Birch

This is a modern-spelling edition of John Greaves’s Pyramidographia (1646), together with some miscellaneous travel-writings, letters and a biography of Greaves by Thomas Birch. It includes a full scholarly introduction and detailed notes. This book is the first of its kind in English, and undertakes a scientific evaluation of the pyramids through metrics, using state-of-the-art instruments and drawing on both ancient and modern authorities, amongst which is included Arab and Persian writers as well as Western sources. Greaves’s work is distinguished from others by his refusal to be drawn into mystical or theological speculation, and is an excellent example of how seventeenth-century scientists may be said to have pioneered modern methods of scientific inquiry. Greaves discusses the age of the pyramids, their purpose, the nature of their builders and the methods he believes were used to erect them. It may be said that he is probably the earliest genuine English “Egyptologist”, and that Pyramidographia is indeed the earliest scientific treatise on the subject. Greaves’s travel-writings, which also contain a great deal of measurement, show readers how he approached his sojourn in foreign lands, and his letters give some measure of the man and his relationships with fellow-scientists and patrons. The biography by Thomas Birch further fills out Greaves’s life and career.

It is the late 1800s, and Susan Winslow in trying to evade a persistent suitor, moves to her Aunt Sophie in the little village of Birch's Ford in Eastern Pennsylvania. She is soon entangled in the lives of the villagers. The innkeeper's son whom she knows from childhood. The blue-eyed handsome Doc who keeps women at arm's length, but cares deeply not only for the physical but the spiritual lives in those around him. Then there is the little boy who though orphaned, unwanted, dirty, and a thief, crawls not only into Susan's heart but in the lives of the villagers. There is tragedy as well as triumph to be experienced. Susan learns the hard way whom to trust and whom not to trust and finally to wait for God's timing for her lonely heart. (253pp. Masthof Press, 2018.)