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Mysteries of the Past
First printing of this edition. 9" x 11 1/2" hardcover bound in tan cloth and red boards. A Fine copy in VG+ dust jacket. The dust jacket has rubs to its spine tips and corners. Rubbing along the panels' upper edges. Mild dust soiling to the panels.
319 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1977
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About the author
Joseph J. Thorndike Jr.
47 books2 followersFor the Tax historian, see
Joseph J. Thorndike
Joseph Jacobs Thorndike (July 29, 1913 – November 22, 2005) was an American editor and writer. He was Managing Editor of Life for three years in the late 1940s, and a co-founder of American Heritage and Horizon magazines.
Thorndike was born and raised in Peabody, Massachusetts, a small town north of Boston. His father was a stockbroker, his mother a teacher. Thorndike was a straight A student at Peabody High, valedictorian of his class, and a writer for two school magazines.
At Harvard ('34) he majored in Economics, but spent much of his time at The Harvard Crimson, rising to Managing Editor his junior year, and to President his senior year.
In June 1934, he started work at Time magazine, writing People, Miscellany and Education articles. He was asked by Henry Luce to join a group planning a new picture magazine, and when Life debuted in 1936, Thorndike, though only 23, was an associate editor of the magazine.. His immediate boss at Life was John Shaw Billings, the first Managing Editor. Billings kept a diary in which, according to Loudon Wainwright's book The Great American Magazine: An Inside History of Life, he called Thorndike "a mulish young Yankee," and "a stubborn little New England cuss" Wainwright himself called Thorndike "a handsome, bright, reserved, efficient fellow...ambitious, proud, marked from the start for bigger things."
In 1946, as Life's circulation topped five million, Thorndike became the magazine's third Managing Editor, a position he held for three years. Toward the end of his stay, disagreements grew between him and Luce. Life, in late 1948, had published a "Life Goes To A Party" story about an uninhibited dance party in Hawaii, including photos of scantily-dressed partygoers. Luce's reaction was to subject the Managing Editor to more supervision, which Thorndike resisted. The dispute came to a head in August, 1949, after Luce circulated a memoir proposing an "Editor-in-Chief's Committee" that would decide on all future articles for the magazine. Thorndike read it, packed his briefcase and resigned.
In 1950, Thorndike and another refugee from Life, Oliver Jensen, formed a small publishing company, Picture Press. They put out a book of cowboy photos by Life photographer Leonard McCombe, and a lavish picture book for Ford Motor Company, Ford at Fifty. James Parton, whom Thorndike had known at the Crimson, joined them in 1952 to create Thorndike Jensen & Parton, and in 1954 they took over a small history publication named American Heritage. They enlarged it, turned it into a hardcover, profusely illustrated bimonthly with no advertisements, and hired popular American Civil War historian Bruce Catton as editor and writer.
Circulation at American Heritage rose to over 300,000. David McCullough, author of the bestsellers Truman and John Adams, and writer and editor for the magazine, later said that it was "the best place I ever worked as an employee... They were receptive to new ideas, with very high editorial standards, high accuracy, and quality writing... You felt like you were cast in a hit show with great people."
A second magazine, Horizon, followed in 1958, and over the next three decades the company published dozens of illustrated books on history, art and architecture. Thorndike wrote two of them: The Magnificent Builders And Their Dream Houses (1978), and The Very Rich: A History of Wealth (1985).
American Heritage sold to McGraw-Hill in 1970, to private investor Samuel Pryor Reed of New York City in 1976, to Forbes in 1986, and to an independent publisher, Edwin S. Grosvenor, in 2007.
In his early seventies, Thorndike served for two years as head of The American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel, a group of writers and scholars who are polled on acceptable English usage.
In 1993 Thorndike published his last book, The Coast: A Journey Down the Atlantic Shore, which Kirkus Reviews described as "an effect
Joseph Jacobs Thorndike (July 29, 1913 – November 22, 2005) was an American editor and writer. He was Managing Editor of Life for three years in the late 1940s, and a co-founder of American Heritage and Horizon magazines.
