Thomas F. King

The hypothesis is that Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan landed and died on uninhabited Gardner Island, now Nikumaroro in Kiribati. This book describes the intensely detailed archaeological research - so detailed that it was tempting to skim to get to the heart of the matter. Reading and keeping track of the mass of detail: acronyms, changed geographical names, researchers past and present, related institutions, etc., was somewhat arduous. Tantalizing, but as expected, we will never know what happened. Given the unflagging interest in Earhart's story, King might have produced a best seller had this been a more fluid story.

Minor irritations: the ubiquitous acronym TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) scattered on every page; numerous so-called TIGHAR songs, "sung to the tune of ..."; and the number of errors, which in my library copy were compounded by a previous reader's "corrections".… (more)

This is a collection of short, informally written, musings on issues regarding cultural resource management (CRM) in the US. If you've ever read any of his writings, you'll probably be familiar with the gist of this book, in that he emphasizes a holistic culturally-focused approach that sometimes gets into seemingly contradictory semantic issues. By collecting these essays together, it becomes obvious that his emphasis is not on history (which should concern preservationists) or potential (which should concern some research-oriented archaeologists), but how people today view these resources. This is an approach not usually taken by people in the CRM world.

Overall, I'd say this a thought-provoking book, which is excellent for those of us who practice CRM in some form to use as a launching point in developing our own philosophy in how we should approach cultural resource management.… (more)