Jasper Burns – författare

Drawing from a broad range of documentation this book vividly characterizes eleven royal women who are brought visually to life through photographs of over 300 ancient coins and through the author's own illustrations.Spanning the period from the death of Julius Caesar in 44BC to the third century AD, and with an epilogue surveying empresses of later eras, the author's compelling biographies reveal their remarkable contributions towards the legacy of Imperial Rome.Examining the wives, daughters, sisters and mothers of emperors, the study includes:a pregnant Roman princess who saves a Roman army through an act of personal heroismthree third-century empresses who rule the most powerful state on Earth, presiding over unprecedented social and political reforman empress, though revered by her husband, is immortalized in history for infidelity and corruption by students of her greatest enemy. Jasper Burns paints portraits of these exceptional women that are colourful, sympathetic, and above all profoundly human. This book will be highly valuable to numismatists, students and scholars of Roman history or women’s studies.

Drawing from a broad range of documentation this book vividly characterizes eleven royal women who are brought visually to life through photographs of over 300 ancient coins and through the author's own illustrations.Spanning the period from the death of Julius Caesar in 44BC to the third century AD, and with an epilogue surveying empresses of later eras, the author's compelling biographies reveal their remarkable contributions towards the legacy of Imperial Rome.Examining the wives, daughters, sisters and mothers of emperors, the study includes:a pregnant Roman princess who saves a Roman army through an act of personal heroismthree third-century empresses who rule the most powerful state on Earth, presiding over unprecedented social and political reforman empress, though revered by her husband, is immortalized in history for infidelity and corruption by students of her greatest enemy. Jasper Burns paints portraits of these exceptional women that are colourful, sympathetic, and above all profoundly human. This book will be highly valuable to numismatists, students and scholars of Roman history or women’s studies.

"A fossil," writes Jasper Burns, "is first of all a thing of remarkable beauty. The sense of awe and exhilaration so many of us feel in the presence of the Ocean, or the Pyramids, or the Great Wall of China comes to me when I find a broken shell that's a million years oldNothing in nature can seem more mute than the stone impression of an organism whose kind disappeared half a billion years ago-yet almost nothing can be more eloquent if we have the ears to hear."For most of his life Jasper Burns has been "hearing" the message of fossils. Drawn from this extensive experience, this book is both an introduction to the hobby of fossil collecting and a unique field guide to sites in the Mid-Atlantic region. The book is beautifully illustrated with the author's drawings of more than 450 fossil specimens and the sites where they can be found.In all, Fossil Collecting in the Mid-Atlantic States describes forty-six specific sites in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. Each description includes:• Precise directions to the site and a description of the most productive areas• The name and geologic period of the rock formations containing fossils• What to look for and how to find it• Special hazards or problems• A complete list of fossils identified at the site• Detailed illustrations of the major specimens