Thorndike was born and raised in Peabody, Massachusetts, a small town north of Boston. His father was a stockbroker, his mother a teacher. Thorndike was a straight A student at Peabody High, valedictorian of his class, and a writer for two school magazines.
At Harvard ('34) he majored in Economics, but spent much of his time at The Harvard Crimson, rising to Managing Editor his junior year, and to President his senior year.
In June 1934, he started work at Time magazine, writing People, Miscellany and Education articles. He was asked by Henry Luce to join a group planning a new picture magazine, and when Life debuted in 1936, Thorndike, though only 23, was an associate editor of the magazine.. His immediate boss at Life was John Shaw Billings, the first Managing Editor. Billings kept a diary in which, according to Loudon Wainwright's book The Great American Magazine: An Inside History of Life, he called Thorndike "a mulish young Yankee," and "a stubborn little New England cuss" Wainwright himself called Thorndike "a handsome, bright, reserved, efficient fellow...ambitious, proud, marked from the start for bigger things."
In 1946, as Life's circulation topped five million, Thorndike became the magazine's third Managing Editor, a position he held for three years. Toward the end of his stay, disagreements grew between him and Luce. Life, in late 1948, had published a "Life Goes To A Party" story about an uninhibited dance party in Hawaii, including photos of scantily-dressed partygoers. Luce's reaction was to subject the Managing Editor to more supervision, which Thorndike resisted. The dispute came to a head in August, 1949, after Luce circulated a memoir proposing an "Editor-in-Chief's Committee" that would decide on all future articles for the magazine. Thorndike read it, packed his briefcase and resigned.
In 1950, Thorndike and another refugee from Life, Oliver Jensen, formed a small publishing company, Picture Press. They put out a book of cowboy photos by Life photographer Leonard McCombe, and a lavish picture book for Ford Motor Company, Ford at Fifty. James Parton, whom Thorndike had known at the Crimson, joined them in 1952 to create Thorndike Jensen & Parton, and in 1954 they took over a small history publication named American Heritage. They enlarged it, turned it into a hardcover, profusely illustrated bimonthly with no advertisements, and hired popular American Civil War historian Bruce Catton as editor and writer.
Circulation at American Heritage rose to over 300,000. David McCullough, author of the bestsellers Truman and John Adams, and writer and editor for the magazine, later said that it was "the best place I ever worked as an employee... They were receptive to new ideas, with very high editorial standards, high accuracy, and quality writing... You felt like you were cast in a hit show with great people."
A second magazine, Horizon, followed in 1958, and over the next three decades the company published dozens of illustrated books on history, art and architecture. Thorndike wrote two of them: The Magnificent Builders And Their Dream Houses (1978), and The Very Rich: A History of Wealth (1985).
American Heritage sold to McGraw-Hill in 1970, to private investor Samuel Pryor Reed of New York City in 1976, to Forbes in 1986, and to an independent publisher, Edwin S. Grosvenor, in 2007.
In his early seventies, Thorndike served for two years as head of The American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel, a group of writers and scholars who are polled on acceptable English usage.
In 1993 Thorndike published his last book, The Coast: A Journey Down the Atlantic Shore, which Kirkus Reviews described as "an effect
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 2, 2021
Books about ancient lives and ancient cities always have a place in my ever-expanding collection. This volume was a happenstance find while volunteering in a book room and was supposed to have waited its turn for reading, but quickly moved up the pipeline because of my curiosity. Although it was published in 1977, the questions it highlights are still as fascinating today.
…a burned palace can be the work of a careless cook as well as a ruthless enemy.
Who first crossed the oceans? Where did Homer’s heroes really originate? Why didn’t the Greeks and Romans develop machinery? Who were the Indo-Europeans? These are just some of the unknowns of the past for which we are still not 100% certain. With the advent of DNA genome sequencing, we certainly have a much better idea than we did decades ago, but really, it’s still all guesswork. We now believe we know when humans left Africa and where they went, but still don’t have much evidence as to why they chose certain routes and how they became enamored of ocean-sailing. Since we are taught to think logically, we also expound theories based upon what has been found. But, so what? If I leave a bottle of Schweppes Bitter Lemon somewhere and it gets buried by centuries of debris, when found, does it mean that humans only drank this beverage? Of course not. Yet, that is how archaeology has always been approached, as we really don’t have much else to go on.
