Albertus Seba’s Cabinet of Natural Curiosities: Discover One of the Most Prized Natural History Books of All Time (1734–1765)

in Biology, Books, Nature | December 13th, 2021

In the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, a Euro­pean could know the world in great detail with­out ever leav­ing his home­land. Or he could, at least, if he got into the right indus­try. So it was with Alber­tus Seba, a Dutch phar­ma­cist who opened up shop in Ams­ter­dam just as the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry began. Giv­en the city’s promi­nence as a hub of inter­na­tion­al trade, which in those days was most­ly con­duct­ed over water, Seba could acquire from the crew mem­bers of arriv­ing ships all man­ner of plant and ani­mal spec­i­mens from dis­tant lands. In this man­ner he amassed a ver­i­ta­ble pri­vate muse­um of the nat­ur­al world.

The “cab­i­nets of curiosi­ties” Seba put togeth­er — as col­lec­tors of won­ders did in those days — ranked among the largest on the con­ti­nent. But when he died in 1736, his mag­nif­i­cent col­lec­tion did not sur­vive him. He’d already sold much of it twen­ty years ear­li­er to Peter the Great, who used it as the basis for Rus­si­a’s first muse­um, the Kun­stkam­mer in St. Peters­burg.

What remained had to be auc­tioned off in order to fund one of Seba’s own projects: the Locu­pletis­si­mi rerum nat­u­ral­i­um the­sauri accu­ra­ta descrip­tio, or “Accu­rate descrip­tion of the very rich the­saurus of the prin­ci­pal and rarest nat­ur­al objects,” pages of which you can view at the Pub­lic Domain Review and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art.

This four-vol­ume set of books con­sti­tut­ed an attempt to cat­a­log the vari­ety of liv­ing things on Earth, a for­mi­da­ble endeav­or that Seba was nev­er­the­less well-placed to under­take, ren­der­ing each one in engrav­ings made life­like by their depth of col­or and detail. The lav­ish pro­duc­tion of the The­saurus (more recent­ly repli­cat­ed in the con­densed form of Taschen’s Cab­i­net of Nat­ur­al Curiosi­ties) pre­sent­ed a host of chal­lenges both phys­i­cal and eco­nom­ic. But there was also the intel­lec­tu­al prob­lem of how, exact­ly, to orga­nize all its tex­tu­al and visu­al infor­ma­tion. As orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished, it groups its spec­i­mens by phys­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ties, in a man­ner vague­ly sim­i­lar to the much more influ­en­tial sys­tem pub­lished by Swedish sci­en­tist Carl Lin­naeus in 1735.

Lin­naeus, as it hap­pens, twice vis­it­ed Seba to exam­ine the lat­ter’s famous col­lec­tion. It sure­ly had an influ­ence on his think­ing on how to name every­thing in the bio­log­i­cal realm: not just the likes of trees, owls, snakes, and jel­ly­fish, but also the “parax­o­da,” crea­tures whose exis­tence was sus­pect­ed but not con­firmed. These includ­ed not only the hydra and the phoenix, but also the rhi­noc­er­os and the pel­i­can.

Eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry Euro­peans pos­sessed much more infor­ma­tion about the world than did their ances­tors, but facts were still more than occa­sion­al­ly inter­mixed with fan­ta­sy. Giv­en the strange­ness of what had recent­ly been doc­u­ment­ed, no one dared put lim­its on the strange­ness of what had­n’t.

Note: A num­ber of the vibrant images on this page come from the Taschen edi­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library Makes 150,000 High-Res Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al World Free to Down­load

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Behold an Inter­ac­tive Online Edi­tion of Eliz­a­beth Twining’s Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Plants (1868)

A Curi­ous Herbal: 500 Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Med­i­c­i­nal Plants Drawn by Eliz­a­beth Black­well in 1737 (to Save Her Fam­i­ly from Finan­cial Ruin)

