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ANNOTATED RESERVE LIST

1. General Accounts of Catastrophism <#1>

2. Scenarios of Past Catastrophes <#2>

3. Apocalyptic <#3>

4. Mythology <#4>

5. Translations and Commentaries <#5>

6. Fiction <#6>

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1. GENERAL ACCOUNTS OF CATASTROPHISM

* Chapman, Clark R., and Morrison, David. 1989. Cosmic Catastrophes. *

Two prominent astronomers give an overview for the layman of recent
perspectives on cosmic catastrophes, both billions and thousands of
years ago. They also forth a sober estimate of threats from comets
and asteroids in the future. They give summary accounts of several
20th century catastrophists they deem ?pseudo-scientific? and try to
sketch the boundaries of what mainstream scientists considered
possible (as of 1989).

* Halpern, Paul. 1998. Countdown to Apocalypse: Asteroids, Tidal
Waves, and the End of the World. *

A very recent survey (complete with apocalyptic websites) of a whole
range of catastrophes, past and future, natural and manmade, with
which science and religion have at one time or another been concerned.

* Huggett, Richard J. 1997. Catastrophism: Asteroids, Comets, and
Other Dynamic Events in Earth History. *

A professor of ?geoecology and environmental change? chronicles the
rise, fall and revival of catastrophism in the history of ideas,
down to topics such as organized chaos in the non-linear dynamics
both of biological change and of pulses in the galaxy and solar
system. One of the very best recent synthetic introductions to the
history and theory of catastrophism.

* Lewis, John S. 1997. Rain of Iron and Ice: The Very Real Threat of
Comet and Asteroid Bombardment. *

Lewis, a planetologist and impact-crater expert, is Codirector of
the NASA/Univ. of Arizona Space Engineering Research Center. He
assembles the evidence for comet and asteroid impacts and
extinctions on the earth, using similar evidence gathered from space
flybys of the planets as well as geology and paleontology. He not
only describes the preventive measures being taken by scientists
today but also, on a more upbeat note, points to the immense
economic yield to be had from mining asteroids.

* Palmer, Trevor. 1999. Controversy: Catastrophism and Evolution,
The Ongoing Debate. *

Ranging over astronomy, biology, history and paleontology, this
volume traces the interactive developments of these two scientific
models from ancient times to the present. It argues in its
conclusion that ?the characteristic pattern of evolution is of
extinctions followed after a pause by the rapid radiation of new
species into vacant ecological space.? Along with Huggett the best
recent introduction to catastrophism.

* Raup, David M. 1986. The Nemesis Affair. *

Raup is an expert on extinction and evolution, and, with Jack
Sepkoski, an early proponent of the theory of periodic mass
extinction. The book includes an excellent summary of the debate
between catastrophism and uniformitarianism beginning with Georges
Cuvier and Charles Lyell in the early 19th century. It aims to be
?an account of the way science works, as seen by a participant.?

* Rudwick, M. J. S. 1997. Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and
Geological Catastrophes: New Translations and Interpretations of the
Primary Texts. *

A specialist in the history of geology and paleontology explains the
ideas and methods of the premier catastrophist in the field before
the dominance of uniformitarianism.

* Schechner-Genuth, Sandra. 1997. Comets, Popular Culture, and the
Birth of Modern Cosmology. *

Begun as a doctoral dissertation at Harvard in the history and
philosophy of science, this book traces changing perceptionss about
comets from ancient times to the 19th century and uses them ?to
explore the interplay of high and low culture and the interface
linking religious thought, political action, and natural world views.?

* Steel, Duncan. 1995. Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets: The
Search for the Million Megaton Menace that Threatens Life on Earth. *

Research astronomer at the Anglo-Australian Observatory and Vice
President of the International Spaceguard Foundation, Steel is a
world-renowned authority on the threat of cometary impacts. He is
one of the principal advocates for ?coherent catastrophism?, which
argues for a very specific periodicity and source for impact episodes.

