Marilyn Johnson

In a celebration of libraries and the dedicated people who staff them, the author argues that librarians are more important than ever, and discusses a new breed of visionary professionals who use the Web to link people and information.

How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

This Book Is Overdue!

The author of The Dead Beat and This Book is Overdue! turns her piercing eye and charming wit to the real-life avatars of Indiana Jones—the archaeologists who sort through the muck and mire of swamps, ancient landfills, volcanic islands, and other dirty places to reclaim history for us all. Pompeii, Machu Picchu, the Valley of the Kings, the Parthenon—the names of these legendary archaeological sites conjure up romance and mystery. The news is full of archaeology: treasures found (British king under parking lot) and treasures lost (looters, bulldozers, natural disaster, and war). Archaeological research tantalizes us with possibilities (are modern humans really part Neandertal?). Where are the archaeologists behind these stories? What kind of work do they actually do, and why does it matter? Marilyn Johnson’s Lives in Ruins is an absorbing and entertaining look at the lives of contemporary archaeologists as they sweat under the sun for clues to the puzzle of our past. Johnson digs and drinks alongside archaeologists, chases them through the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and even Machu Picchu, and excavates their lives. Her subjects share stories we rarely read in history books, about slaves and Ice Age hunters, ordinary soldiers of the American Revolution, children of the first century, Chinese woman warriors, sunken fleets, mummies. What drives these archaeologists is not the money (meager) or the jobs (scarce) or the working conditions (dangerous), but their passion for the stories that would otherwise be buried and lost.

Archaeologists and the Seductive Lure of Human Rubble

Lives in Ruins

Marilyn Johnson was enthralled by the remarkable lives that were marching out of this world—so she sought out the best obits in the English language and the people who spent their lives writing about the dead. She surveyed the darkest corners of Internet chat rooms, and made a pilgrimage to London to savor the most caustic and literate obits of all. Now she leads us on a compelling journey into the cult and culture behind the obituary page and the unusual lives we don't quite appreciate until they're gone.

Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries

The Dead Beat

Center for the American Woman and Politics (Eagleton Institute of Politics)

Kathy A. Stanwick

A state-by-state listing of women currently holding public office

A Biographical Directory and Statistical Analysis

Women in Public Office

In wry and lucid prose, Johnson takes a mordantly funny look at the history and practice of "the ultimate human-interest story," the obituary.

The Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries

Her Quest for Love and What She Found Instead

Bobbi Jean McSheen, The Barbecue Queen

Matilda White Riley

Anne Foner

Represents the first integrated effort to deal with age as a crucial variable in the social system. Of special interest to sociologists for whom the sociology of age seems destined to become a special field.

A Sociology of Age Stratification

Aging and Society, Volume 3

Jennifer Bonham

The focus of the first half of the book is largely on the current engagement with cycling, challenges faced by existing and would-be cyclists and the issues cycling might address. The second half of the book is concerned with strategies and processes of change. Contributors working from different ontological positions reflect on changing socio-spatial relations to enable the broadest possible participation in cycling.

Marilyn Johnson

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