Hamish & Henry holds book signing

LIVINGSTON MANOR, NY — Hamish & Henry Booksellers will hold a book signing for Nina Burleigh’s “Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt” at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 8.

The book, published by Harper Collins, is the colorful tale of desert peril and adventure involving a band of real-life “Indiana Joneses.” It is also a chronicle of the first large-scale interaction between Western civilians and Islam in the modern era.

Under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Army, a small and little-known corps of Paris’s brightest intellectual lights left the safety of their laboratories, studios, and classrooms to embark on a thirty-day crossing into the unknown—some never to see French shores again. Over 150 astronomers, mathematicians, naturalists, physicists, doctors, chemists, engineers, botanists, artists—even a poet and a musicologist—accompanied Napoleon’s troops into Egypt. Unraveling the mysteries that had befuddled Europeans for centuries, Napoleon’s scientists were the first to document the astonishing accomplishments of a lost civilization.

The Independent Booksellers Association has made “Mirage” a BookSense Notable Pick for December 2007. The New York Times Sunday Book Review will review “Mirage” in December, and Mary Hall interviewed Nina on WJFF’s Making Waves on December 3.

For more information call 845/439-8029.