Explore a New Archive of 2,200 His­tor­i­cal Wildlife Illus­tra­tions (1916–1965): Cour­tesy of The Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four Will Be Retold from a Woman’s Point of View

in Books, Literature | December 9th, 2021

Nine­teen Eighty-Four has been a byword for total­i­tar­i­an dystopia longer than most of us have been read­ing books. But apart from its the title and cer­tain words from its invent­ed “newspeak” — dou­ble­plus­good, unper­son, thought­crime — how deeply is George Orwell’s best-known nov­el embed­ded into the cul­ture? Most of us rec­og­nize the name Win­ston Smith, and many of us may even remem­ber details of his job at the Min­istry of Truth, where the facts of his­to­ry are con­tin­u­al­ly rewrit­ten to suit ever-shift­ing polit­i­cal exi­gen­cies. But how much do we know about the oth­er major char­ac­ter: Julia, Win­ston’s fel­low min­istry employ­ee who becomes his clan­des­tine co-dis­si­dent and for­bid­den lover?

“In some ways she was far more acute than Win­ston, and far less sus­cep­ti­ble to Par­ty pro­pa­gan­da,” writes Orwell in Nine­teen Eighty-Four. “But she only ques­tioned the teach­ings of the Par­ty when they in some way touched upon her own life. Often she was ready to accept the offi­cial mythol­o­gy, sim­ply because the dif­fer­ence between truth and false­hood did not seem impor­tant to her.” Juli­a’s amoral­i­ty throws the rigid­i­ty of Win­ston’s own atti­tudes into con­trast, and also shows up their imprac­ti­cal­i­ty. Now, in the hands of nov­el­ist San­dra New­man, Julia will become not just star of the sto­ry but its nar­ra­tor.

Or so it looks, at least, from the brief pas­sage quot­ed in the Guardian’s announce­ment of Julia, a re-telling of Nine­teen Eighty-Four approved by Orwell’s estate and to be pub­lished in time for the 75th anniver­sary of the orig­i­nal. Though it has no firm pub­li­ca­tion date yet, Julia will come out some time after New­man’s next book The Men, in which, as the Guardian’s Ali­son Flood puts it, “every sin­gle per­son with a Y chro­mo­some van­ish­es from the world.” It will join an abun­dance of recent retellings from the wom­an’s point of view, includ­ing every­thing from “Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, a ver­sion of the Ili­ad from the per­spec­tive of Bri­seis, to Mag­gie O’Farrell’s Ham­net, which cen­ters on the life of Shakespeare’s wife.”

Entrust­ing a lit­er­ary prop­er­ty to a writer of anoth­er era, cul­ture, and sen­si­bil­i­ty is a tricky busi­ness, but there arguably has nev­er been a more oppor­tune time to put out a book like Julia. It seems the dystopia-hun­gry pub­lic has nev­er been read­ier to iden­ti­fy the “Orwellian” in life, nor more respon­sive to re-inter­pre­ta­tions and expan­sions of long-estab­lished bod­ies of pop­u­lar myth. And what with women hav­ing con­quered the world of fic­tion, there will nat­u­ral­ly be great inter­est in Juli­a’s take on life under Big Broth­er — as well as in its inevitable tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion.

via The Guardian/Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch the Live TV Adap­ta­tion of George Orwell’s Nine­teen Eighty-Four, the Most Con­tro­ver­sial TV Dra­ma of Its Time (1954)

George Orwell’s 1984 Staged as an Opera: Watch Scenes from the 2005 Pro­duc­tion in Lon­don

Aldous Hux­ley to George Orwell: My Hell­ish Vision of the Future is Bet­ter Than Yours (1949)

George Orwell Iden­ti­fies the Main Ene­my of the Free Press: It’s the “Intel­lec­tu­al Cow­ardice” of the Press Itself

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You!

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Read 1,000+ Thanksgiving Books Free at the Internet Archive

in Books, Internet Archive | November 24th, 2021

On Thanks­giv­ing Day, Amer­i­cans make the (some­times ardu­ous) effort to gath­er for an enor­mous tra­di­tion­al meal and for many, a now equal­ly tra­di­tion­al view­ing of tele­vised foot­ball. But even when stretched to their max­i­mum length, these activ­i­ties occu­py only so many hours. What to do with the rest of the day? You might con­sid­er head­ing over to the Inter­net Archive and fill­ing it with some hol­i­day-appro­pri­ate read­ing. Last year that site’s librar­i­an Brew­ster Kahle tweet­ed a sug­ges­tion to “check out 700 Thanks­giv­ing books! (from delight­ful to dat­ed to a lit­tle weird)” in their online col­lec­tion, a col­lec­tion that has since risen to more than 1,000 dig­i­tized vol­umes.

