The History of Woodstock, Vermont, 1890-1983

The History of Woodstock, Vermont, 1890-1983 PDF Author: Peter S. Jennison
Publisher: Countryman Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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The History of Woodstock, Vermont, 1890-1983

The History of Woodstock, Vermont, 1890-1983 PDF Author: Peter S. Jennison
Publisher: Countryman Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description


George Perkins Marsh

George Perkins Marsh PDF Author: David Lowenthal
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295989858
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882) was the first to reveal the menace of environmental misuse, to explain its causes, and to prescribe reforms. David Lowenthal here offers fresh insights, from new sources, into Marsh’s career and shows his relevance today, in a book which has its roots in but wholly supersedes Lowenthal’s earlier biography George Perkins Marsh: Versatile Vermonter (1958). Marsh’s devotion to the repair of nature, to the concerns of working people, to women’s rights, and to historical stewardship resonate more than ever. His Vermont birthplace is now a national park chronicling American conservation, and the crusade he launched is now global. Marsh’s seminal book Man and Nature is famed for its ecological acumen. The clue to its inception lies in Marsh’s many-sided engagement in the life of his time. The broadest scholar of his day, he was an acclaimed linguist, lawyer, congressman, and renowned diplomat who served 25 years as U.S. envoy to Turkey and to Italy. He helped found and guide the Smithsonian Institution, shaped the Washington Monument, penned potent tracts on fisheries and on irrigation, spearheaded public science, art, and architecture. He wrote on camels and corporate corruption, Icelandic grammar and Alpine glaciers. His pungent and provocative letters illuminate life on both sides of the Atlantic. Like Darwin’s Origin of Species, Marsh’s Man and Nature marked the inception of a truly modern way of looking at the world, of taking care lest we irreversibly degrade the fabric of humanized nature we are bound to manage. Marsh’s ominous warnings inspired reforestation, watershed management, soil conservation, and nature protection in his day and ours. George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation was awarded the Association for American Geographers' 2000 J. B. Jackson Prize. The book was also on the shortlist for the first British Academy Book Prize, awarded in December 2001.

The Provincial

The Provincial PDF Author: Hendrik Booraem
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
ISBN: 9780838752647
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
"The Provincial traces Calvin Coolidge's life from his thirteenth birthday until his graduation from Amherst College ten years later. It is a story of a shy young man from the country who gradually acquires an education and goes on to higher and higher levels of learning, but in Coolidge's case that progress was very much against his will. He grew up in the remote farming hamlet of Plymouth Notch, Vermont, eleven miles from the nearest railroad; his stern, thrifty father made money selling insurance and maple sugar, holding local offices, and renting property. Coolidge looked forward to someday keeping the general store his father owned, only a hundred feet from his house, and passing his life in this isolated, close-knit community, among people he knew and liked. This book shows how his intelligence, his love of reading, and his father's ambitions for him pushed him unwillingly farther and farther away. First he was sent to the local academy, eleven miles away, to study Latin and Greek. Then, on the enthusiastic recommendation of his high school principal, he went on to Amherst College in Massachusetts. On his first attempt to enter he became physically sick and had to return home. The following year he tried again, and this time he stayed, but he was desperately unhappy the first two years and asked his father in vain to be allowed to come home." "In the end, however, Amherst turned out to be a success story for him. Overlooked for the first two years by the sleek metropolitan young men who set the tone for the student body, shut out of fraternities and social life because of his shyness and country ways, he finally impressed his classmates with his dry sarcasm in debate, his ready wit, his unshakable poise and self-control. At the same time, he himself was changed and broadened. Under the influence of great Amherst professors like Charles E. Garman and Anson D. Morse, he became sure of himself and well read in history, philosophy, and political science. Even so, as he graduated to the acclaim of his classmates, he still yearned to go home to Plymouth Notch and settle there. The Provincial ends with Coolidge's graduation; a brief afterword explains how he took up law and local politics to please his father, and how hard work and intelligence led him to the Presidency."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Frederick Billings

Frederick Billings PDF Author: Robin W. Winks
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520214972
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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00 Frederick Billings was the first lawyer to hang his shingle in San Francisco, the man who named the city of Berkeley, and an instrumental figure in founding the University of California. An early conservationist and advocate of national parks, Billings was also president of the Northern Pacific railroad. This riveting biography captures not only Billings's dynamic life, but also the spirit and excitement of California during the gold rush era. Frederick Billings was the first lawyer to hang his shingle in San Francisco, the man who named the city of Berkeley, and an instrumental figure in founding the University of California. An early conservationist and advocate of national parks, Billings was also president of the Northern Pacific railroad. This riveting biography captures not only Billings's dynamic life, but also the spirit and excitement of California during the gold rush era.

Laurance S. Rockefeller

Laurance S. Rockefeller PDF Author: Robin W. Winks
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610910907
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Despite his status as a scion of one of the wealthiest and most famous families in the United States and an enormously successful businessman in his own right, Laurance S. Rockefeller is unknown to all but a small circle of Americans. Yet while he has been neither Vice President nor Governor nor chairman of the world's largest bank, his contribution to society has been at least as great as that of his more famous brothers. In Laurance S. Rockefeller: Catalyst for Conservation, noted historian Robin W. Winks brings Laurance to the forefront, offering an intimate look at his life and accomplishments. While Rockefeller has played a vital role in the business world as one of the most astute venture capitalists of our time -- providing seed money for, among other endeavors, Eastern Airlines, Intel Corporation, and Apple Computers -- his driving passion throughout his life has been the environment. In addition to the millions of dollars he has donated and the numerous conservation organizations he has helped to found, he served under five consecutive presidents in environmental advisory capacities. Perhaps most significantly, Rockefeller served under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy as chairman of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (ORRRC), brilliantly orchestrating an assessment of the recreation and conservation needs and wants of the American people and the policies and programs required to meet those needs. The reports issued by the Commission represent a groundbreaking achievement that laid the framework for nearly all significant environmental legislation of the following three decades. Winks uses a combination of historical insight and extensive access to Rockefeller and government archives to present the first in-depth examination of Laurance Rockefeller's life and work. His deftly argued and gracefully written volume explains and explores Rockefeller's role in shaping the transition from traditional land conservation to a more inclusive environmentalism. It should compel broader interpretation of the history of environmental protection, and is essential reading for anyone concerned with the past or future of conservation in America.

