And maybe climate change?”Įvery few years, a fuzzy memory of the crosshatched illustrations would pop into my head, and I would think, “I need to find that book.” This went on for two decades. What I remembered about the plot sounded so bizarre, I had a tough time articulating it beyond, “It’s about being wrong about everything! And archeology. That book and that thought haunted me throughout my 20s and 30s, but there was one problem: I’d completely forgotten the title and the name of the author. Instead of launching me into a downward existential spiral, the idea of being wrong about history, whether it be the symbolism of the pyramids or the color of triceratops, thrilled me. It was read to us by a teacher who was definitely rebelling against the Texas public school system’s required reading list. In just 95 black-and-white illustrated pages, that book imprinted itself on my brain and instilled in me a fleeting desire to become an archeologist. What if everything you thought you knew about the past was completely wrong? That’s the idea that blew my mind as a 10-year-old in suburban Houston, when I gleaned it from the pages of an oversized blue paperback book.
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