There, espe­cial­ly if you sort by pop­u­lar­i­ty, you’ll find a wealth of Thanks­giv­ing-themed chil­dren’s books, from Wen­di Sil­vano’s Turkey Trou­ble and Mark Fear­ing’s The Great Thanks­giv­ing Escape to Charles Schulz’s A Char­lie Brown Thanks­giv­ing and Nor­man Brid­well’s Clif­ford’s Thanks­giv­ing Vis­it (whose tit­u­lar big red dog fea­tures at this very moment in his own major motion pic­ture).

But there are also selec­tions for grown-up read­ers. Take, for exam­ple, Lau­rie Col­lier Hill­strom’s The Thanks­giv­ing Book: a Com­pan­ion to the Hol­i­day Cov­er­ing its His­to­ry, Lore, Tra­di­tions, Foods, and Sym­bols, Includ­ing Pri­ma­ry Sources, Poems, Prayers, Songs, Hymns, and Recipes: Sup­ple­ment­ed by a Chronol­o­gy, Bib­li­og­ra­phy with Web Sites, and Index — the length of whose title belies its pub­li­ca­tion in not the 19th cen­tu­ry, but 2008.

Or per­haps you’d pre­fer to accom­pa­ny the diges­tion of your Thanks­giv­ing feast with a hol­i­day-appro­pri­ate work of fic­tion. In that case your choic­es include Thanks­giv­ing Night by lit­er­ary exam­in­er of mod­ern fam­i­ly life Richard Bausch; Thank­less in Death by mur­der­ous-thriller pow­er­house J.D. Robb (alter-ego of pro­lif­ic romance nov­el­ist Nora Roberts); and even Tru­man Capote’s “The Thanks­giv­ing Vis­i­tor,” col­lect­ed in one vol­ume along with his sto­ries “A Christ­mas Mem­o­ry” and “One Christ­mas.” That last book will give you a head start on the rest of the hol­i­day sea­son to come, wher­ev­er in the world you may live. And if that hap­pens to be Cana­da, you can give your kids a head start on next year’s Cana­di­an Thanks­giv­ing while you’re at it. Enter the col­lec­tion here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Illus­trat­ed Ver­sion of “Alice’s Restau­rant”: Watch Arlo Guthrie’s Thanks­giv­ing Coun­ter­cul­ture Clas­sic

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer” in a 1988 Film By Gus Van Sant

Bob Dylan’s Thanks­giv­ing Radio Show: A Playlist of 18 Delec­table Songs

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Left­over Thanks­giv­ing Turkey

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Rare Book Featuring the Concept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune Goes Up for Auction (1975)

in Books, Film, History, Sci Fi | November 9th, 2021


Denis Vil­leneu­ve’s new adap­ta­tion of Frank Her­bert’s Dune has made a decent­ly promis­ing start to what looks set to shape up into an epic series of films. But how­ev­er many install­ments it final­ly com­pris­es, it’s unlike­ly to run any­where near as long as Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky’s ver­sion — had Jodor­owsky actu­al­ly made his ver­sion, that is. Pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, that project promised to unite the tal­ents of not just the cre­ator of the Dune uni­verse and the direc­tor of The Holy Moun­tain, but those of MĹ“bius, H.R. Giger, Sal­vador DalĂ­, Pink Floyd, Orson Welles, and Mick Jag­ger. Even David Lynch’s Dune, for all its large-scale weird­ness, would sure­ly play like My Din­ner with Andre by com­par­i­son.

Alas, none of us will ever get to see Jodor­owsky’s Dune, now one of the most sto­ried of all unmade films. But one of us — one of the deep-pock­et­ed among us, at least — now has a chance to own the book. Not Her­bert’s nov­el: the book assem­bled cir­ca 1985 as a pitch­ing aid, meant to show stu­dios the exten­sive pre-pro­duc­tion work Jodor­owsky, pro­duc­er Michel Sey­doux, and their col­lab­o­ra­tors had done.

