about the experience of being modern Americans than to humans about being human, even when the setting is beyond the land from sea to shining sea. Moreover, the worst of the era's authors were so caught up in the giddiness of their own aching modernity that the contemporary reader is veritably bombarded with outmoded language and idiom that can mask messages of potentially enduring value. Don't be offended, Transatlantic Forteans, I hold other eras of British fiction in equal distain.

My own prejudice having been aired, I'll say that what I've read so far has been very interesting—not always gripping, I confess: Dune Messiah has some tedious longueurs during which it lapses into introspection on the experience of prescience and the nature of government and religion (I was minded, weirdly, of the Temple at Dawn, the third book of Mishima's Sea of Fertility tetralogy, with it's extremely long digressions into the philosophy of law and Hindu/Buddhist views on reincarnation), but usually very interesting. Herbert seems to know—just about—when he needs to quicken the pace and drop some present tense narrative, narrative he does very well despite the slabs of world-building history and ecology that his tales wend their way through (again, like Tolkien, his landscape descriptions are second-to-none). Perhaps it's this very contrast that makes the direct-action at the end of the protagonists' agonisingly cautious web-spinning feel exceedingly satisfying.

Elsewhere, comparisons to Tolkien seem to crop up regularly and it's easy to see why (although I know nothing of any direct influence and have read that Tolkien did not like the work), but (without checking dates) I'd say a key difference inheres in the fact that although Tolkien's historical setting spans millennia, the primary narrative of, say, The Lord of the Rings (the part we read and experience 'as it happens' in his fictional present) only really stretches a few years ('There and Back Again'); the three books from Herbert I'm currently working through casually skip several years at a bound and then strategically drip-feed the events of the intervening years back to the reader in non-chronological order—which is effective as it requires the reader to actively 'work along', placing the new pieces into what has already been revealed of the puzzle. It has been hinted to me by friends that there are many more such leaps to come in books 4 to 6. Also interesting is the fact that the 'flavour' quotations that introduce the (unnumbered) chapters are not as disposable as usual. Indeed, they often foreshadow and prefigure events yet to arrive in the narrative, but from unconventional perspectives: extracts from histories and prayer-books, lyrics and poems, confessions and scientifc treatise. This demands an unusual dual viewing-point from the reader, who, if paying proper attention, is obliged to step outside the immediacy of the currently unfurling plot (and it does tend to unfurl, not directly present itself) to view the whole tale retrospectively as having being completed in some now-mythical past of a far, far-flung future (sub specie aeternitatis?). This perhaps draws us back to Tolkien's Red Book of Westmarch, a framing device that bolsters verisimilitude and neatly bookends the whole cycle, but I've yet to complete the whole series and am told, in any case, that there is no great resolution at the end.

In conclusion, so far, so good, but it isn't an easy page-turner if you are accustomed to the lazy clichés of modern sci-fi and fantasy. I'm pleasantly satisfied that it has retained its appeal so long (so sales would suggest); perhaps the masses should offered more of this fare and less junk!
 
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So I've been a bit depressed lately and my Go To Genre in such situations is the Psychological Thriller (science fiction demands too much of me in such times). Something Real world - and hence not requiring too much cogitation - but with a whiff of Forteana in its exploration of the nooks and crannies of human psychology.

I have noted that this seems to be a very much female dominated genre - with the great Barbara Vine as the Queen bee of it all - and I have no problem with that. It was nice, however to come across a new male kid on the block.

His name is Peter Swanson and actually he's not that new - he already has four novels to his name (but somehow he's flown under my radar).

The one I've just read is called Before She Knew Him (Faber & Faber, 2019).

Somewhere in Massachusetts a youngish couple who have recently moved into an upmarket residential area are invited to have a dinner party in a house of a couple of a similar age next door to them. The wife of the invited couple notices, in the study of the host couple's husband, an item which she believes could only have been taken from the victim of a recent murder in the locality....

The plot moves fast without ever sacrificing it's intelligence. The characters - even the villainous ones - are all extremely easy to relate to and it is as twisty as hell yet always credible. There are also some quite deep ruminations on the relations between the sexes and of both misogyny and misandry.

