3 free eBooks - February 2015

It was hard to pick my three favorites this month. I settled on three topics: Mayans, Fungi, and Chinese Painting.

Maudslay, Alfred Percival. Biologia Centrali-Americana, or, Contributions to the knowledge of the fauna and flora of Mexico and Central America. London: R. H. Porter and Dulau & Co. 1902. Four volumes available from the Internet Archive: volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, volume 4. These books focus on the archeology of a region - primarily Mayan - in the late 1800s that has gotten more attention over the past century. There are lot photographs (sometimes with people to help understand the scale of the ruins) and drawings. There are also a few color plates. The photograph at right is quite well know (it’s in the Wikipedia entry for him and is in many textbooks). Many of the ruin were roughly cleared of vegetation or still partially obscured at the time Maudslay documented them.

Banning, Mary Elizabeth. Fungi of Maryland. Available via the New York State Museum here. This is an online exhibit more than a book but I am including it here to show off the beautiful illustrations done by Mary Banning. She began her work in 1868 and continued for over 20 years producing 174 detailed 13” x 15” watercolor illustrations. The online exhibit includes 48 of them. Unfortunately - she was unable to get her work published; she sent it to the New York State Museum as a ‘safe place’ in 1890; it was found again 91 years later in 1981.

Barnhart, Richard M. Peach Blossom Spring Gardens and Flowers in Chinese Painting. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1983. Available from the Internet Archive here. Some of the images are very colorful and some are muted. I particularly liked the muted image of the lotuses.