“Filled with the script, sto­ry­boards, con­cept art, and more, the book is basi­cal­ly as close as any­one can get to see­ing Jodorowsky’s ver­sion of Dune,” writes io9’s Ger­main Lussier. “But, of course, the direc­tor and his team only cre­at­ed a hand­ful of copies and this was decades ago. This isn’t a book you can just get on Ama­zon.”


But you can get it at Christie’s, on whose auc­tion block it’s expect­ed to go for between €25,000 and €35,000 (around USD $30,000–40,000). Reck­on­ing that only ten to twen­ty copies were ever print­ed, the house­’s list­ing describes the book as “an extra­or­di­nary arti­fact” from “a doomed project which inspired legions of film-mak­ers and movie­go­ers alike.” Despite all of Hol­ly­wood ulti­mate­ly pass­ing on this enor­mous­ly ambi­tious adap­ta­tion, “all of this was not in vain.” Jodor­owsky him­self claims that, though unre­al­ized, his Dune set a prece­dent for “a larg­er-than-life sci­ence fic­tion movie, out­side of the sci­en­tif­ic rig­or of 2001: A Space Odyssey.” Its influ­ence, accord­ing to Christie’s, is present in 1970s films like Star Wars and Alien. Would it be too much to sense a trace of the Jodor­owskyan in Vil­leneu­ve’s Dune as well?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky, Pink Floyd, Sal­vador Dalí, Moe­bius, Orson Welles & Mick Jag­ger Nev­er Made

Mœbius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tan­ta­liz­ing Ani­ma­tion

The Dune Graph­ic Nov­el: Expe­ri­ence Frank Herbert’s Epic Sci-Fi Saga as You’ve Nev­er Seen It Before

Ale­jan­dro Jodorowsky’s 82 Com­mand­ments For Liv­ing

Watch the First Trail­er for Dune, Denis Villeneuve’s Adap­ta­tion of Frank Herbert’s Clas­sic Sci-Fi Nov­el

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Bill Gates Lets College Students Download a Free Digital Copy of His Book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

in Books, Current Affairs | October 25th, 2021

FYI: Ear­li­er this year, Bill Gates pub­lished the New York Times best­seller, How to Avoid a Cli­mate Dis­as­ter: The Solu­tions We Have and the Break­throughs We Need. In the book, Gates explains why we need to work toward net-zero emis­sions of green­house gas­es, and how we can achieve this goal.  Giv­en that this respon­si­bil­i­ty will even­tu­al­ly fall to a younger gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers, Gates has decid­ed to make a dig­i­tal copy of his book avail­able to every col­lege and uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent in the world.

The book can be down­loaded an .epub file which can be opened in a com­pat­i­ble e‑reader appli­ca­tion on many devices. An email address, along with a name of college/university, is required. Find the book here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Bill Gates Describes His Biggest Fear: “I Rate the Chance of a Wide­spread Epi­dem­ic Far Worse Than Ebo­la at Well Over 50 Per­cent” (2015)

Take Big His­to­ry: A Free Short Course on 13.8 Bil­lion Years of His­to­ry, Fund­ed by Bill Gates

Bill Gates Rec­om­mends 5 Thought-Pro­vok­ing Books to Read This Sum­mer

How Bill Gates Reads Books

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How Neal Stephenson’s Sci-Fi Novel Snow Crash Invented the “Metaverse,” Which Facebook Now Plans to Build (1992)

in Books, Sci Fi, Technology | October 21st, 2021

What­ev­er the ben­e­fits and plea­sures of our cur­rent inter­net-enriched world, one must admit that it’s not quite as excit­ing as the set­ting of Snow Crash. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1992, that nov­el not only made the name of its author Neal Stephen­son, it ele­vat­ed him to the sta­tus of a tech­no­log­i­cal Nos­tradamus. It did so, at least, among read­ers inter­est­ed in the inter­net and its poten­tial, which was much more of a niche sub­ject 29 years ago. Of the many inven­tions with which Stephen­son fur­nished Snow Crash’s then-futur­is­tic 21st-cen­tu­ry cyber­punk real­i­ty, few have cap­tured as many techie imag­i­na­tions as the “meta­verse,” an enor­mous vir­tu­al world inhab­it­ed by the avatars of its users.