Satisfaction guaranteed - unless you're just someone who doesn't care for this genre.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40390756-before-she-knew-him
 
A review I've written for FT magazine.

Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland
ed. Matthew Cheeseman and Carina Hart

Routledge 2021 Hb, 326pp, £120, ISBN 9780367440961

This collection, originating in the Folklore Society’s 2019 conference, Folklore and the Nation, sets out to explore folklore (shared, traditional culture) and folkloristics (the academic discipline) within the contested national discourses of Britain and Ireland. It explores the role of folklore in shaping the islands’ constituent nations from the 18th to the 21st centuries. and examines how folklore functions as a vehicle for nationalist thought and sentiment, covering varied historical areas of discourse from the Brothers Grimm to Brexit.

I’ll focus on a few of the more accessible pieces, but others worth reading among the 17 essays include “Brexit and the Making of a Myth” by Tabitha Peterkin, “The Country Dance and Shakespeare-Land” by Felix Taylor, “Robin Hood, Boris Johnson and Extinction Rebellion” by Carina Hart and “Haddon and the Anarchist Agenda in the Anglo-Irish Folklore Movement! by Ciarán Walsh.

In “British Folk Film and Television” Diane A Rogers credits Mark Fischer’s development of the concept of hauntology. She acknowledges the importance of 1970s folk horror on British TV: The Owl Service, The Stone Tape, the MR James adaptations and the Dr Who story The Daemons, involving an idyllic English village beset by murderous Morrismen and witchcraft. The Wicker Man and Witchfinder General have been an inspiration to the new wave of folk horror films: Midsommar, The Witch, Kill List and The Hole in the Ground. Rogers stresses the concept of the “folklore fallacy” where films give the impression that their folklore elements are drawn from historical records, though they’re usually a synthesis of fact and fable.

David Clarke’s “The Last Earl of Hallamshire” examines the influence of Anglo-Saxon identity on the folklorists of Hallamshire (Sheffield) and how that identity coalesced around two folk heroes: Robin Hood/Loxley and Earl Waltherof. In folklore and literature these were Saxon rebels who fought the Norman occupation. Their legends became part of an imagined heritage of Anglo-Saxon indigeneity to Britain. The outlaw yeoman Robin of legend was replaced by the disinherited nobleman in literature by Sir Walter Scott and on TV in Robin of Sherwood and Robin Hood. But both continue to function as symbols of the radical spirit of the region in the form of Saxon against Norman and, in more recent history, north against south.

Jeremy Harte writes on “Wood and Wild in the Making of England”. Did the death of the last wolf in England tame the woodlands? Or was it the enclosure of the commons? Harte explores these themes along with, and the Man With a Wolf’s Skin (wildmen). The last wolf may have died at Wormhill or perhaps at Perry Oaks, a glade now known as Heathrow Terminal 3. The royal forests of mediæval England were ancient landscapes rather than primordial wildwoods but they contained legends: Boudica fighting her last battle in Epping Forest, the slaughter of the druids on Anglesey. The black legend of Norman forest law was remembered in folktale and songs. Cursed for evicting an old man, William II, the “King of the Woods” died while hunting in the New Forest; the devil appeared to men in the forest and foretold this. The Hunters of Souls were Demons who appeared as animals in the forests to hunt men for their anima. Fairy damsels (Milton) also gave chase. Whether they were work-shy or wore wolfskin the Wildmen posed a threat to order. Forest dwellers were runaway serfs, outlaws, bandits, venturing forth to fight the oppressors. But Robin Hood wasn’t Robin Goodfellow; unlike the Hereward The Wake (Wild Man, Outlaw, Disinherited Nobleman of the Fens) his weapons aren’t tipped by elf fire. Rebels such as the Wild Man (sometimes wearing a wolfskin), the Green Man, the oak priests stalked the forests, and their spirits took up that march.

