Passionate Curiosities explores the collections held in the University of Michigan's Kelsey Museum of Archaeology through the lens of the people whose intellectual interests, financial backing, and social networks brought artifacts to Ann Arbor from the 1880s to the 1990s. Through purchases and expeditions, these individuals shaped the Museum's internationally recognized antiquities from the ancient civilizations of Greece, Rome, North Africa, Egypt, and the Near East, extensive photographic documentation of these regions from the early 1900s, and significant assemblages of early Christian and Islamic visual culture. An intriguing array of personalities--from archaeologists, missionaries, and diplomats to industrialists, bankrollers, and inventors--weave through these pages. They include Ernst Herzfeld, the eminent Orientalist who helped forge antiquities legislation in Iran; Luigi Cesnola, the rapacious harvester of Cypriot sites; Esther Van Deman, the pioneering feminist and scholar of Roman construction techniques; and Samuel Goudsmit, the renowned nuclear physicist and avid Egyptologist. World-famous dealers who established standards in antiquities connoisseurship likewise populate these sagas. Readers will encounter Edgar J. Banks, a swashbuckling purveyor of Mesopotamian antiquities and entrepreneur of biblical documentary films; Maurice Nahman, the "lion of Cairo"; and the colorful members of the Tano dealer dynasty in Egypt. This copiously illustrated book will interest general readers as well as scholars curious about the holdings of the Kelsey, early collectors and dealers, and the history of museums.

Hybrid Geographies reconsiders the relationship between human and non-human, the social and the material, showing how they are intimately and variously linked. General arguments, informed by work in critical geography, feminist theory, environmental ethics, and science studies are illustrated throughout with detailed case-study material.

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe: everything you never knew you never knew about every country on Earth.A scientist by training and an explorer by passion, Dr. John Oldale has logged half a million miles visiting more than ninety nations. Now, he celebrates our weird and wonderful world in a cornucopia of fascinating facts brought vividly to life through the unexpected stories behind them. Touching on history, travel, politics, natural history and more, he paints a unique portrait of each country from the mightiest to the most miniscule. You won't find the following in your average travel guide: · Why is kissing on trains banned in France? · In what country are litigants expected to present their case at court in the form of a poem? · Which war did women win in 1929 just by sitting down? · If Panama hats aren’t from Panama, where are they from? · Who eat fresh camel dung as a cure for dysentery (and why does it work)? · Why were US disk jockeys once told they could play birthday requests on any day except the one requested? · Which modern dictator banned old age, libraries and gold teeth, and was later replaced by his dentist? · And 2,000 more funny, trivial, poignant, and telling facts A must for active and armchair globe-trotters alike, A World of Curiosities will engross anyone who is at all curious about the world beyond their door. Explore and enjoy.

Quick and reliable to grow for summer colour, and well marketed, most gardeners will have at least one pelargonium in their garden or conservatory, without realising either the number or variety of species available, nor the plant's extraordinary history. The Passion for Pelargoniums reveals the fascinating and dramatic tales of those who have been involved in finding, classifying, collecting and breeding the plants. It explodes the myth that all modern versions of the plant are descended from the oldest known variety - the seventeenth-century drab-coloured P. triste, literally translated as the sad pelargonium, and reveals that 2,000 hybrids have been developed from less than a dozen plants originally imported from the East. From the contribution of L'Heritier, whom Sir Joseph Banks named 'an impudent Frenchman', to collectors like Masson and the Marquess of Blandford (known for his 'elegant emporium'), competing nurserymen determined to make both fortunes and reputations, and the burgeoning Victorian varieties as growers searched for the holy grail of the scarlet geranium, the book recounts the plant's extraordinary history. Today, while traditional white ones, doubles, 'nosegays' and 'rosebuds' still flourish, the 'lemon-scented geranium' is only one of a number of scented varieties, while pelargoniums can have flowers of pink, red, purple, yellow or black. This is the story of how the passion felt by gardeners for their plants stirred them to bitter rivalry and criminal obsession, scandal, fraud, and fast dealing, and saw polite society being rather less than polite.