“Lots of oth­er sci­ence fic­tion media includes meta­verse-like sys­tems,” writes The Verge’s Adi Robert­son, but “Stephenson’s book remains one of the most com­mon ref­er­ence points for meta­verse enthu­si­asts.” This holds espe­cial­ly true in Sil­i­con Val­ley, where, as Van­i­ty Fair’s Joan­na Robin­son puts it, “a host of engi­neers, entre­pre­neurs, futur­ists, and assort­ed com­put­er geeks (includ­ing Ama­zon C.E.O. Jeff Bezos) still revere Snow Crash as a remark­ably pre­scient vision of today’s tech land­scape.” It’s rumored that Face­book CEO Mark Zucker­berg will soon announce his com­pa­ny’s intent to change its name to one that bet­ter suits its own long-term plan: to tran­si­tion, as Zucker­berg him­self put it, “from peo­ple see­ing us as pri­mar­i­ly being a social media com­pa­ny to being a meta­verse com­pa­ny.”

Bold though this may sound, astute read­ers haven’t for­got­ten that Snow Crash is a dystopi­an nov­el. The meta­verse it presents “is an out­growth of Stephenson’s satir­i­cal cor­po­ra­tion-dom­i­nat­ed future Amer­i­ca,” writes Robin­son, “but it’s unde­ni­ably depict­ed as hav­ing a cool side.” After all, the nov­el­’s pro­tag­o­nist is “a mas­ter hack­er who gets in katana fights at a vir­tu­al night­club,” though his vir­tu­al exis­tence com­pen­sates for a grim­mer real-world lifestyle. “In the book, Hiro lives in a shab­by ship­ping con­tain­er,” Stephen­son says, “but when he goes to the Meta­verse, he’s a big deal and has access to super high-end real estate.” This may sound faint­ly rem­i­nis­cent of cer­tain online worlds already in exis­tence: Sec­ond Life, for exam­ple, whose hey­day came in the ear­ly 2010s.

Though pre­sum­ably more ambi­tious, Zucker­berg’s vision of the meta­verse remains, for the moment, broad­ly defined: it will con­sist, he’s said, of “a set of vir­tu­al spaces where you can cre­ate and explore with oth­er peo­ple who aren’t in the same phys­i­cal space as you.” But as The Verge’s Alex Heath notes in an arti­cle on Face­book’s impend­ing name change, the com­pa­ny “already has more than 10,000 employ­ees build­ing con­sumer hard­ware like AR glass­es” — glass­es, that is, for aug­ment­ed real­i­ty, the over­lay­ing dig­i­tal ele­ments onto the real world — “that Zucker­berg believes will even­tu­al­ly be as ubiq­ui­tous as smart­phones.” It’s not impos­si­ble that he could be lead­ing the way toward the thrilling, dan­ger­ous, and often hilar­i­ous vir­tu­al world Snow Crash held out to us — and in whose absence we’ve had to make do with Face­book.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Habi­tat, the Very First Large-Scale Online Role-Play­ing Game (1986)

Tim­o­thy Leary Plans a Neu­ro­mancer Video Game, with Art by Kei­th Har­ing, Music by Devo & Cameos by David Byrne

William Gib­son, Father of Cyber­punk, Reads New Nov­el in Sec­ond Life

Sci-Fi Author J.G. Bal­lard Pre­dicts the Rise of Social Media (1977)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Beautifully Illustrated Atlas of Mushrooms: Edible, Suspect and Poisonous (1827)

in Books, History | October 20th, 2021

Two cen­turies ago, Haiti, “then known as Saint-Domingue, was a sug­ar pow­er­house that stood at the cen­ter of world trad­ing net­works,” writes Philippe Girard in his his­to­ry of the Hait­ian war for inde­pen­dence. “Saint-Domingue was the per­le de Antilles… the largest exporter of trop­i­cal prod­ucts in the world.” The island colony was also at the cen­ter of the trade in plants that drove the sci­en­tif­ic rev­o­lu­tion of the time, and many a nat­u­ral­ist prof­it­ed from the trade in slaves and sug­ar, as did planter, “physi­cian, botanist, and inad­ver­tent his­to­ri­og­ra­ph­er of the Hait­ian Rev­o­lu­tion” Michel Eti­enne Descour­tilz, the Pub­lic Domain Review writes.