Paul Cowdell discusses “Folklore As MacGuffin”. Witchcraft is used as a MacGuffin or deus ex machina, to construct a plot or advance a narrative, in Miles Burton’s novel The Secret of High Eldersham (1930), where characters discuss “the excellent work of Margaret Murray”. In spite of the efforts of academic folklore practitioners this use of the folklore fallacy continues today in popular fiction. Murray had been an Egyptologist before turning to witchcraft and championing the idea that it had survived as a uniform pagan cult until the 17th century. She inspired Gerald Gardner whose Witchcraft Today (1954) inspired many a folk horror tale.

This is an interesting collection aimed at an academic audience, but in some essays the overuse of jargon is more likely to inspire a priesthood of gatekeepers rather than students enthused by folklore.

Páiric O’Corráin

3 stars


Here's a longer paragraph about Folklore as a MacGuffin.

Folklore As MacGuffin by Paul Cowdell. Witchcraft being used as a MacGuffin or deus ex machina to construct a plot or advance a narrative is noted in the novel High Eldersham (1930) where characters discuss “the excellent work of Margaret Murray”. In spite of the efforts of the Academy and folkloristics this use of the folklore fallacy continues today in popular fiction. Murray had been an Egyptologist before turning to witchcraft and championing the idea that it had survived as a uniform pagan cult until the 17th century; her scholarly work was eclectic in its choice of sources and she found it easier to turn to a popular audience in the 1930s. She inspired Gerald Gardner whose Witchcraft Today (1954) inspired many a folk horror tale. Murray lives on as a pseudonymous character in That Old Black Magic (2018) helping to solve an occult killing.
 
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I was a kamikaze by Ryuji Nagatsuka

The author went from being a student of French to being conscripted as a trainee pilot. He of course survived the war, but the book nevertheless gains momentum as the inevitable "final" mission approaches. He describes shortages of aircraft, pilots, food, ammunition and even aviation fuel. Interestingly, the pilots who volunteered to do this were not fanatic nut jobs - the author was a mild-mannered agnostic.
 
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I was a kamikaze by Ryuji Nagatsuka

The author went from being a student of French to being conscripted as a trainee pilot. He of course survived the war, but the book nevertheless gains momentum as the inevitable "final" mission approaches. Interestingly, the pilots who volunteered to do this were not fanatic nut jobs - the author was a mild-mannered agnostic.
How did you come across this book? I am always amazed at the wonderful, wide range of reading by my fellow Forteans.
 
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Anybody mentioned Neal Stephenson yet? All the stuff i have read by him has been interesting and different. I loved the Baroque cycle particularly. I admit i have Anathem by the bed waiting to be read - it is a bit of a doorstop and i am a bit intimidated but i should just treat it like Bleak House and get stuck in
 
Anybody mentioned Neal Stephenson yet? All the stuff i have read by him has been interesting and different. I loved the Baroque cycle particularly. I admit i have Anathem by the bed waiting to be read - it is a bit of a doorstop and i am a bit intimidated but i should just treat it like Bleak House and get stuck in

Anathem is an epic tale, with peanty of maths thrown in the appendix if you're interested.

Here's a review of Some Remarks, I wrote for FT mag

Some Remarks by Neal Stephenson.

WilliamMorrow Paperbacks (2014).

PB: 336 pp. $15.99. ISBN: 9780062024442.


Some ask: where are the flying cars?

Stephenson asks: Where's my donut-shaped space station? Where's my ticket to Mars?

Known for the SF novels Snowcrash and Anathem Secret History Cryptonomicon and the Historical Novel Cycle The System of the World, Some Remarks gathers together 16 pieces: Stephenson's journalism, meditations, interviews and a short story.

In articles ranging from 1993 to 2012 he muses on the development of rocketry in Locked In; early e-Money in The Great Simoleon Caper; academic snobbery in Everything and More Foreword.

In a wide ranging Q&A, The Salon Interview (2004), he expands on the historical background to The System of the World, the quarrels between Newton and Leibniz, the development of Calculus, Puritanism, the reconciliation of Science, Religion and Alchemy both Leibniz, Newton and other savants of their time, and the links between System and Cryptonomicon. Perhaps of equal importance is how the System novels turn the birth of modern banking into entertainment!