If people speaking a certain language enter and settle down in an area, will this necessarily be reflected in the archaeological record? What if they prefer to use the kind of dishware they find in their new homeland instead of continuing to use their own, or decide that the way the natives bury their dead or build their houses is better than their own?
The book does its best to answer some of the mysteries, but unless some real evidence appears somewhere, we will never truly know, for example, just who the Sea Peoples really were. Another example is the Phaistos Disk, a 4,000-year-old clay disk that was found on Crete in 1908. At the time of this book’s writing, the mystery had still not been solved. However, it’s now believed to be a prayer to a Minoan goddess. We think. Not 100% certain.
I am the type of nut who will spend a day on vacation in an ancient land wandering around, believing that I might be standing upon a trove of long-forgotten items/treasure/manuscripts. They found Richard III under a car park. Imagine what is under the ground in Rome or Greece or Anatolia? We once thought Troy was a myth, until real evidence surfaced. I just want answers. Until then, my Bitter Lemon bottle will have to suffice. A very good read.
Book Season = Year Round (find the clues)
…a burned palace can be the work of a careless cook as well as a ruthless enemy.
Who first crossed the oceans? Where did Homer’s heroes really originate? Why didn’t the Greeks and Romans develop machinery? Who were the Indo-Europeans? These are just some of the unknowns of the past for which we are still not 100% certain. With the advent of DNA genome sequencing, we certainly have a much better idea than we did decades ago, but really, it’s still all guesswork. We now believe we know when humans left Africa and where they went, but still don’t have much evidence as to why they chose certain routes and how they became enamored of ocean-sailing. Since we are taught to think logically, we also expound theories based upon what has been found. But, so what? If I leave a bottle of Schweppes Bitter Lemon somewhere and it gets buried by centuries of debris, when found, does it mean that humans only drank this beverage? Of course not. Yet, that is how archaeology has always been approached, as we really don’t have much else to go on.
If people speaking a certain language enter and settle down in an area, will this necessarily be reflected in the archaeological record? What if they prefer to use the kind of dishware they find in their new homeland instead of continuing to use their own, or decide that the way the natives bury their dead or build their houses is better than their own?
The book does its best to answer some of the mysteries, but unless some real evidence appears somewhere, we will never truly know, for example, just who the Sea Peoples really were. Another example is the Phaistos Disk, a 4,000-year-old clay disk that was found on Crete in 1908. At the time of this book’s writing, the mystery had still not been solved. However, it’s now believed to be a prayer to a Minoan goddess. We think. Not 100% certain.
I am the type of nut who will spend a day on vacation in an ancient land wandering around, believing that I might be standing upon a trove of long-forgotten items/treasure/manuscripts. They found Richard III under a car park. Imagine what is under the ground in Rome or Greece or Anatolia? We once thought Troy was a myth, until real evidence surfaced. I just want answers. Until then, my Bitter Lemon bottle will have to suffice. A very good read.
Book Season = Year Round (find the clues)
July 25, 2017
This was one of my mother's favorites. She loved books on the ancient civilizations and had quite a collection of the genre, so popular in the 70s and 80s. Reading her book was fun, and brought back memories of her awe and wonder of our world.
August 28, 2018
Very interesting but it's very much like reading a text book. Lots of great pictures and other images.
February 12, 2017
What I love about books from the 1970's was there was a such an array of 'mysteries' type of books dealing with ancient and pre-historic finds from around the world. This book is another example of such a book. I paid $5.00 for this book years ago and while the book is dated, it is still a pleasure to read through from time to time.
May 14, 2012
A dated work,from 1977, it still asks many important questions of archeology.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews