Captivating story of discoveries and losses.
The searc
h for dinosaur fossils amid sandstorms and desert heat is anything but dry in this lively story of the excavation in January, 2000, of a site in the western Egyptian desert, partially excavated by Ernst Stromer in 1911, but untouched since then. Nothdurft, a professional writer, working in concert with Josh Smith, the young paleontologist who was the team leader of the January, 2000, dig, tells the stories of both the 1911 and the 2000 excavations, along with the fossil discoveries made by each group.
Stromer, a German aristocrat and meticulous paleontologist, found the fossils of four unique, 95-million-year-old dinosaurs in Bahariya in 1911, spent twenty years analyzing them, and then supervised the fossils’ installation at the Bavarian State College of Paleontology and Historical Geology in Munich. In April, 1944, everything was lost in the allied bombing of Munich. The story of Stromer’s efforts, now almost forgotten, alternates with that of Smith and his group of young Ph.D’s from the University of Pennsylvania, who hope to find additional fossils in the same area in January, 2000.
Financed by a Los Angeles film company making a documentary, the crew ultimately unearths a 80 – 100 ton new dinosaur species, discovering in the process that at least two other equally gigantic dinosaur species shared space with this titan. How this desert area could support three such huge species becomes the question for the geologists on the trip, a mystery which Nothdurft imbues with immediacy and great excitement as they examine the confusing strata for clues.
Nothdurft excels in characterizing the paleontologists and geologists so that the reader can easily imagine participating in the dig along with them. His narrative is fast-paced and full of memorable detail–depictions of Bahariya, with its 130-degree heat and its scorpions, the excitement of the young researchers as they uncover new fossils, and their puzzlement at the paradoxes which unfold. With likeable researchers, and photo
s and drawings which make their discoveries come alive, this is a wonderful introduction to the challenges of on-site research, the scientific methods of the crew, and the respect with which they regard the past. Ultimately, even the almost-forgotten Ernst Stromer shares in their discoveries.
Notes: No photos of authors Nothdurft or Smith seem to be available.
The photo of Ernst Stromer comes from http://spinosauridae.fr.gd
One of the few surviving fossils of Stromer’s Spinosaurus appears in this photo:
story-telling tradition of the Middle East enlivens Turkish author Orhan Pamuk’s novel about the residents of Kars, a town in the remote northeast corner of Turkey, as Kerim Alakusoglu, known as Ka, returns after many years to investigate a spate of suicides by young women forbidden to wear headscarves in school. Arriving during a blizzard, he feels as if it is “snowing at the end of the world,” and when the city is closed to all traffic for three days, “The desolation and remoteness…hit him with such force that he felt God inside him.”
es come to the fore when Ka witnesses the coffee shop shooting of the Director of Education, the man who has, on orders from the government, banned the “headscarf girls” from the school campus. The assailant is a young member of the Freedom Fighters for Islamic Justice, and Ka soon meets and comes to know others associated with the movement and the leader responsible for it. The Director has been wearing a tape-recorder, and the reasoned dialogue with which he attempts to communicate with his assailant, and the assailant’s sane, but completely irrational, responses are stunning to a western reader.
What began as a mentoring relationship between established Trinidadian novelist V. S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux, a young American writer working on his first novel, went on to endure as a “friendship” for thirty years as both writers traveled the world but remained in touch. They met when Theroux was a young ex-Peace Corp worker teaching in Uganda at the university in Makerere in 1966, and Naipaul, nine years his senior, became “writer-in-residence” there, though Naipaul hated teaching and mocked the writing of his students and the Makerere faculty. He did, however, recognize Theroux’s talent, and he did help and encourage him to get his novel published. Theroux, in turn, was an astute reader of Naipaul’s work, and both benefited from the relationship, at least at first.
e Theroux would become a literary star with over forty novels and books of non-fiction. Naipaul, a painstaking, often philosophical writer, eventually won the Nobel Prize in 2001, and was knighted. Though this book is fascinating for its picture of the mentoring process and of a friendship which managed to survive despite the pettiness and frequent mean-spiritedness of Naipaul, it is also a portrait of Theroux, who published this book as his own enduring form of payback.
ne of the most delightful and original satires I’ve read in ages, this debut novel pokes fun at just about every aspect of British society, from government spin-meisters and crass politicians to marriages of convenience, TV interview programs, consumerism, and the belief that many of the world’s problems would be solved if only other people were “more like us.” What makes this satire particularly refreshing is that the author writes it with a smile on his face, obviously preferring to prick balloons with his witty needling, rather than wield a rapier in a slashing attack.
s married to Mary, a highly paid financial executive who works around the clock at her job in Geneva, where she expects to remain for two years. They have just celebrated their twentieth anniversary, for which Alfred has given Mary a subscription to The Economist, and she has given him a new electric toothbrush. Obviously, Alfred and Mary lack imagination, though neither of them seems to notice—until Alfred starts to open himself to the wider world with his new assignment. Soon Alfred begins to resent Mary’s high-handed demands and her selfishness—and he finds Harriet Chetwode-Talbot, with whom he is constantly working, especially attractive.
tting his massive, almost 700-page novel in Sudan and neighboring Kenya, Philip Caputo details the extraordinary efforts of non-government organizations (NGOs) from around the world to bring aid into “no-go” zones, those zones declared so dangerous that the UN will not enter. Many of these agencies ferry aid through the use of bush pilots and small airlines from Kenya, which fly into Sudan and land on hidden, usually make-shift, landing strips, often dodging small-arms fire and enemy aircraft when they try to return home. The Muslim government of Sudan, located to the north in Khartoum, has long been at war with the oil-rich, largely Christian south, and atrocities occur on a regular basis—the abduction of children for children’s armies, the rape and enslavement of women, the maiming and mutilation of the healthy, the cutting off of food and water, and the theft of medical supplies to prevent disease. Lacking weapons and ammunition, the rebel Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) is no match for the heavily supplied army from Khartoum.
aracters who fly for Knight Air out of Kenya—Fitzhugh Martin, a mixed race Kenyan; Douglas Braithwaite, an American entrepreneur and pilot; and Wesley Dare, a Texas mercenary—along with their lovers, an Anglo-Kenyan philanthropist and a female Canadian pilot. A young female evangelical from Iowa, working in Sudan, becomes part of a third love story when she is attracted to a member of the SPLA.
of man’s inner nature. When even a high-minded evangelical makes expedient decisions with horrifying results, and when intense love sputters out, then what is left? Caputo does not provide those answers, nor does the structure of the novel. In a conclusion dependent upon coincidence and melodrama, the reader is left with the idea that in this complex conflict between good and evil, the best one can hope for is a toss-up.
