Ptak's Science Book Blog

June 23, 2009 2:57 PM

The blog associated with Ptak's online science bookstore is an absolutely fascinating, frequently-updated tour through historical, social, and scientific miscellany extracted from unusual books in the collection of the author, John Ptak.

To give a flavour of the breadth of the mini-essays on his blog, consider:
Maps of Lunar Nothingness
Map of Missing People of Central Europe and Russia, 1881
(Both from the thread, Maps of Blank and Missing Things)
Women Meat Pioneers (from the thread Impossible Titles)
Seeing Renaissance Pillows: a Short Bit on an Unnecessary Topic (from the thread Prints: looking HARD/deeply at)
Things People Did Underground (from the thread History of Technology).
History of Normalcy, Part 1: "Girls" (from the thread militaria)

posted by Rumple (5 comments total)

John used to have a storefront in DC. It was one of my favorite places when I was young. Almost as interesting as spending a day in the National Archives.

I moved to Asheville when I was 39, and there he was again. He'd married and moved.

Sadly, there is no physical store anymore, but the website does indeed give some idea of what glorious places his stores were.

Speaking as a new Mefite, Rumple is now on my enemies list for stealing my first FPP. Asheville is my town, and you will stop mining it for content. Just kidding-How'd you find this anyway?
posted by Mr. Yuck at 3:57 PM on June 23, 2009

Animalimitationality!
posted by geos at 4:54 PM on June 23, 2009

Good post. It's absolutely a top-notch site and deserving of wider exposure.
posted by peacay at 5:05 PM on June 23, 2009

JUST the kind of scroungy / ununusual blog I like to save for days when everything else is too "mee-too". Thanks!
posted by Twang at 5:58 PM on June 23, 2009

This looks great. Thank you for the post!
posted by chorltonmeateater at 1:48 AM on June 24, 2009