Saturday, March 06, 2010

A Description of Distant Roads Original Journals of the First Expedition into California, 1769-1770 by Juan Crespí

A Description of Distant Roads
Original Journals of the First Expedition into California, 1769-1770 by Juan Crespí
Edited and Translated by Alan K. Brown.
San Diego State University Press,
2001. ISBN 1-879691-64-
890 pages || deluxe hard cover edition || $60.00
ONLINE SPECIAL! $39.95

This volume includes the complete journals of Juan Crespí in Spanish and English. Este tomo incluye los diarios completos de Juan Crespí en español y ingles.

This work makes available for the first time the complete journals of Juan Crespí, the Franciscan friar who accompanied the first expeditions that established Spanish presence in Alta California. Beginning at the northern edge of the mission frontier of Baja California, the 1769 expedition trekked overland some three hundred miles to establish San Diego. From there, Crespí and the contingent of military personnel and Indian auxiliaries traveled northward on to Monterey and back again. Crespí journals provide the first detailed observations about the new land of Alta California and its peoples. This book is an essential source for the history of Spanish occupation of Alta California and the native Americans inhabiting the land. Here's what the critics are saying:

"Thanks to the erudition and detective work of Alan K. Brown and the high scholarly standards of SDSU Press, we no longer have to depend on a flawed version of this essential account of the founding of Spanish California. This is the definitive edition, in English AND Spanish.

David J. Weber, Dedman Professor of History, Southern Methodist University, and author of The Spanish Frontier in North America (1992) and many other books on the Spanish-Mexican borderlands.

"This work will be an integral part of any collection of basic California historical materials. Researchers in related fields such as anthropology, historical geography, and ethnobotany, along with history buffs and mission aficionados will seize upon it as a Îmust read itemâ and it becomes an instant Îmust possessâ title for any California library reference collection. Alan K. Brown deserves immense credit for his monumental research, editing, and analytical effort that produced this volume.

Harry W. Crosby, author of Antigua California, Mission Colony on the Peninsular Frontier, (1994).

"Alan K. Brown has provided historians, scholars, and researchers with a tremendous gift. His monumental and authoritative translation of Crespí's complete journals will quickly become an indispensable work for all who study the history of California. The introduction to Brown's work is, in and of itself, a masterful piece of research and writing. The extensive and thorough footnotes attest to Brown's careful attention to detail and desire to include the latest scholarship in his work. Brown's translations from the original Spanish texts are superbly done. They remain faithful to the Spanish but are "reader-friendly." Having the Spanish version of the original journals available in the text for comparison purposes greatly increases the value of Brown's contribution to researchers.

Rose Marie Beebe, President, California Mission Studies Association and Professor of Spanish, Santa Clara University

Thursday, March 04, 2010

"Conjunction junction, what's your function?" | Conjunctions: Verbal-Visual Relations, edited by Laurie Edson

Well, we think your function is to read this enticing collection of original scholarly essays, Conjunctions: Verbal-visual Relations, edited by Laurie Edson.

Through an assortment of theoretical and critical approaches, the book examines how scholars and intellectuals from many diverse areas of focus, including visual art, philosophy, poetry and book illustration, have tackled the difficult relationship between the verbal and the visual. Contributors include Michel Deguy, Judd D. Hubert, Claude Gandelman,Laurie Edson, Marjorie Perloff, Roger Shattuck, Georges Roque, Sydney Lévy, Anne-Marie Christin, Richard Vernier, Breon Mitchell, Steven Winspur, Roger Cardinal, Robert W. Greene, Eric T. Haskell, Harriett Watts, Willard Bohn, and Virginia A. La Charité

Come on, who wouldn't want to check this out?

Do You Love Dickens' HARD TIMES? You Have to Read...



Monday, March 01, 2010

That Notorious Scallywag Conan O'Brien...


...has a twitter, and so do we! hit the logo below or click here to follow our adventures online.
Follow us! We shall lead you someplace exciting, like Costco, or Antiquity.

Sunday, February 28, 2010

New SDSU Press GEAR now available...

Oliver Mayer's HURT BUSINESS--Special Sale on Amazon.com


Click the image or hit this link to see the special hype.sdsu.edu HURT BUSINESS page.