Crossroads Of Commerce

Each year, starting in 1925, the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) commissioned a striking oil painting of a PRR engine in a dramatic setting, which was featured on a large wall calendar that the company distributed by the hundreds of thousands to customers and the public. Grif Teller painted 27 of the 33 scenes. This book reproduces Teller's calendar art and his other paintings in full color and recounts his life and career.

A unique volume, Inventing Times Square approaches the subject of twentieth-century American city culture through a multidimensional examination of one quintessential urban space: Times Square. Ranging in time from 1905, when the crossroad was given its present name, through to the current plans for redevelopment, the authors examine Times Square as economic hub, real estate bonanza, entertainment center, advertising medium, architectural experiment, and erotic netherworld. Though the volume centers on Times Square, the essays venture much further into urban history and American social history, revealing in the process how Times Square reflected—even epitomized—America as it became an urban consumer culture.

South Bend, Indiana stood at the crossroads of several major Native American trading routes long before the Europeans, led by the French, arrived from Canada and the East Coast to trade for furs. The city on a bend of the St. Joseph River soon became an important commercial center for settlers moving west. Eventually, the University of Notre Dame and Studebaker would call the growing community home.

Cities of Medieval Iran brings together studies in urban geography, archaeology, and history of medieval Iranian cities, covering the millennium from 500 to 1500 AD, with a focus on urban actors themselves.

Recently, the academic world celebrated 100 years of the opening of Cave 17 or the Library Cave, a veritable treasure house of Silk Road artifacts, in Dunhuang, the eastern terminus of the silk routes. Celebrations recording a hundred years of Tocharian Studies soon followed. The complexity of documenting the cultural artifacts of the so-called Silk Road becomes clear when it is remembered that between 1900 - 1925 just six men made what have been called archaeological raids into this remote corner of Central Asia. Between them until the 1940s they removed wall paintings, manuscripts, sculptures and other treasures literally by tons from the lost cities of the Silk Road. Today this great Central Asian collection, apart from what is in situ, is scattered through museums and institutions of at least 12 different countries. To even see some of this treasure one has to travel to Great Britain, China, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, and the United States, and have to visit over 30 institutions. The German expedition alone collected manuscripts in more than 20 languages and 25 scripts on silk, leather, birch, bark, wood paper, and more. Little wonder then that the articles on Kizil and generally on the Silk Road lie buried in obscure publications in different languages, Chinese, German and Russian being the most frequently used, apart from English.

The hectic front of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science hides an unseen back of the museum that is also bustling. Less than 1 percent of the museum's collections are on display at any given time, and the Department of Anthropology alone cares for more than 50,000 objects from every corner of the globe not normally available to the public. This lavishly illustrated book presents and celebrates the Denver Museum of Nature & Science's exceptional anthropology collections for the first time. The book presents 123 full-color images to highlight the museum's cultural treasures. Selected for their individual beauty, historic value, and cultural meaning, these objects connect different places, times, and people. From the mammoth hunters of the Plains to the first American pioneer settlers to the flourishing Hispanic and Asian diasporas in downtown Denver, the Rocky Mountain region has been home to a breathtaking array of cultures. Many objects tell this story of the Rocky Mountains' fascinating and complex past, whereas others serve to bring enigmatic corners of the globe to modern-day Denver. Crossroads of Culture serves as a behind-the-scenes tour of the museum's anthropology collections. All the royalties from this publication will benefit the collections of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science's Department of Anthropology.