Abebooks

Reference 1 has proved to be read which is rich in digressions, so rich in fact that several weeks into it I have only got to page 130 - out of the 290 pages of text and 50 pages of apparatus. I will get there eventually.

In the meantime, I have been amused, not for the first time by the library stickers in a second hand book from the US, in this case Connetquot Public Library, Bohemia, New York. A nicely made book from the Harvard University Press, which appears to have arrived in the library in 1983, with no evidence of it ever having been borrowed on the ticket. Perhaps it is a new style ticket, neatly obliterating the old style ticket which was there before, complete with the many stamps that the book clearly deserves.

Bought in order to investigate the Bargh allegation that life was a lot more violent in the olden days that it is now. It was very violent in the stone ages (to judge by the number of skeletons of people from those ages killed by trauma of one kind or another) and carried on that way until fairly recently. All part of the story about the importance, the power of the flight-or-fight reflex.

I shall, no doubt, report further in due course.

PS: for those who are interested, Connetquot is a town, or perhaps a township, or perhaps a city (in US local administration speak), in the middle of Long Island. Big enough to sport a substantial Connetquot River State Park Preserve, which looks to be maybe twice the size of our Hyde Park in London. To judge by Google's Street View, new forest rather than old forest. A nice looking but not expensive area - and it looks as if you could buy quite a lot of house for the price of our house in Epsom.

Reference 1: Before you know it - John Bargh - 2017.

Reference 2: Crime and conflict in English communities 1300-1348 - Barbara Hanawalt - 1979.