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Mixed Harvest
Stories from the Human Past
Rob Swigart
224 pages, bibliog.
ISBN 978-1-78920-611-1 $149.00/£110.00 Hb Published (December 2019)
ISBN 978-1-78920-620-3 $24.95/£19.95 Pb Published (December 2019)
eISBN 978-1-78920-612-8 eBook
NAUTILUS BOOK AWARD 2019 WINNER: MULTICULTURAL AND INDIGENOUS CATEGORY.
Reviews
“Swigart is to be congratulated for giving us a series of connected short stories that are both entertaining and educational. The book is accurately grounded in archaeological facts, and its individual stories are thoroughly believable. Its particular format should be emulated by all those wishing to blend fact and fiction, not just as entertainment but as education, too.” • Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies
“Rob Swigart has written a most remarkable and imaginative short story collection. It is remarkable for its enthralling, in-depth portrayal of the lives of humans from their emergence as distinct beings… Each of these stories is told, not only with an acute sense of informed historicity and scientific accuracy, but with engaging writing. Reading these stories was not only an evocative intellectual experience but a heartfelt emotional one as well. It is the work of a master storyteller. Swigart brings the stories so alive one feels a part of them—as if you, I, we, truly are…A magnificent and often extraordinary sequence of stories.” • Jack B. Rochester, Jack.Boston.com
“Mixed Harvest is an unexpected take on human origins and early human societies, blending deftly written short stories with brief nonfiction segments… Readers will leave with a strong emotional grounding in the anthropological and archaeological record, and a large number of informational and thematic touchpoints for understanding this history.” • Joey Eschrich, Arizona State University
Description
In unforgettable stories of the human journey, a combination of storytelling and dialogue underscore an excavation into the deep past of human development and its consequences. Through a first encounter between a Neanderthal woman and the Modern Human she called Traveler, to the emergence and destruction of the world’s first cities, Mixed Harvest tells the tale of the Sedentary Divide, the most significant event since modern humans emerged. Rob Swigart’s latest work humanizes the rapid transition to agriculture and pastoralism with a grounding in the archaeological record.
Rob Swigart, PhD (Comparative Literature) taught for 35 years at a university, published eleven novels and poetry in The Atlantic, Poetry, and other journals, and co-authored a business book while working as a research affiliate with the Institute for the Future.