De re metallica

janbbeck · Post by **janbbeck** » September 17th, 2011, 6:37 am

I immensely enjoyed listening to
The Chemical History of The Candle
Creative Chemistry
The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry
Familiar Letters on Chemistry
The Romance of Modern Chemistry

And in the spirit of these books I would like to suggest
"De re metallica"
It is a the famous book by Agricola on mining methods, metallurgical processes, geology, mineralogy etc up to the 16th century. It is quite unique in that it was translated by american president Herbert Hoover and his wife into english.

It is in the public domain, having been published in the 1800s and one possible source is archive.org:
http://www.archive.org/details/deremetallica00agri

RuthieG · Post by **RuthieG** » September 17th, 2011, 7:31 am

Ooh, I know a couple of people who are going to love this.

Ruth

Post by **Leni** » September 17th, 2011, 10:12 am

I have thought of putting this up for reading, and then decided to go with the Natural History. It'd be a nice project, though.

Post by **Availle** » September 17th, 2011, 10:21 am

The book is huge - 650 pages...

But if you're BC'ing it... you know I'll read for it.

janbbeck · Post by **janbbeck** » September 17th, 2011, 3:59 pm

BC'ing?

Post by **annise** » September 17th, 2011, 7:09 pm

BC stands for Book Coordinator
Every project here has someone who acts as the co-ordinator - if it is a Solo then the solist is the BC .
Being a group BC is a long term committment - especially with a less popular , probably difficult, long read and we do ask BC's to have some experience with how things work here - THe book suggestion thread is just that - a book suggestion - sometimes some one will come along and take it up either as a Solo - or to run as a group - or someone may have added it to their possible list - many of which are very long

Maybe if you are very keen , you could do some other reading and get the experience needed, and if no one else has volunteered run it yourself - it is an interesting suggestion and worthwhile doing

Anne

Post by **Availle** » September 18th, 2011, 1:40 am

Oh, I'm sorry...

I was talking to Leni about the BC'ing part...

As I said, the book is huge, so BC'ing will certainly be a long-term project, that I personally would not like to do (at this point). But if Leni (or somebody else does), I will read for the book!

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » September 18th, 2011, 4:00 am

If I don't read, I would certainly Proof listen.

Esther

janbbeck · Post by **janbbeck** » September 19th, 2011, 2:28 pm

Well, I would read for it too. So if someone would do the BC at some point, let me know.

One thing about this book is that there are lots of footnotes explaining where the translation has been difficult. I dont know how one would handle that since audio is not like a page of paper. How is this usually handled?

Post by **annise** » September 19th, 2011, 2:48 pm

I have got as far as looking at it to BC because I do think it would be interesting - but am not yet committed

The footnotes seem to be to be a problem in using it as an audio book - not all of them but I am not sure that all the ones about how he has translated things , although really interesting I am sure to a Latin scholar, would tend to make the main text incomprehensible
However the footnote on the real first page which explains his concept of geology is essential

You asked how we handled footnotes - normally if they are read, they are read either where the number appears in the text or at the end of the sentence - I usually just try and read them as an aside, though if they are long I'd say footnote ---blah blah blah - end of footnote.
The book appears to be about 330,000 words - about 33 hours listening. so that the 12 books would need to all be split .

Anne

janbbeck · Post by **janbbeck** » September 20th, 2011, 7:12 pm

So basically we would have to decide for each footnote whether to read it or not, right?

Post by **annise** » September 20th, 2011, 9:16 pm

Yes - unless we can come up with a rule . For the Origon of the species I said only to read those that contributed to the understanding - (and Ava didn't agree

.)
I always tell people not to read - see page 63 as there is no page 63 in an audio file for example
It may even need to be made into google docs - I wish we could find a text version - a real one not the OCR version -

Anne

Post by **annise** » September 20th, 2011, 10:13 pm

I have just realised when the translator died - 1964 which means it is probably not PD here in Australia or in most European countries - so I will not be able to co-oordinate it

Anne

Post by **Availle** » September 20th, 2011, 10:30 pm

Nooo... then I can't read for it either...

RuthieG · Post by **RuthieG** » September 21st, 2011, 1:44 am

I have just realised when the translator died - 1964

Well, as he was President of the USA, I presume he was an American citizen...

So OK for anyone whose country observes the Rule of the Shorter Term.

The book, although published in 1950, states:

This New 1950 Edition of DE RE METALLICA is a complete and unchanged reprint of the translation published by The Mining Magazine, London, in 1912. It has been made available through the kind permission of Honorable Herbert C. Hoover and Mr. Edgar Rickard, Author and Publisher, respectively, of the original volume.

So, it looks OK to me for everyone except readers in countries which don't do the RotST thing (e.g. Germany, Canada).

Ruth