Some of the same territory is covered and updated to the 21st Century in Metaphysics in The Royal Society 1715 - 2010.

A book within a book, is Mother Earth, Mother Board, (118 pages). This collects Stephenson's Hacker Tourist articles on under-sea telecommunications cable-laying in the 1990s. Introducing divers, engineers who calls themselves cable trash and who lay the modern cables it also provides a history of the art. And Art it is as every hill, dip, and shallow has to be taken into account. Read how Lord Kelvin invented the mirror galvanometer, a new improved compass and a depth sounder, making a fortune from each.

While some of the material is dated it covers the development Stephenson as an SF writer and the adolescence/growing to adulthood of the World Wide Web. 8/10.
 
Anathem is an epic tale, with peanty of maths thrown in the appendix if you're interested.

Here's a review of Some Remarks, I wrote for FT mag

Some Remarks by Neal Stephenson.

WilliamMorrow Paperbacks (2014).

PB: 336 pp. $15.99. ISBN: 9780062024442.


Some ask: where are the flying cars?

Stephenson asks: Where's my donut-shaped space station? Where's my ticket to Mars?

Known for the SF novels Snowcrash and Anathem Secret History Cryptonomicon and the Historical Novel Cycle The System of the World, Some Remarks gathers together 16 pieces: Stephenson's journalism, meditations, interviews and a short story.

In articles ranging from 1993 to 2012 he muses on the development of rocketry in Locked In; early e-Money in The Great Simoleon Caper; academic snobbery in Everything and More Foreword.

In a wide ranging Q&A, The Salon Interview (2004), he expands on the historical background to The System of the World, the quarrels between Newton and Leibniz, the development of Calculus, Puritanism, the reconciliation of Science, Religion and Alchemy both Leibniz, Newton and other savants of their time, and the links between System and Cryptonomicon. Perhaps of equal importance is how the System novels turn the birth of modern banking into entertainment!

Some of the same territory is covered and updated to the 21st Century in Metaphysics in The Royal Society 1715 - 2010.

A book within a book, is Mother Earth, Mother Board, (118 pages). This collects Stephenson's Hacker Tourist articles on under-sea telecommunications cable-laying in the 1990s. Introducing divers, engineers who calls themselves cable trash and who lay the modern cables it also provides a history of the art. And Art it is as every hill, dip, and shallow has to be taken into account. Read how Lord Kelvin invented the mirror galvanometer, a new improved compass and a depth sounder, making a fortune from each.

While some of the material is dated it covers the development Stephenson as an SF writer and the adolescence/growing to adulthood of the World Wide Web. 8/10.
He’s a very clever and talented chap. I might skip the maths though (makes me feel queasy)
 
Anybody mentioned Neal Stephenson yet? All the stuff i have read by him has been interesting and different. I loved the Baroque cycle particularly. I admit i have Anathem by the bed waiting to be read - it is a bit of a doorstop and i am a bit intimidated but i should just treat it like Bleak House and get stuck in
The Baroque Cycle is one of my favourites - Quicksilver blew me away.
 
Anybody mentioned Neal Stephenson yet? All the stuff i have read by him has been interesting and different.
I'm not a big reader but was introduced to Snow Crash on a holiday once. Think it's time to revisit Neal Stephenson again
 
I just finished reading Haunted Hostelries of Shropshire by Andrew Homer, a local ghost book I picked up in Shrewsbury last summer. I must say that it is a cut above many local ghost books, by an author who has put in the legwork and stuffed with original testimony, rather than regurgitated tales as so often is the case. I really enjoyed it, it makes me want to book a night in many of the places mentioned.
 
