In 2013 I was given access to a large private collection of letters from the 1880s concerning the emergence of American esotericism, occultism, new thought, and asian religions. In my opinion, this is a landmark find, as the letters reveal numerous previously-unknown important facts about the radical transformation of American religious culture in the late 19th century. Virtually all of the new religious currents that appeared at that time and still shape American religiosity today have roots in the events and people discussed in these missives.

After I contacted them, the owners of the correspondence worked out to have it be preserved by Missouri State University's Special Collections department. The letters are now available for the public to examine. Also, I have transcribed and edited them for publication--the book will come out this spring under the title "Letters to the Sage: Selected Correspondence of Thomas Moore Johnson, Volume 1: The Esotericists."

Also, I have an article that was just released which summarizes some of the main finds in the letters.

I discuss this all in my blog post

• Illegal 'nighthawkers' damage Hadrian's Wall

• Horseshoes & Plague Victims: Digging up 2,000 yrs of London beneath Liverpool St - 3,000 skeletons are about to be excavated. "What we’re hoping to find out here is exactly what was going on outside the city wall in the Roman times."

• The Unfinished Business at Ancient Herodium

• Signs of 400-Year-Old Human-Produced Air Pollution Found in Andean Ice Cap

• Pacific giving up coins from Ottoman wreck

• Rare shipwreck excavated off Paralimni

• German archaeologists will help protect cultural heritage in Northern Iraq

• Largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon coins found in recent years goes on display at British Museum

• British Army veterans to join archaeologists in mission to solve mysteries of Battle of Waterloo - They'll help archaeologists find undiscovered mass graves & a more accurate lay of the land on the Belgian fields where the battle was waged. “The battlefield remains remarkably undisturbed.”

• Historic Indian sword was masterfully crafted

• Skeletons found in 'major' Roman dig

• 'Beneath the Surface: Life, Death, and Gold in Ancient Panama' opens at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia

• Plane carrying Chile soccer stars found, 50 years on - Climbers in Chile's Andes say they've found the wreckage of plane that disappeared over 1/2 a century ago with a team of soccer stars on board. Bones are scattered among the wreckage.

• Outline of medieval church revealed on building site

• Archaeologists could be about to unearth the musket-shot-riddled remains of one of Britain’s great left-wing heroes. Executed by firing squad in April 1649, Robert Lockyer was an activist in England’s first democratic political movement, the Levellers

• Researchers help guard sunken tribe artifacts from turbines

• Typical hero-stone found in Kollur

• Dracula sculpture to be placed in his 'Turkish dungeon'

• Historic cannonball stolen from southern castle

• Barley and wheat residues in Neolithic cemeteries of Central Sudan and Nubia

• Mystery Over 15th-Century Drilled Skull Solved

• Biblical city of Libnah found, archaeologists surmise: Finds at Tel Burna increasingly strengthen the theory that the town was a Judahite stronghold; it also dates to Libnah's era, the 7th century BCE

• Magna Carta edition found in Sandwich archive scrapbook

• Cult Sites in Israel Dotted with Penis-Shaped Stone Structures

• Prehistoric High Times: Early Humans Used Magic Mushrooms, Opium

• Research continues into 3000 year-old Nok culture of sub-Saharan Africa

• Treasure hunters find late Roman mosaics

• Prehistoric Temples on Maui Reveal Origins of Island’s First Kingdom

• Untouched Mycenaean Tomb Found in Central Greece

• Angered Archaeologists Allow Thousands to Enter the Louvre for Free

• Shackleton and Scott's historic Antarctic huts saved from ruin

• How modern humans ate their way to world dominance

• Princely doodling in the 15th century

• Mysterious Stone Carving May Contain Old Message

• Ancient Romans Ate Meals Most Americans Would Recognize

• Archaeologists use airborne lasers to solve mystery of Angkor's demise

• Nicaragua canal developers collect 15,000 relics along route

• Archaeologists dig deep to uncover evidence of ancient Indian civilization

• Archaeologists excavate fortified site from ancient Kingdom of Judah

• Drought may soon yield mysterious WWII-era bomber beneath Lake Mead

• Oldest Dog Remains Turns Out to Be a Wolf

• Is this shipwreck the Griffon? State to find out

• Flooding caused by British Columbia's Site C dam will wash away 12,000 years of human history

• Pompeii wall collapses amid heavy rain

• Neanderthals disappeared from the Iberian Peninsula before than from the rest of Europe

• Ancient animal bone suggests Himiko adopted Chinese fortunetelling method

• Tobacco planted on archaeological area in northern Turkey

• Cave tombs discovered in Xinjiang

• In a Crisis, the Bigger Your Social Network the Better

• Ancient mummies discovered floating in sewage in Upper Egypt

• Earth's biggest gold hoard in South Africa was formed by ancient microbes

• Tomb of Western Zhou Dynasty 'diplomat' unearthed

This report Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror and subsequent map were released this week by the Equal Justice Initiative on Lynchings in the south over a 73 year period. That map alone has caused me to rework and examine my own findings and has led me to some new interesting conclusions concerning the Civil Rights Movement in my state.

This week for my America II class, we were assigned Echoes of Mutiny, by Seema Soshi. The book argues that the US and the British Empire established a remarkable effective surveillance network around Indian radicals that settled in California in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, laying the operational groundwork for the Red Scare. It's got some flaws, but is an excellent transnational (all the rage these days) look at immigration between India and California. My professor is really pretty excited by it, but it's a new book that almost no one has read (Oxford University Press doesn't do marketing, apparently).

So there are so,e correlating individuals but nothing else? Maybe mention the influences either way