Tag Archives: History

Fuel for My Jetpack, Mead for My Dragon

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Modern Mechanix & Inventions

I love looking back at our old future.

Maybe it’s just nostalgia talking, but I liked seeing the Things to Come back before they came. I mean, we’re basically living in the future as we speak.  We’ve got it all – space ships, space stations, robots on Mars, handheld communicators that can put us in contact with anyone in the world, instant food, everything.  We even have flying cars, especially if you drive them off of someplace really high.

The problem with our current future is that it’s so unimpressive looking.  Ever notice how the iPhone looks like a bar of soap that’s got two more showers left in it?  Sure, its practical, fits in your pocket, and doesn’t require nuclear energy to play music or make a call – but man does it look dull!

I long for the days of our fun future, the inaccurate and impractical version with big, silvery pipes and unnecessary buttons and single levers that control everything.

And so it was with great pleasure that I came across a little gem from history called Modern Mechanix & Inventions.

Modern Mechanix & Inventions began life in 1928, seeking to make its name amidst the science and technology publications biz at the time.  Chock full of DIY projects and the car reviews of Tom McCahill, the magazine held its own until 2001, changing its title a couple of times during its run.

There are a number of places on the ’net to find archives with pictures of the covers, most being mixed in with other classic publications.  I wouldn’t be writing about it now if a friend hadn’t made mention about it on facebook (props to MarcosBnPinto!).  The visions presented in some of the mag’s more fantastic covers are the stuff that fueled the rockets of the imagination in the days before we exorcised the Man in the Moon.

I genuinely enjoy seeing stuff like this. It’s great food for fantasy, storytelling, or getting ideas for running a role playing game.  I’m always on the lookout for more retro-future artwork, so if you can suggest any, I’d be glad to take a look at it.  Drop us a line!

For a look at a number of these beautiful covers, visit Marcos’s tumblr here.

A Year in Books/Day 126: Ancient Rome

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  • Title: Ancient Rome
  • Author: Robert Payne
  • Year Published: 1966/This Edition: 2001 (Horizon/ibooks, inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 2001/2002
  • Source: History Book Club
  • About: While there’s nothing new or groundbreaking about the text or historical standpoint, this is a wonderful primer on ancient Rome. It’s a solid read, entertaining and enlightening without being flashy or over-blown. The real treat is in the beautifully rendered concept photographs, which give us an idea-however slight-of how Rome looked to its citizens.
  • Motivation: I’m a sucker for ancient history. Cannot. Get. Enough.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 41: “These tough-minded hill people had come far. They had built a workable civilization, absorbed the arts of the Etruscans, shown themselves to be possessed of a ferocious spirit of independence, and could look forward to increasing their influence. Then quite suddenly in a single day they lost the gains of centuries.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 124: By Permission of Heaven

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  • Title: By Permission of Heaven The True Story of the Great Fire of London
  • Author: Adrian Tinniswood
  • Year Published: 2003 (Riverhead Books/Penguin Group)
  • Year Purchased: 2005
  • Source: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
  • About: London was devastated by a fire on 2 September, 1666. By Permission of Heaven chronicles the confusion, terror and panic that befell the city’s inhabitants during the fire and its aftermath. He continues the story through the re-building that set the stage for the modern London that we know today. It’s riveting, nail-biting, human history at its best. I’ve written several times about the challenge of making history seem alive, present and tactile for readers. Fear not, because Tinniswood is a master. Challenge achieved.
  • Motivation: I’m an Anglophile and I particularly love the history of London. I’m weird that way.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 43: “At some point Hanna was badly burned. But she managed to scramble to safety along the eaves with her father. They were followed by the manservant. Only the maid was left in the house, too frightened of heights, or too confused by the noise and the smoke to escape. As the easterly gales whipped across the rooftops, she died there–the first victim of the Great Fire of London. No one even knows her name.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9

A Year in Books/Day 117: Miss Cranston’s Omnibus

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  • Title: Miss Cranston’s Omnibus
  • Author: Anna Blair
  • Year Published: 1998 (Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd. for LOMOND BOOKS)
  • Year Purchased: 2002/2003
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: What is it about old folks reminiscing that cuts straight to the bone, brain and heart? Is it because there’s no excess of thought, no emotional grandstanding? There’s a realness that remains-sometimes raw and sorrowful, sometimes light and joyous-but no heaviness. Whatever it is, it’s on stunning display in Miss Cranston’s Omnibus. Author Anna Blair interviewed hundreds of aging Glaswegians about their lifestyles and experiences during the first half of the twentieth century. She wove that material into a larger historical narrative, allowing for as true and clear a picture of the place and time as we’ll ever have. This edition is comprised of two earlier volumes (Tea at Miss Cranston’s and More Tea at Miss Cranston’s), originally published in 1985 and 1991.

