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The time has come for my annual short pre-Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

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Illinois Adventure – Cahokia Mounds

An evening pause: Time for some less well known North American archeology, very nicely persented, describing a history likely quite similar to other similar sites in the southwest.

Hat tip Cotour.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

15 comments

  • wayne

    on a more fanciful note….

    “America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilisation”
    Graham Hancock
    https://youtu.be/GAccZ8eWhXo?t=320
    1:43:19

  • Visited an aboriginal mound along the Natchez Trace in Mississippi. It isn’t all that high, but built with people carrying dirt in buckets. Impressive.

  • I’d never heard of the entire Mississippian civilization. (I grew up in Wisconsin. Does history teaching suck or what?)

    Thanks!

  • Doubting Thomas

    Echoing Markedup – Never knew! Now I have a new road trip destination.

    Thanks Robert!

  • Chris Lopes

    “on a more fanciful note….”

    That’s putting it mildly. :)

  • wayne

    Chris–
    Thankfully, Hancock does not do aliens.

    Joe Rogan Experience #961
    Graham Hancock, Randall Carlson & Michael Shermer
    https://youtu.be/tFlAFo78xoQ
    3:35:09

  • wayne

    Doubting Thomas / Markedup2–

    Wisconsin has multiple mounds– check Baraboo and Madison, to name 2 locations.
    (Interestingly– in college, both the Geology and Anthropology departments, went on on regular yearly field-trips to Baraboo.)

  • wayne

    Ancient Wisconsin ~
    Lost Pyramid Mound Of Burlington
    (2021)
    https://youtu.be/9h9oyW-MEiQ
    1:49

  • wayne

    “Is the house of history built on foundations of sand?”
    Graham Hancock | TEDxReading 2016
    https://youtu.be/ZyfE3IvDWR8
    18:04

    (This is the one that got him banned from TEDx.)

  • Doubting Thomas

    Wayne – Thanks – I’ll check them out and may load them into my US tour plans.

    Sincerely

    Doubting Thomas

  • wayne

    Doubting Thomas-
    There are mounds in Indiana and Ohio as well.

    Check out the “Mounds State Park,” in Anderson, Indiana.
    https://www.in.gov/dnr/state-parks/parks-lakes/mounds-state-park/
    They have “10 unique earthworks built by the Adena-Hopewell people.”

  • wayne

    In Ohio…..

    Hopewell Culture National Historical Park,
    Chillicothe, Ohio
    https://www.nps.gov/hocu/index.htm

    (We have no idea what these people actually called themselves. “Hopewell” was the name of the guy who owned the farm upon which this stuff was discovered.)

  • wayne

    In Michigan—

    The Norton Mound Group
    https://www.michigan.gov/som/0,4669,7-192-29938_68915-54607–,00.html

    “The Norton Mound Group is one of the best preserved Hopewellian burial centers in the country and one of the most important archaeological sites in Michigan. The site represents a fine example of the northern extension of the Hopewell culture. When first excavated in 1874 by W. L. Coffinberry under the auspices of the Kent County Scientific Institute (now the Public Museum of Grand Rapids), the site consisted of 17 mounds ranging from 30 feet in diameter and 1.5 feet in height to 100 feet in diameter and 15 feet in height. Once part of a much more extensive system of over 30 mounds which were destroyed by the expansion of the City of Grand Rapids, only 11 retain their basic form.”

  • markedup2 noted: “(I grew up in Wisconsin. Does history teaching suck or what?)”

    Well, yeah, if you just pay attention to what’s in school.

  • To be fair to my History teachers, I did have some good ones. I remember saying something typically teenaged-stupid and the teacher took a week to tell us about a bunch of stuff that had been removed from our history textbook.

    Now, I remember neither what I said nor any specific examples, but it was eye opening to have a teacher explain how textbooks were created, why stuff is left out, and what some of it was.

    My current favorite under-taught bit of history: The Battle of Athens (Georgia, not Greece).

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