The Perfect Book to Read in a Blizzard: Cro-Magnon, the Story of Ice Age Humans

With the mid-Atlantic region recovering from one blizzard and bracing for another, we might be forgiven for wondering whether, instead of worrying about global warming, we ought to be learning how to make igloos. Let me call your attention to the perfect book to read after shoveling three feet of snow off your walk: Brian Fagan's Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans.

Cro-Magnon people were the first fully modern Europeans. We know them best for their stunning cave paintings at Lascaux, Altamira and elsewhere. But the Cro-Magnons were not just artistically gifted; they were ingeniously inventive. In fact they were the most adaptable and technologically creative people that had yet lived on earth. They lived side by side with an older species, Neanderthals, for some 15,000 years. In the end, the Cro-Magnons were better able to cope with the changing climate as the ice age blanketed Europe: they had better tools, better communication, and warmer clothes. They survived and Neanderthals faded away.

I really enjoy working Brian Fagan, an archaeologist who has a gift rare in his profession for bringing the prehistoric past to life. He can evoke the mystery of a cave flickering with torchlight, or the hesitant, wordless encounter of a Cro-Magnon hunting party and a Neanderthal settlement. A few pages later he can explain the cutting-edge techniques scientists use to date and interpret artifacts or tiny fragments of bone. And he can provide illuminating insights into the ingenuity of humans, revealing how what seem like simple innovations could push human history forward. For instance, what tool--probably more important than the wheel--allowed our Cro-Magnon ancestors to make it though the frigid winters of the Ice Age? The needle. With a sliver of bone pierced at one end, it was possible to sew together hides or furs and make real clothes. Imagine shoveling your walk, or chasing a deer, while trying to keep a bear hide draped over your shoulders and you'll see pretty clearly why this is important. 

If you have enjoyed the works of Jared Diamond--or for that matter, Clan of the Cave Bear and its bestselling sequels, I think you'll find Cro-Magnon an absorbing read. Here's a brief interview with Brian about the book. (Someone said he looks "like Indiana Jones's dad." I think she's got a point there.) 

(For more information on Brian Fagan and his other books, including the New York Times bestseller The Great Warming, visit www.brianfagan.com.)

New Advances in Bookselling Metrics: The Saltometer

Looks like we may have a major snowstorm in New York and the Mid-Atlantic in the next few days. Bad weather is always tough on retailers, bookstores included. But I learned from the excellent bookselling blog, Shelf Awareness, that at least one bookstore has found a hidden benefit to winter precipitation: a new customer "metric."

Although the current trend in bookselling is toward ever more computerized inventory control systems, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, Wis., shared its unique customer tracking device, known as the Saltometer:

"When there's a heavy snowfall in Milwaukee, it means one thing: massive piles of salt on the sidewalks of our fair city," noted the Boswellians blog. "We here at Boswell welcome it, of course. Not only does it keep the sides of Downer Avenue clear for pedestrians (come on by and see us!), it allows us booksellers to use that most hallowed of marketing tools: the saltometer. What is the saltometer, you ask? It's a highly sophisticated system by which we can look at the white-lined footprints all over the store and see what sections are really the most popular. Sure, we know what books you're all buying, but what about the books you read while you linger in the store on a frosty evening? Yes, the saltometer is the bookseller's friend."

New York City is not supposed to be hit very hard by the storm. I'm secretly disappointed. What could be better than getting snowed in for a day or two with a big pile of books to read?

(Photo of Washington Street, Providence by Jef Nickerson from Flickr)

Because It Can't Be E-Books All the Time: Today It's Monkey Time!

A reader has requested that I post about something other than e-books, Macmillan vs Amazon, etc. Excellent idea. And as this happened to turn up in my in-box just a day or so ago, it seems a good time to turn to the world of children's books. And monkeys. And what happens when a great cinematic auteur encounters the same.

And the Feathers Fly! Amazon & Macmillan Duke It Out

Whew. Just hours after I posted on Friday that it looked like a battle was brewing between big publishers and Amazon over e-book pricing, the fight broke out. I won't attempt to give a blow-by-blow here, but Mike Shatzkin gives a good summary here and there will be plenty of other accounts to come. 


In brief, Amazon went to the "nuclear option," as Shatzkin puts it, by delisting Macmillan titles and it blew up in their face. Many others will analyze this event and I'm not sure the dust has settled yet, so I'll restrict myself to a couple of observations: 


First, it's very interesting to read the Kindle forum posts on Amazon. Their announcement is clearly intended to cast Macmillan as the bully in the situation, even though it was Amazon who punished the publisher. On Amazon's Kindle page, not surprisingly, a vocal audience of Kindle owners, who have come to regard $9.99 as the inalienable right of e-book buyers, are ready to see it that way. (In fact, even before both companies' announcements, posters at the Kindle forum tended to assume Macmillan was boycotting Amazon rather than the other way round.) 


Still, even among Kindle owners, there are several posters who say, "geez, 14.99 doesn't sound so bad, it's still a lot less than a hardcover." Completely lost in the conversation is the fact that all these Macmillan titles might be available for $9.99 if you're willing to wait for them, the way you do for a paperback. I think Macmillan (and other publishers who want to "window" e-books) need to make consumers much more aware of that. 

Also interesting, I also read a hundred or so comments at the NYT Bits blog post on the controversy. There, many readers knocked Macmillan but a greater number (though not at first glance a majority) saw this as bullying by Amazon. In other words, among a sample of people who aren't all Kindle fans, opinion is much more divided. (Naturally there are plenty of "plague on both their houses" opinions and a few gimlet-eyed, "hey, they're both just rational actors attempting to maximize their profits" types.) 

I don't know whether we'll see $14.99 hold as the new standard price for e-books but I think it was fortunate for publishers that Apple came along when it did, before Amazon was able to get a stranglehold on the e-book market. 


Granted, there's much debate, especially outside the Big Six publishers, over whether it's really desirable to raise e-book prices. I'm frankly of two minds about it. Will have to take that up another time. But as Shatzkin points out in the comments threat on his post, publishers who are still absolutely dependent on print books have powerful incentives to slow the erosion of prices, and even the adoption of e-books in general, which are a serious threat to bookstores, still by far our biggest sales channel.  




(Full disclosure: Bloomsbury Press titles are distributed by Macmillan, but Bloomsbury has a separate relationship with Amazon and was not a party to the dispute.) 

Image from tshirtworks.blogspot.com