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2. SCENARIOS FOR PAST CATASTROPHES

* Allan, D. S., and Delair, J.B. 1997. Cataclysm: Compelling
Evidence of a Catastrophic World Change 9,500 B.C. *

Combining expertise in geology, paleogeography, and anthropology,
these two British authors fashion the hypothesis that a fragment
from a supernova hit the globe c. 11,500 years ago.

* Bellamy, Hans Schind. 1938. Moons, Myths, and Man. *

Hans Hörbinger, an Austrian engineer, propounded his Cosmic Ice
Theory in 1913, according to which the moon is the last of a series
of icy satellites captured by the earth within human memory. (For
two astronomers? recent account off this theory, and dismissal of
it, see Chapman and Morrison, Cosmic Catastrophes, below.) In this
1938 book his disciple, Bellamy, collected thousands of catastrophic
myths and sorted them into useful categories-- e.g. Dragons and
Serpents, the Great Fire, Deluge Warnings-- though unfortunately
without footnoting his sources. This book is useful as a broad
survey of the myths that can be recruited for a variety of
catastrophist scenarios.

* deGrazia, Alfred. 1981. Chaos and Creation: An Introduction to
Quantavolution in Human and Natural History. *

The first of the ten volumes in the author?s Quantavolution Series,
this book introduces the new paradigm, then employs it in fashioning
scenarios for the last 14,000 years on the assumption that the solar
system was once an electrically charged binary system and that a
series of historically attested planetary instabilities ensued upon
the break-up of the binary partner.

* -- 1984. The Burning of Troy and Other Works in Quantavolution and
Scientific Catastrophism. *

Eighteen essays in ?quantavolution?, a term of the author?s coinage
which is meant to stress that catastrophes are not merely negative
events; they have a tendency to trigger suddenly ?quantum leaps?
forward, whether in speciation or the mental development of humans
and civilizations. The five parts are entitled ?Historical
Disturbances?, ?Geological Issues?, ?Workings of the Mind? (which we
will read in detail in deGrazia?s Homo Schizo, ?Polemics and
Personages?, and ?Communicating a Scientific Model?.

* Donnelly, Ignatius. 1887. Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel. *

In seeking to explain the origin of the vast deposits of till and
gravel on the American continent and elsewhere, this well-known
orator and congressman came to believe that it has been deposited by
the tail of a comet within human memory.

* Gallant, Roy A. 1995. The Day the Sky Split Apart: Investigating a
Cosmic Mystery. *

An account of the Tunguska event (June 30, 1908), when a ?fireball
brighter than the sun? exploded over Siberia and felled trees
outward in a radial pattern over some 2000 square kilometers (half
the size of Rhode Island). After chronicling the event itself
Gallant moves through subsequent expeditions launched to determine
its causes and the theories that proliferated. He concludes by
joining the increasing number of scientists who insist on the ?need
for an early warming system? for such events in the future.

* Patten, Donald W. 1988. Catastrophism and the Old Testament: The
Mars-Earth Conflicts. *

A geographer by scientific training and a creationist by religious
conviction, Patten ?concludes that ancient catastrophes were
astronomical in nature, cyclical in timing, and global in impact.?
He proposes a model which, he claims, ?accords with Newtonian
mechanics, geomagnetic principles, gyroscopic theory, and historical
accounts.? His time-frame is roughly the same as Velikovsky?s, from
2500 to 700 B.C

* Ryan, William, and Pitman, Walter. 1998. Noah?s Flood: The New
Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History. *

Two oceanographers posit an event c. 7000 B.C. which was remembered
in the flood myths of Atrahasis, Gilgamesh, Deucalion, and Noah: the
overflowing of the Mediterranean, as a result of melting since the
last Ice Age, into the area which is now the Black Sea and which
showns signs of having been earlier inhabited and farmed.

* Velikovsky, Immanuel. 1965. Worlds in Collision. *

A psychoanalyst by training, Velikovsky scandalized the scientific
community in 1950 by publishing a catastrophist hypothesis which
became an overnight best seller. His scenario, with a time frame
from 1500 to 700 B.C., involves the fissioning off from Jupiter of a
huge comet which later, after devastating encounters with Earth and
Mars, stabilized into orbit as the planet Venus. Some see him as
having retarded catastrophism by his shaky astrophysics, others as
having dramatically revived it and shown its necessary connection to
chronological revision.

