From the Aztec Empire (1300-1521 Spanish Invasion)

Represents the preciousness of water in the Aztec culture. It survived the Spanish invasion on 1521 and is a symbol of the lasting Aztec religious beliefs.

British Museum Database

“Figurine.” British Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Mar. 2015.

http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=667512&partId=1&searchText=Chalchiuhtlicue&page=1

Aztec History

http://www.history.com/topics/aztecs

http://www.aztec-history.com/aztec-farming.html

The book I chose is called Nels Anderson’s World War I Diary and is a first-hand account of the war. I found it by searching “world war I” but that was too broad so I added “primary source” and this book caught my eye. I flipped through the first couple pages and the forward drew me in by saying that Nels Anderson, whose journals are in this book, wrote over four-hundred hand written pages recording his life during the war.

Nels Anderson was an American soldier who was twenty-eight years old when he arrived in France in 1918 to partake in the “war to end all wars.” He writes about how being a soldier was different than what he had imagined. In his words, “I used to think it took courage to be a soldier but I have decided that I have more call for patience.” He then writes about how “trenching” (ditch digging) took up a large amount of the time he spent abroad and the long process trenching was. He doesn’t make it sound pleasant at all. Most of the diary isn’t recording fighting because that was so infrequent, its recording the daily life of soldiers  for most of the time they spent “at war.”

It is so interesting to read this and think about how the nature of war today has changed. Now a war that severely impacts hundreds of thousands occurs on the digital battlefield for example.

Anderson, Nels, and Allan Kent. Powell. Nels Anderson’s World War I Diary. Salt Lake City: U of Utah, 2013. Print.

Mirroring the Past: The Writing and the Use of History in Imperial China

Ng, On Cho, and Q. Edward Wang. Mirroring the Past: The Writing and Use of History in Imperial China. Honolulu: U of Hawaii, 2005. Print.

I discovered this book by imputing the key terms “history of china” and “use of history” into the database. This book was right next to the one that came up on the search results. Since I just read the importance of history to the Chinese throughout the centuries in the BBC podcast of the Jade bi it was cool to pick up this book and open to the prologue which talked all about how China venerated its history and turned the production of history into a “routine”. It goes from the age of Confucius to the last great dynasty, the Qing, and tells how they each documented their history with writing and artifacts that were as important to the Chinese as anything else. The book argues that “control of the past, by imperial fiat, was part of the power and authority of the new regime.” China’s history is every bit as interesting as the authors write about it in this text.

Interesting titles next to this book:

Inventing China Through History

Reinventing Modern China: Imagination and Authenticity in Chinese Historical Writing