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You might be wondering why the Smithsonian Libraries would choose a book based on beasts from fantasy, but behind every myth is some truth. The family of “cryptids” includes such familiar creatures as Bigfoot, Yeti, and the Loch Ness Monster, plus several other questionable beasts of land and sea. This book, illustrated with black-and-white photos and drawings, attempts to apply the scientific method to reports of these mythological creatures. The goal is to separate fact from fiction, i.e., what is pure imagination from what is actually possible.

This beautifully illustrated monograph describes the excavation and research of an ancient Ixil Maya Indian town in a Guatemalan valley. The archeologists involved in this project describe their field work and findings with scholarly attention to detail, but also with obvious enthusiasm for their discoveries. The Discussion chapter highlights their fascination with ongoing exploration to fill in the historical blanks.

The ancient city of Palmyra was, for a number of centuries, an important trading center for materials transported across the Silk Road to and from many points in Asia and the Middle East. Much of our current understanding of silk in antiquity comes from the study of material from Palmyra. This book on Palmyra textiles picks up from earlier scholarship, seeking to identify the origin of these silks and to expand their cultural context.

This early and only edition consists of an illustrated three volume study of Roman vessels drawn and engraved by Italian artist and editor Carlo Antonin (born circa 1740). Volume one features vessels in the Pio-Clementine and Chiaramonti Museum at the Vatican; volume 2 shows items in the Capitoline Museum and the galleries of Rome; and volume 3 has images of other antique “Rome district” vases. This book includes more than 195 full-page images illustrating variant forms and decoration on Roman vases and vessels.

This beautifully illustrated and rare--actually, first and only edition folio--is a study of the subject matter depicted on a Roman glass cameo vase (AD1-AD25) called the Portland Vase. The Portland Vase inspired glass and porcelain makers including Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) who produced a duplicate in black and white jasperware in 1790. Discovered in the sarcophagus of Emperor Alexander Severus near Rome in 1582, the vase passed through the Barberini family, British ambassador Sir William Hamilton, and finally to the 2nd & 3rd Dukes of Portland who gave it to the British Museum. Auth

"Pursuing the wonder of discovery" is an apt tagline for Frank A. Garcia. Despite having no formal education, Mr. Garcia has become one of America’s foremost paleontologists, discovering more than 30 previously unknown species (including two which were named after him). He slid down into phosphate pits with a broken leg, dug up massive prehistoric turtle bones with his dog Webster, and even went digging while recovering from back surgery.

There is a commonly held superstition that illicitly removing specimens of petrified wood from Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park is bad luck. As a result, the National Park Service receives many of these returned rocks with “conscience letters” of regret from over the years. The letters have been carefully archived and the purloined samples are now in a “conscience pile” at the end of the park property. The rocks cannot be distributed on the park land as the exact provenance for each piece can never be known, and areas need to be kept as pristine as possible for future research.