THE RETICENT ARCHAEOLOGIST UNLEASHED tells the story of Mike Wisenbaker's half-century-plus life journey, focusing mostly on the past fifty years. Although he is not famous (or infamous) enough to call for an exhaustive, in-depth autobiography, he's traveled down some captivating and challenging paths.

He reveals many morsels about the mid-twentieth century to the present zeitgeist through the eyes of a baby boomer trained and groomed as an anthropologist and historian. He peppers his book with insights from archaeology, anthropology, conservation, history, natural history and human behavior. This chronicle also delves into his varied pastimes, such as diving (both cave and reef), paddling, surfing, sailing, mountain biking, hiking, fishing and hunting. As for diving, he served as the publicist and historian for the Woodville Karst Plain Project-one of the world's foremost underwater cave exploration teams-for twenty years.

The book's main thrust covers how a non-academic archaeologist coped with a never-ending roller coaster of real-world vagaries. The story begins with his humble origins, which led him down some unexpected and sinuous paths.