American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson

American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson PDF Author: Peter Kurth
Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 589

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Book Description
Dorothy Thompson (1893-1961) was America’s first internationally famous female foreign correspondent. Born outside of Buffalo, New York, she graduated from Syracuse University in 1914 and honed her writing and interviewing skills in the women’s suffrage movement before heading for Europe as a freelance journalist. Reporting from Vienna, Budapest and Berlin during the rise of Nazism, she was the first western journalist to be expelled from Germany by Adolf Hitler after denigrating him in a profile. Her later columns in the Ladies’ Home Journal and radio broadcasts for CBS (published as Listen, Hans) made her, next to Eleanor Roosevelt, the most influential woman in the United States. Thompson was married three times: her second marriage was to the American novelist, Nobel Prize-winner, and alcoholic Sinclair Lewis; her third and happiest, to Czech artist Maxim Kopf. She also had several lesbian relationships. Avidly interested in everything from sustainable farming to the fine arts, she divided her later years between New York City and her farm in Barnard, Vermont. “A skillful exploration of the life and personality of the formidable foreign correspondent” — New York Times “[readers] will be pleased to meet a fascinating, driven and indomitable woman who richly deserves this fine biography” — Thomas Griffith, New York Times “Sensationally good ... Kurth’s vividly detailed and dramatic portrayal of Thompson’s life fully compensates for the memoirs she planned but never lived to write. Here was a one-of-a-kind incarnation of energy, honesty and commitment; a woman we must not forget.” — USA Today “Kurth guides us through the tumultuous complexities of the time-the rise of Nazism in Germany; isolationism in America; the Second World War; the establishment of Israel and other issues that Thompson took over as her personal battleground. His daunting task is to show us a mind at work, and he pulls it off.” — Washington Post “In a day of dime-a-dozen pundits jabbering on the talk shows, Thompson’s diligence and influence are worth recalling. Mr. Kurth’s compulsively readable account allows us to re-live an age and do just that.” — Wall Street Journal “Kurth has a surprising grasp of Thompson’s emotional makeup, strictly avoiding the kind of supercilious or paternalistic attitude that such a character invites in male authors. His biography is insightful without being sentimental, warm without being sycophantic.” — Toronto Star “An important asset of this big, solid book is author Kurth’s prolific use of Thompson’s own words. She left 150 file cases of published and unpublished writings — chunks of private thoughts and musings on her three husbands and her own sexuality one would have expected her to burn... Kurth has battled through this paper blizzard and emerged with a clear-as-ice-water picture of a turbulent, complex personality.” —Baltimore Sun “Peter Kurth, author of the haunting Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson, proves once again that he is the equal of Stefan Zweig as a biographer of women. His fairness, his control of his material and his eye for the revealing quotation are such that he makes us empathize with Miss Thompson even when we feel like strangling her.” — Washington Times

The New England Historical and Genealogical Register

The New England Historical and Genealogical Register PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : New England
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
Beginning in 1924, Proceedings are incorporated into the Apr. number.

God's Government Begun

God's Government Begun PDF Author: Thomas D. Hamm
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253114716
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Growing out of the most radical fringes of the abolitionist movement, the Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform set out to inaugurate a new social order based on the principles of nonresistance. The Society founded eight utopian communities which, though short-lived, were the setting for the most radical questioning of antebellum American society. The members of the Society renounced all forms of coercive relationships. They attempted to live without government or private property and to model new visions of work, education, religion, economics, women's rights and roles, and community. This book tells the story of their impassioned attempt to transform the world and begin the "Government of God."

Vermont History

Vermont History PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Vermont
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description


Real Democracy

Real Democracy PDF Author: Frank M. Bryan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226077985
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Relying on an astounding collection of more than three decades of firsthand research, Frank M. Bryan examines one of the purest forms of American democracy, the New England town meeting. At these meetings, usually held once a year, all eligible citizens of the town may become legislators; they meet in face-to-face assemblies, debate the issues on the agenda, and vote on them. And although these meetings are natural laboratories for democracy, very few scholars have systematically investigated them. A nationally recognized expert on this topic, Bryan has now done just that. Studying 1,500 town meetings in his home state of Vermont, he and his students recorded a staggering amount of data about them—238,603 acts of participation by 63,140 citizens in 210 different towns. Drawing on this evidence as well as on evocative "witness" accounts—from casual observers to no lesser a light than Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—Bryan paints a vivid picture of how real democracy works. Among the many fascinating questions he explores: why attendance varies sharply with town size, how citizens resolve conflicts in open forums, and how men and women behave differently in town meetings. In the end, Bryan interprets this brand of local government to find evidence for its considerable staying power as the most authentic and meaningful form of direct democracy. Giving us a rare glimpse into how democracy works in the real world, Bryan presents here an unorthodox and definitive book on this most cherished of American institutions.