    drawing, poster design for Miss Cranston's Tea...

    drawing, poster design for Miss Cranston's Tearooms. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  • Motivation: Glasgow! History! Nostalgic old people!
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 11: “The photographer of the 1880s swoops under his dark velvet cloth and snaps his fingers at the family group. Breaths are held and, as the cliche says, a moment in time is captured for ever, and with it an array of that era’s fashion from infants’ to grandparents’. Repeat the process every decade and you have a century of change from bonnet to Princess of Wales’ feather, button boot to pink sneaker. Well…You’d have the gamut right enough, as far as the bien-provided were concerned, but for much of that hundred years there was a broad swathe of Glasgow folk a world away from wool and velvet and starched pinafores.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8

A Year in Books/Day 115: James Williamson Studies and Documents of a Pioneer of the Film Narrative

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  • Title: James Williamson Studies and Documents of a Pioneer of the Film Narrative
  • Author: Martin Sopocy
  • Year Published: 1998 (Associated University Presses, Inc.)
  • Year Purchased: 2002
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: Be warned: This book is so dry and bland that you could crumble it up and toss it in a bowl of soup. It’s so slow-paced that I had to put it away and pick it up again a few months later. Twice. That was a new experience for me, as I relish slogging through even the most dry-toast academic volumes. To have that happen with a book on silent film was almost unbearably disappointing. Yet, it is significant in its way: it’s a book about English filmmaker James Williamson; it offers painstakingly detailed breakdowns of films long since lost; the photographs and images of slides are of critical importance to film history.
  • Motivation: I have a sizable library of books on silent cinema. Since I write extensively on the subject, I’m always eager and excited to add a new volume (this book is possibly the only time I have been disappointed) to my collection.
  • Times Read: 1 (barely)
  • Random Excerpt/Page 61: “An overall view of the history of the film narrative could tempt us to suppose that motion photography, that cinema itself, has an inherent affinity with realism. Yet in actual practice such an affinity exists only to the extent that the filmmaker rejects the camera’s capacity for illusion and uses it instead with the conscious purpose of recording the world around him as he sees it, and the incidents within that world that have actually happened or could plausibly happen.”
  • Happiness Scale: 5

A Year in Books/Day 115: Pompeii The Living City

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  • Title: Pompeii The Living City
  • Authors: Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence
  • Year Published: 2005 (St. Martin’s Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2005
  • Source: History Book Club
  • About: History should be a living, breathing, laughing, squirming thing. Alive, thought-provoking, uncomfortable, enlightening. Not boring or stilted. When presented in book form, you shouldn’t want to skip ahead to find the good bits; it should all be good bits. Fortunately, Butterworth and Laurence agree. Their Pompeii The Living City is as vivid, varied and fast-paced as the subject itself. The result is an indelibly engaging volume that pulls on your senses until it feels-almost, if only in the back of the mind-like a real-time experience.
  • Motivation: I’ve loved ancient history since I was a kid and dreamed big dreams of being an anthropologist or archaeologist when I grew up. Well, kind of; I never seriously wanted to do anything but write. Kid me envisioned the anthropologist/archaeologist thing as kind of a side-line or hobby. Ah, youth!
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 130: “In all respects, the beauty industry was big business in Pompeii. Affluent women struggled to emulate the idealised femininity of the frescoes on their walls, who stared into polished bronze or silver mirrors with justified self-regard, their dressing tables bare of any artificial means of enhancement. Yet the great range of ingeniously wrought bottles that have been found testifies to the lengths to which some women in the real world would go to preserve or improve their looks.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9
    House of the Faun in Pompeii, Italy

    House of the Faun in Pompeii, Italy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

Some Book Recommendations for When You are Stuck in a Car for Way Too Long

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The lovely Elisa of Fun & Fabulousness-she of the impeccable eye-asked if I could recommend some books appropriate to read on a looong car ride. Specifically, five. Five books, so she can choose one for her trip.

