MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — “Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest” was an unpublished (in his lifetime) manuscript by Aldo Leopold, author of the more famous environmental work, A Sand County…
MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—Enthusiastic over his “discovery” of the region Columbus identified as the Indies, Spain’s rulers backed him with a much larger expedition set to leave the fall following his return…
MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—For all our breast-beating about our history, Americans know surprisingly little about Christopher Columbus beyond a couple of lines from Ramon Montaigne’s poem about sailing the ocean blue and…
MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—This post is a change of pace from the commentaries on exploration narratives posted previously. Instead, this post discusses a work that touches upon environmental ethics, which is another…
MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—For much of its history, China had been an insular, rather xenophobic nation. There had been attempts, often successful, to subdue neighboring nations, but much of that aggressive spirit…
MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—Marco Polo is much more better known in the west, if only for the kids’ game I had never heard of prior to a television commercial a few years…
MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—I think it’s safe to say that Marco Polo was the most famous European explorer prior to Columbus. He has to have been, in any event, as his Travels…
MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—Benjamin was a twelfth century Jewish scholar from the town of Tudela in Navarre, in what is now Spain. In 1165, Benjamin set off on a journey across the…
MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—The Flat Island Book is a medieval manuscript containing a number of Icelandic tales, including the “Saga of Erik the Red” as well as the “Greenland Saga,” from which…
MECHANICSVILLE, Va.—The Saga of Erik the Red documents the first sustained European contacts with North America from the latter part of the tenth century to the beginning of the eleventh.…