I just finished reading Haunted Hostelries of Shropshire by Andrew Homer, a local ghost book I picked up in Shrewsbury last summer. I must say that it is a cut above many local ghost books, by an author who has put in the legwork and stuffed with original testimony, rather than regurgitated tales as so often is the case. I really enjoyed it, it makes me want to book a night in many of the places mentioned.
Was Whitchurch mentioned Simon? There's at least one pub here with poltergeist activity. Another one I must read is; https://www.google.com/url?q=https:...cQFnoECAcQAg&usg=AOvVaw16l_oa6DID9AqDjd6-x8jY
 
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For those who are interested by Tibetan folklore, I would recommend the book "A Step Away from Paradise" by Thomas Shor.

The book deals with the adventures of Tulshuk Lingpa, a famous "terton" of the first half of the 20th century. "Terton" means "treasure hunter". It is a kind of lama (buddhist monk) who specializes in uncovering hidden religious scriptures in the wild. In the early 1960s, Tulshuk Lingpa set himself the goal of opening the door of a terrestrial paradise hidden on the slopes of the Kangchenjunga, in the Himalayas. At that time, hundreds of Tibetan and Sikkimese people sold all their possessions to follow him in this quest for a land of peace and plenty. Needless to say, this did not end very well ...

In the early 2000s, Thomas Shor heard of this forgotten story and decided to track and interview the survivors of this strange event. This book is the fruit of these interviews.

If you've ever read Alexandra David Neel's books about mysticism and magic in Tibet, you'll probably enjoy this short book as it brings about the same kind of material, but in a more recent context. It's really a fascinating dive into the belief system of the Tibetan people and in their hopes & dreams in a troubled period of their history. It's also astonishing to see that many of the survivors of this impossible quest for "paradise" kept thinking it was worthwile all along. One of the oldest survivors, now a lonely monk with a serious heart condition, even asked the author to help him go back on the mountain, as he now knew for sure where the secret door was located !

The story itself is somewhat moving, as it describes how a man's fate can be shaped for the worse by the incredible expectations that others place upon his shoulders : Tulshuk Lingpa somehow didn't have any other choice than proceed forward in his quest, because his followers wanted him to. In this regard, the conclusion of the book, focusing on the fate of Tulshuk Lingpa's supposed reincarnation, is quite satisfying, as the man is - finally - free ... (whether or not one believes he's the "reincarnation" of anybody).

A nice story, based on real events, as witnessed by their participants.
 
Whitchurch certainly has a section... with The Black Bear, Old Eagles and The Old Town Hall Vaults all down as haunted.
MrsF grew up in a nearby village called Ash. When her boyfriend (who had a far bigger penis than I by all accounts) came to stay one night, as her room was so small, he had to pile up his motorbike gear against the bedroom door. They both saw a figure appear who she describes as looking like Abraham Lincoln. They saw him for a few seconds, then he faded away. A few strange things happened there.
 
My recent interest in the Thirty Years War has sent me on a reading spree about the characters of those times.
Some great books that I read in one sitting:
I use the .epub format and listen to them by https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hyperionics.avar&gl=US

They're not formally Fortean but they are full of strange characters and happenings.

Éminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France
by Jean-Vincent Blanchard
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11870600-minence?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=lpX7oiN4Yo&rank=3

Richelieu: His Rise to Power
by Carl J. Burckhardt, Edwin Muir (Translator), Willa Muir (Translator)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36075766-richelieu?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=vBmP1V9azN&rank=2

Her Majesty's Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage
by Stephen Budiansky
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...r?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=WhAPlzYXr4&rank=2

Francis Walsingham, Spymaster
by Derek Wilson (Goodreads Author)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...r?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=1PVvxYw4ME&rank=1

The King's Revenge: Charles II and the Greatest Manhunt in British History
by Don Jordan, Michael Walsh (Goodreads Author)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...e?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=BbUdSI0Eau&rank=1

And meanwhile I'm reading this monumental and fascinating book, but unfortunately it's not been translated yet:
Der Dreißigjährige Krieg: Europäische Katastrophe, deutsches Trauma 1618-1648
by Herfried Münkler
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...arch=true&from_srp=true&qid=qnc4EV21uP&rank=2

And this one is good too:
The Thirty Years War
by C.V. Wedgwood, Anthony Grafton (Introduction)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show...r?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=I6Ke4GBrYh&rank=1
 
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