Descour­tilz’ 1809 Voy­ages d’un nat­u­ral­iste “chron­i­cles, among oth­er adven­tures, a trip from France to Haiti in 1799 in order to secure his family’s plan­ta­tions.” Instead, he was arrest­ed and con­script­ed as a doc­tor under Jean-Jacques Dessalines.

The expe­ri­ence did not change his view that the island should be recon­quered, though he did admit “the germ” of rebel­lion “must secret­ly have exist­ed every­where there were slaves.” Decour­tilz chiefly spent his time, while not attend­ing to those wound­ed by Napoleon’s army, col­lect­ing plants between Port-au-Prince and Cap-Haï­tien.

In the dense trop­i­cal growth along the Art­i­bonite riv­er, now part of the bor­der between Haiti and the Domini­can Repub­lic, Decour­tilz learned much about the plant world — and maybe learned from some Haitians who knew more about the island’s flo­ra than the French­man did. Res­cued in 1802, Decour­tilz returned to France with his plants and began to com­pile his research into tax­o­nom­ic books, includ­ing Flo­res pit­toresque et med­icale des Antilles, in eight vol­umes, and a lat­er, 1827 work enti­tled Atlas des champignons: comestibles, sus­pects et vénéneux, or “Atlas of mush­rooms: edi­ble, sus­pect and poi­so­nous.”

As the title makes clear, sort­ing out the dif­fer­ences between one mush­room and anoth­er can eas­i­ly be a mat­ter of life and death, or at least seri­ous poi­son­ing. “Fly agar­ic, for exam­ple,” writes the Pub­lic Domain Review, “can resem­ble edi­ble species of blush­ers.” Con­sumed in small amounts, it might cause hal­lu­ci­na­tions and eupho­ria. Larg­er dos­es can lead to seizures and coma. One can imag­ine the num­bers of colonists in the French Caribbean who either had very bad trips or were poi­soned or killed by unfa­mil­iar plant life. Just last year alone in France, hun­dreds were poi­soned from misiden­ti­fied mush­rooms.

To guide the mush­room hunter, cook, and eater, Decourtiliz’s book fea­tured these rich, col­or­ful lith­o­graphs here by artist A. Cornil­lon (which may remind us of the pro­to-psy­che­del­ic sci­en­tif­ic art of Ernst Haeck­el). He alludes to the great dan­gers of wild mush­rooms in a ded­i­ca­tion to “S.A.R., Duchesse de Berry” and promis­es his guide will pre­vent “mor­tal acci­dents” (those which “fre­quent­ly occur among the poor.”) Descour­tilz offers his guide, acces­si­ble to all, he writes, out of a devo­tion to the alle­vi­a­tion of human suf­fer­ing. Read his Atlas of Mush­rooms, in French at the Inter­net Archive, and see more of Cornillon’s illus­tra­tions here.

via Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

1,000-Year-Old Illus­trat­ed Guide to the Med­i­c­i­nal Use of Plants Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

Dis­cov­er Emi­ly Dickinson’s Herbar­i­um: A Beau­ti­ful Dig­i­tal Edi­tion of the Poet’s Col­lec­tion of Pressed Plants & Flow­ers Is Now Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A 13th-Century Cookbook Featuring 475 Recipes from Moorish Spain Gets Published in a New Translated Edition

in Books, Food & Drink, History | October 19th, 2021

Some of the dis­tinc­tive­ness of Spain as we know it today comes as a lega­cy of the peri­od from 700 to 1200, when most of it was under Mus­lim rule. The cul­ture of Al-Andalus, as the Islam­ic states of mod­ern-day Spain and Por­tu­gal were then called, sur­vives most vis­i­bly in archi­tec­ture. But it also had its own cui­sine, devel­oped by not just Mus­lims, but by Chris­tians and Jews as well. What­ev­er the dietary restric­tions they indi­vid­u­al­ly worked under, “cooks from all three reli­gions enjoyed many ingre­di­ents first brought to the Iber­ian penin­su­la by the Arabs: rice, egg­plants, car­rots, lemons, sug­ar, almonds, and more.”

So writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Tom Verde in an arti­cle occa­sioned by the pub­li­ca­tion of a thir­teenth-cen­tu­ry Moor­ish cook­book. FidĚŁaĚ„lat al-KhiwaĚ„n fiĚ„ TĚŁayyibaĚ„t al‑TĚŁaĘżaĚ„m wa-l-AlwaĚ„n, or Best of Delec­table Foods and Dish­es from al-Andalus and al-Maghrib had long exist­ed only in bits and pieces. A “mad­den­ing­ly incom­plete car­rot recipe, along with miss­ing chap­ters on veg­eta­bles, sauces, pick­led foods, and more, left a gap­ing hole in all exist­ing edi­tions of the text, like an emp­ty aisle in the gro­cery store.” But in 2018, British Library cura­tor of Ara­bic sci­en­tif­ic man­u­scripts Dr. Bink Hal­lum hap­pened upon a near­ly com­plete fif­teenth- or six­teenth-cen­tu­ry copy of the FidĚŁaĚ„la with­in a man­u­script on medieval Arab phar­ma­col­o­gy.

The FidĚŁaĚ„la itself dates to around 1260. It was com­posed in Tunis by Ibn RazÄ«n al-TujÄ«bÄ«, “a well-edu­cat­ed schol­ar and poet from a wealthy fam­i­ly of lawyers, philoso­phers, and writ­ers. As a mem­ber of the upper class, he enjoyed a life of leisure and fine din­ing which he set out to cel­e­brate in the FidĚŁaĚ„la.” The Chris­t­ian Recon­quista had already put a bit­ter end to all that leisure and fine din­ing, and it was in rel­a­tive­ly hard­scrab­ble African exile that al-TujÄ«bÄ« wrote this less as a cook­book than as â€śan exer­cise in culi­nary nos­tal­gia, a wist­ful look back across the Strait of Gibral­tar to the ele­gant main cours­es, side dish­es, and desserts of the author’s youth, an era before Spain’s Mus­lims and Jews had to hide their cul­tur­al cuisines.”

That descrip­tion comes from food his­to­ri­an Naw­al Nas­ral­lah, trans­la­tor of the com­plete FidĚŁaĚ„la into an Eng­lish edi­tion pub­lished last month by Brill. In some of its sec­tions al-TujÄ«bÄ« cov­ers breads, veg­eta­bles, poul­try dish­es, and “meats of quadrupeds”; in oth­ers, he goes into detail on stuffed tripe, “edi­ble land snails,” and tech­niques for “rem­e­dy­ing over­ly salty foods and raw meat that does not smell fresh.” (The book includes 475 recipes in total.) Though much in the Moor­ish diet is a far cry from that of the major­i­ty in mod­ern Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries, inter­est in his­tor­i­cal gas­tron­o­my has been on the rise in recent years. And as even those sep­a­rat­ed from al-TujÄ«bÄ« by not just cul­ture but sev­en cen­turies’ worth of time know, what­ev­er your rea­sons for leav­ing a place, you soon long for noth­ing as acute­ly as the food — and that long­ing can moti­vate impres­sive achieve­ments.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Did Peo­ple Eat in Medieval Times? A Video Series and New Cook­book Explain

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

A Data­base of 5,000 His­tor­i­cal Cook­books — Cov­er­ing 1,000 Years of Food His­to­ry — Is Now Online

Dis­cov­er Japan’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Cook­book Ryori Mono­gatari (1643)

Tast­ing His­to­ry: A Hit YouTube Series Shows How to Cook the Foods of Ancient Greece & Rome, Medieval Europe, and Oth­er Places & Peri­ods

Down­load 10,000+ Books in Ara­bic, All Com­plete­ly Free, Dig­i­tized and Put Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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