Painting by Carl von Steuben

(Painting by Carl von Steuben)

I’m honored; naturally, I said yes! I promptly got to work. It was all downhill from there. What happened? Continue reading →

A Year in Books/Day 111: 1700 Scenes from London Life

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  • Title: 1700 Scenes from London Life
  • Author: Maureen Waller
  • Year Published: 2000 (Four Walls Eight Windows)
  • Year Purchased: 2002/2003
  • Source: History Book Club
  • About: This is a biography/history of a very specific time and place. What was it like to live in London at the start of the eighteenth century? If you had walked its streets and slept in one of its tall, cramped terraced houses, what could you expect from life? What did you eat and drink? What did you do with your scant leisure time? What did you wear and how did you worship? Waller addresses as many of these questions as possible, bringing us several paces closer to knowing what life was like as a Londoner three centuries ago.
  • Motivation: History. London. Rinse and repeat; you’ve all read this explanation before.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 57: “For babies of poorer parents left behind in the disease-ridden capital with its smoke-choked skies and contaminated water, life was just as perilous. Many died from neglect, the unsanitary conditions, and from being smothered in bed by their mothers-whether by accident or intent it was never easy to determine.”
  • Happiness Scale: 8 1/2

A Year in Books/Day 104: London The Biography

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  • Title: London The Biography
  • Author: Peter Ackroyd
  • Year Published: 2000 (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
  • Year Purchased: 2001-2003
  • Source: History Book Club
  • About: A city is a living, breathing, changing thing; it makes sturdy sense to give the biographical treatment to one of the world’s leading capitals. At nearly 800 pages, this account of London from pre-history to the late twentieth century is exhaustively comprehensive. Ackroyd manages to keep the pace quick without sacrificing detail or context. This is as good as anything he’s ever written, which is large praise indeed.
  • Motivation: Anglophile in the house here. I’m also a life-long history nerd.
  • Times Read: 2
  • Random Excerpt/Page 51: “On either side of the southern entrance to that bridge, there now rear two griffins daubed in red and silver. They are the totems of the city, raised at all its entrances and thresholds, and are singularly appropriate. The griffin was the monster which protected gold mines and buried treasure; it has now flown out of classical mythology in order to guard the city of London. The presiding deity of this place has always been money.”
  • Happiness Scale: 9 1/2
    The Great Fire of London destroyed 80% of the ...

    The Great Fire of London destroyed 80% of the city in 1666. The Guildhall was damaged in this and other great fires. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

     

A Year in Books/Day 100: Living Authors

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  • Title: Living Authors
  • Editor: Dilly Tante
  • Year Published: Original Edition-1931/This Edition-2001 (The H.W. Wilson Company/Bookspan)
  • Year Purchased: 2004
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: Since I spend so much time writing about dead writers, this is one of the most-used volumes in my personal reference library. Although I don’t remember where I bought it, I know that it only cost about $5; practically speaking, it is the best investment I have ever made in a book! ‘Living Authors’ features biographies of pretty much every still-breathing writer (400 of them!) of any importance at the time of initial publication (1931), which means that it covers the years that I most frequently focus on in my own writing. Each entry also has a detailed bibliography. For those of you wondering why I don’t just head over to Wikipedia/other informative web-site, I’ll stop you right there. It’s not the same! Dilly Tante filled his book with strange data and odd minutia, often provided by the authors themselves. It’s simply more interesting and fulfilling.
  • Motivation: I’m always excited to find reference materials contemporaneous to the subjects I write about.
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover-1/As reference-countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page vi: “In themselves these facts are trivial and meaningless. If they concerned the man in the brown hat next door or the discreet lady across the way, they might be dismissed as idle gossip, both inexcusable and dull. But in the world of art, where talent is primarily a consolidation of personality, we have a right to be curious. Our desire to know the artist is matched by his desire to reveal himself, for the art of the modern world is fundamentally autobiographical, and Goethe, described by Spengler as “the man who forgot nothing, the man whose works, as he avowed himself, are only fragments of a single great confession,” may well stand as the type of the Western artist.”
  • Happiness Scale: Off the charts!
My copy of 'Living Authors' Edited by Dilly Tante

My copy of 'Living Authors' Edited by Dilly Tante: I'll award 2 bragging points for every writer you can name!