BiblioVault - Books about Discovery and exploration

Red Gold

The Conquest of the Brazillian Indians, 1500-1760

John Hemming

Harvard University Press, 1978

Res

Anthropology and Aesthetics, 43: Spring 2003: Islamic Arts

Francesco Pellizzi

Harvard University Press, 2003

Res is a journal of anthropology and comparative aesthetics dedicated to the study of the object, in particular cult and belief objects and objects of art. The journal presents contributions by philosophers, art historians, archaeologists, critics, linguists, architects, artists, and others. Its field of inquiry is open to all cultures, regions, and historical periods. Res also publishes iconographic and textual documents important to the history and theory of the arts.

Res appears twice yearly, in the spring and autumn. The journal is edited by Francesco Pellizzi. More information about Res is available at www.res-journal.org.

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Richard Kern's Far West Sketches

A Visual History of the 1853 Gunnison Expedition

Robert Shlaer

University of Utah Press, 2020

In 1853 Richard Hovendon Kern was hired as topographer and artist for a government-sponsored reconnaissance led by Captain John Williams Gunnison. Kern sketched landscape panoramas as the group made its way from the eastern border of Kansas Territory toward the Pacific Ocean. When the expedition reached Sevier Lake, Utah, however, it was attacked by a band of Indians. Seven men, including Kern and Gunnison, were killed and Kern’s drawings were stolen. The sketches were soon recovered and eventually carried to Washington, D.C.

Robert Shlaer came across them many years later at the Newberry Library in Chicago and was inspired to locate the views depicted in the drawings and to photograph them, as nearly as was possible, from the same spot where Kern stood when he sketched them.

Richard Kern’s Far West Sketches juxtaposes Kern’s drawings with Shlaer's photographs, presenting 389 illustrations in geographic sequence from east to west, as well as a detailed narrative of the expedition. An associated website will include maps, drawings, and photographs so that they can be enlarged, compared, and studied in detail, providing an immersive experience of this important and ill-fated expedition.

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Route for the Overland Stage

James H. Simpson's 1859 Trail Across the Great Basin

Jesse G. Petersen

Utah State University Press, 2008

The 1859 exploration of the Great Basin by army topographical engineer James Simpson opened up one of the West's most important transportation and communication corridors, a vital link between the Pacific Coast and the rest of the nation. It became the route of the Pony Express and the Overland Mail and Stage, the line of the Pacific telegraph, a major wagon road for freighters and emigrants, and, later, the first transcontinental auto road, the Lincoln Highway, now Highway 50.

No one has accurately tracked or mapped Simpson's original route, until now. Jesse Petersen shows in words, maps, and photos exactly where the explorer went. Sharing his detective-like reasoning as he walked or drove the entire trail west and Simpson's variant route returning east, Petersen takes readers on a mountain and desert trek through some of America's most remote and striking landscapes.

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Russians in Alaska

1732-1867

Lydia Black

University of Alaska Press, 2004

This definitive work, the crown jewel in the distinguished career of Russian America scholar Lydia T. Black, presents a comprehensive overview of the Russian presence in Alaska. Drawing on extensive archival research and employing documents only recently made available to scholars, Black shows how Russian expansion was the culmination of centuries of social and economic change.
Black’s work challenges the standard perspective on the Russian period in Alaska as a time of unbridled exploitation of Native inhabitants and natural resources. Without glossing over the harsher aspects of the period, Black acknowledges the complexity of relations between Russians and Native peoples.
She chronicles the lives of ordinary men and women—the merchants and naval officers, laborers and clergy—who established Russian outposts in Alaska. These early colonists carried with them the Orthodox faith and the Russian language; their legacy endures in architecture and place names from Baranof Island to the Pribilofs.
This deluxe volume features fold-out maps and color illustrations of rare paintings and sketches from Russian, American, Japanese, and European sources—many have never before been published. An invaluable source for historians and anthropologists, this accessible volume brings to life a dynamic period in Russian and Alaskan history. A tribute to Black’s life as a scholar and educator, Russians in Alaska will become a classic in the field.

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