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3. APOCALYPTIC

* Barkun. 1996. Millenialism and Violence. *

These seven essays, drawing together research from political
science, psychology, sociology and history, establish connections
between millenarian movements and episodes of violence. Case studies
range from medieval Christians to 19th century Maoris to
contemporary opponents of abortion and defenders of the environment.

* Cohn, Norman Rufus. 1970. The Pursuit of the Millenium. *

The classic account of the apocalyptic tradition in medieval Europe,
ranging over such topics as the disoriented poor, the hosts of
Antichrist, the Crusades, self-immolating redeemers, amoral
supermen, and the egalitarian state of nations.

* -- 1995. Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come. *

Cohn here surveys catastrophic myths from ancietn Egypt,
Mesopotamia, India, Iran, Syria and Israel, then argues that it is
with Zoroaster (whom he dates to between 1500 and 1200 B.C.) that
there first emerges a vision of a final struggle to come which will
defeat the forces of chaos once and for all. Cohn carries the story
down through Christian sects of the first century A.D.

* Reddish, Mitchell G. 1995. Apocalyptic Literature: A Reader. *

A professor of religion has put together this anthology of Jewish
and early Christian apocalyptic texts, dividing them into those that
do and do not contain journeys into the divine realm.

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4. MYTHOLOGY

* Cohn, Norman Rufus. 1996. Noah?s Flood. *

A beautifully illustrated history of the Mesopotamian and Hebrew
flood myths and their sundry interpretations through the ages, with
chapters on 17th century catastrophists such as Whiston and modern
myth-interpreters such as Dundes.

* Crossley-Holland, Kevin. 1980. The Norse Myths. *

A modern retelling of the Norse myths from the Creation to Ragnarok,
with a useful 30-page introduction to the cosmology and pantheon of
the Norse world.

* Dronke, Ursula. 1996. Myth and Fiction in Early Norse Lands. *

Essays by a preeminent scholar of Eddic poetry, including ones on
the relations of the apocalyptic Voluspa to Greek and Latin
Sibylline oracles and of Ragnarok to the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf.

* Dundes, Alan, ed. 1988. The Flood Myth. *

Dundes? own explanation of the deluge myth is that it stems from
male envy of the female power to give birth; we all come into the
world ?delivered from an initial flood of amniotic fluid when the
sac breaks?, and men tell flood stories that replicate the creation
of the world in that fashion. He allows many other theories their
own voices, too, and in the essays he has collected there are
separate accounts of flood myths, and theories about them, in
Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece, Mesoamerica, South America, Australian
Aborigines, Cameroon, the Phillipines, Thailand, India, as well as
reflections on uniformitarianism, creationism, and ?the principle of
retribution? in catastrophe myths.

* Forsyth, Neil. 1987. The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth. *

Surveying the many variants of the combat myth from Gilgamesh to
Augustine, Forsyth, a professor of comparative literature, concerns
himself primarily with the devil?s function in the narratives in
which he appears and portrays the developing systems of Jewish and
Christian belief from that point of view. This has come to be a
definitive work in its field.

* Graves, Robert. 1960. The Greek Myths, Vol. I and II. *

Graves? prose retellings of virtually all the Greek myths are easy
to read, and accompanied by notes referring to the primary ancient
sources for each and every detail. He adds his own interpretations
but keeps them carefully separated both from the retellings and the
source references. There is no better easily available compendium of
Greek myths in English. Note that the index is only at the end of
the second of these two volumes.

* Leon-Portilla, Miguel. 1986. Pre-Columbian Literatures of Mexico. *

The Director of the Institute of Historical Research in the National
Museum of Mexico describes the principal literary genres of the
ancient Mexican peoples and provides extended quotations from each.

* Long, Charles H. Alpha: The Myths of Creation. *

The third book in the Patterns of Myth series edited by Alan Watts,
this is a compilation of lesser known myths primarily from Africa
and Polynesia. It is a resource for ?universal? motifs and
variations on interrelated myths of world-creation and
world-destruction.

