• In the country of the dead. Amateurs
• The destiny jar
• Treasure hunters
• Unseen things
• Vandalism and other acts of removal. Diggers
• Going to market
• A history of urges
• The chosen ones
• Salvage archaeology
• Where artifacts end up. The golden jar
• Houses of obsession
• Public trust
• In situ. No place like home
• Holding on
• Letting go.

To whom does the past belong? Is the archeologist who discovers a lost tomb a sort of hero - or a villain? If someone steals a relic from a museum and returns it to the ruin it came from, is she a thief? Written in his trademark lyrical style, Craig Childs's riveting new book is a ghost story - an intense, impassioned investigation into the nature of the past and the things we leave behind. We visit lonesome desert canyons and fancy Fifth Avenue art galleries, journey throughout the Americas, Asia, the past and the present. The result is a brilliant book about man and nature, remnants and memory, a dashing tale of crime and detection.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Down and dirty : studying people who study people
• Boot camp. Field school : context is everything ; The survivalist's guide to archaeology : our ancestors were geniuses ; Extreme beverages : taking beer seriously ; Pig dragons : how to pick up an archaeologist ; My life is in ruins : jobs and other problems ; Road trip through time : our partner, heartbreak ; Underwater mysteries : slow archaeology, deep archaeology
• The classics. Explorers clubs : classics of the ancient world and Hollywood ; Field school redux : the earth-whisperers
• Archaeology and war. The bodies : who owns history? ; Evidence of harm : bearing witness ; Archaeology in a dangerous world : a historic alliance ; Avoidance targets : mission-- respect
• Heritage. Buckets of archaeologists : if archaeologists tried to save the world.

Finding Life in RuinsJump into a battered Indiana Jones-style Jeep with the intrepid Marilyn Johnson and head down bone-rattling roads in search of those who dig up the past. Johnson, the author of two acclaimed books about quirky subcultures-The Dead Beat (about obituary writers) and This Book Is Overdue! (about librarians)-brings her irrepressible wit and curiosity to bear on yet another strange world, that of archaeologists. Who chooses to work in ruins? What's the allure of sifting through layers of dirt under a hot sun? Why do archaeologists care so passionately about what's dead and buried-and why should we?Johnson tracks archaeologists around the globe from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean, from Newport, Rhode Island to Machu Picchu. She digs alongside experts on an eighteenth-century sugar plantation and in a first-century temple to Apollo. She hunts for bodies with forensics archaeologists in the vast and creepy Pine Barrens of New Jersey, drinks beer with an archaeologist of ancient beverages, and makes stone tools like a caveman. By turns amusing and profound, Lives in Ruins and its wild cast of characters find new ways to consider what is worth salvaging from our past.Archaeologists are driven by the love of history and the race to secure its evidence ahead of floods and bombs, looters and thieves, and before the bulldozers move in. Why spend your life in ruins? To uncover our hidden stories before they disappear.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• The lady in the jeweled dog collar
• The case of the missing masterpiece
• Ghost dancing at Wounded Knee
• Babe Ruth on a quail hunt
• The only pharaoh outside of Egypt
• Selling history
• Sumerian plunder
• Heroes.

Stolen, Smuggled Sold: On the Hunt for Cultural Treasures tells the dark and compelling stories of iconic cultural objects that were stolen, smuggled or sold, and eventually returned back to their original owner. There are many books about museum heists, Holocaust artwork, insider theft, trafficking in antiquities, and stolen Native American objects. Now, there's finally a book for the general public that covers the entire terrain. The book includes full-color photos of the objects. Stolen, Smuggled, Sold features seven vivid and true stories in which the reader joins the author as she uncovers a cultural treasure and follows its often-convoluted trail. Along the way author and reader encounter a cast of fascinating characters from the underbelly of the cultural world: unscrupulous grave robbers, sinister middlemen, ruthless art dealers, venal Nazis, canny lawyers, valiant academics, unstoppable investigative reporters, unwitting curators, and dedicated government officials. Stories include Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1, the typeset manuscript for Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, a ceremonial Ghost Dance short from the massacre at Wounded Knee, the theft of 4,800 historical audio discs by a top official at the National Archives, a missing original copy of The Bill of Rights, the mummy of Ramses I, and an ancient treasure from Iraq. While each story is fascinating in and of itself, together they address one of the hottest issues in the museum world: how to deal with the millions of items that have breaks in the chain of ownership, suspicious ownership records, or no provenance at all. The issue of ownership touches on professional practices, international protocols, and national laws. It's a financial issue since the illicit trade in antiquities and cultural items generates as much as $4 billion to $8 billion a year.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)