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5. TRANSLATIONS AND COMMENTARIES

* Alter, Robert, tr. 1996. Genesis: Translation and Commentary. *

In this new translation Alter, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative
Literature at Berkeley, combines the fluency of modern prose with a
keen sense of tradition. The commentary underneath the translation
on each page intervenes whenever the single choice of the
translation is insufficient.

* Dalley, Stephanie. 1991. Myths from Mesopotamia. *

Dalley is a Fellow in Assyriology at the Oriental Institute, Oxford,
and these fluent translations, unlike many writers? ?versions? of
the Gilgamesh and other stories, are based on first-hand
philological knowledge of the original texts, reflected also in
notes and bibliography. It is useful as providing alternative
translations of all the Mesopotamian texts read in the course: ?The
Epic of Creation?, ?Gilgamesh?, ?Anzu? and ?Erra and Ishun?.

*Ford, J. Massyngberde. 1975. Revelation: A New Translation with
Introduction and Commentary. *

This is the most cogent exposition of the theory that the bulk of
Revelation was composed by John the Baptist and his disciples and is
therefore essentially pre-Christian. The editor rearranges the text
according to the chronology presupposed for its strata and gives
both close textual notes and a general commentary to each.

* Foster, Benjamin R. 1995. From Distant Days: Myths, Tales, and
Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia. *

Massive anthology of texts translated with individual introductions
by a Yale Assyriologist.

* Goetz, Delia, and Morley, Sylvanus G. 1950. Popol Vuh: The Sacred
Book of the Ancient Quiché Maya. *

This English version is made from the translation of the original
Quiché into Spanish by Adrian Recinos. In general it has been
outdated by Tedlock?s version, but a second version is always useful.

* Heidel, Alexander. 1951. The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of
Creation. *

A translation, by a scholar at the Oriental Instiute in Chicago, of
the Enuma Elish (Foster?s Epic of Creation) and other cuneiform
tablets of the Babylonian creaton story, accompanied by an essay on
Old Testament parallels.

* Hollander, Lee M., tr. 1962. The Poetic Edda. *

Collected by an unidentified Icelander, probably during the 12th or
13th century, this is one of the greatest treasure troves of Nordic
culture. The translator is an authority in Nordic language and
literature, and attempts to reproduce the verse patterns and rhythms
as well as the mood of the original.

* Sandars, N. K. 1971. Poems of Heaven and Hell from Ancient
Mesopotamia. *

An attempt by a scholar who does not command the original cuneiform
to fashion a ?straightforward narrative? out of versions by
specialists.

* Sawyer-Lauçanno, Christopher. 1987. The Destruction of the Jaguar:
Poems from the Books of Chilam Balam. *

Written in the Mayan language but in Latin script, the Books of
?Chilam Balam? (the archetypal ?Jaguar Priest?) are generally
considered to be recompositions from memory of the original texts of
hieroglyphic books destroyed by the Spanish. They combine ?prophecy,
history, chronology, ritual and mythology? and have passages of
undeniably great poetry, most of it having to do with bleak times to
come. The author of this poetic simplification of the bewildering
texts readily admits that ?I am not a Mayan scholar and my knowledge
of the language is severely limited.?

* Tedlock, Dennis. 1996. Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of
Life (Revised Edition). *

Dennis and Barbara Tedlock, both trained anthropologists, gained the
trust of the highland Mayans with whom they worked to such an extent
that they were made diviners and ?daykeepers?. As a result the
translator is able to bring to the text of this ?Bible? of the
Quiché an unprecedented understanding of the cultural context of its
phrases.

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6. FICTION

* Napier, Bill. 1998. Nemesis. *

Fiction, for a change. And the author, an astronomer, knows the
difference, since, with Victor Clube, he has co-authored two of the
most credible catastrophist hypotheses in the last decades, The
Cosmic Serpent and The Cosmic Winter. In this ?spaceguard? drama set
in the immediate future, deflection of a Near Earth Object depends
on finding and interpreting accurately a medieval manuscript.

Email Prof. Mullen <mailto:ceno at bard.edu?subject=RE:
Catastrophe/Apocalypse Website> with questions and comments.

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