Download or read book Quest for Flight written by Craig S. Harwood and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-10-17 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Wright brothers have long received the lion’s share of credit for inventing the airplane. But a California scientist succeeded in flying gliders twenty years before the Wright’s powered flights at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Quest for Flight reveals the amazing accomplishments of John J. Montgomery, a prolific inventor who piloted the glider he designed in 1883 in the first controlled flights of a heavier-than-air craft in the Western Hemisphere. Re-examining the history of American aviation, Craig S. Harwood and Gary B. Fogel present the story of human efforts to take to the skies. They show that history’s nearly exclusive focus on two brothers resulted from a lengthy public campaign the Wrights waged to profit from their aeroplane patent and create a monopoly in aviation. Countering the aspersions cast on Montgomery and his work, Harwood and Fogel build a solidly documented case for Montgomery’s pioneering role in aeronautical innovation. As a scientist researching the laws of flight, Montgomery invented basic methods of aircraft control and stability, refined his theories in aerodynamics over decades of research, and brought widespread attention to aviation by staging public demonstrations of his gliders. After his first flights near San Diego in the 1880s, his pursuit continued through a series of glider designs. These experiments culminated in 1905 with controlled flights in Northern California using tandem-wing Montgomery gliders launched from balloons. These flights reached the highest altitudes yet attained, demonstrated the effectiveness of Montgomery’s designs, and helped change society’s attitude toward what was considered “the impossible art” of aerial navigation. Inventors and aviators working west of the Mississippi at the turn of the twentieth century have not received the recognition they deserve. Harwood and Fogel place Montgomery’s story and his exploits in the broader context of western aviation and science, shedding new light on the reasons that California was the epicenter of the American aviation industry from the very beginning.

Download or read book The California Condor 1966 76 written by Sanford R. Wilbur and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book University of California Publications in English written by University of California (1868-1952) and published by . This book was released on 1945 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Stroll by My Western Bookshelves written by Gordon J. Van de Water and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2009-04-03 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much experience and action, much thought and reminiscence, fill the pages of this volume. Here are books about explorers, frontiersmen, mountaineers, hunters, rangers, gold-finders, cowboys, and tenderfeet; novels and narratives by pioneer women; books by friends and also fighters of Native Americans. Often generously quoted, they pulse with the life of the old West. Albert R. Vogeler, Professor Emeritus, California State University, Fullerton You have the mantle of Henry Wagner, Carl Wheat, and Francis Farquhar on your shoulders. You are to be commended for bringing to life so many of the books that are key to our heritage. Gary F. Kurutz, Curator of Special Collections, California State Library

Download or read book University of California Publications in English written by and published by . This book was released on 1929 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book This Land Was Mexican Once written by Linda Heidenreich and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2007-05-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The territory of Napa County, California, contains more than grapevines. The deepest roots belong to Wappo-speaking peoples, a group whose history has since been buried by the stories of Spanish colonizers, Californios (today’s Latinos), African Americans, Chinese immigrants, and Euro Americans. Napa’s history clearly is one of co-existence; yet, its schoolbooks tell a linear story that climaxes with the arrival of Euro Americans. In “This Land was Mexican Once,” Linda Heidenreich excavates Napa’s subaltern voices and histories to tell a complex, textured local history with important implications for the larger American West, as well. Heidenreich is part of a new generation of scholars who are challenging not only the old, Euro-American depiction of California, but also the linear method of historical storytelling—a method that inevitably favors the last man writing. She first maps the overlapping histories that comprise Napa’s past, then examines how the current version came to dominate—or even erase—earlier events. So while history, in Heidenreich’s words, may be “the stuff of nation-building,” it can also be “the stuff of resistance.” Chapters are interspersed with “source breaks”—raw primary sources that speak for themselves and interrupt the linear, Euro-American telling of Napa’s history. Such an inclusive approach inherently acknowledges the connections Napa’s peoples have to the rest of the region, for the linear history that marginalizes minorities is not unique to Napa. Latinos, for instance, have populated the American West for centuries, and are still shaping its future. In the end, “This Land was Mexican Once” is more than the story of Napa, it is a multidimensional model for reflecting a multicultural past.

Download or read book John Bidwell and California written by John Bidwell and published by Arthur H. Clark Company. This book was released on 2003 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Natural History of the Swainson s Warbler written by Brooke Meanley and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Plains and the Rockies written by Henry Raup Wagner and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book North American Fauna written by and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Sacred Encounters written by Jacqueline Peterson and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Golden State written by Marlene Smith-Baranzini and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays on mining and economic development in California from the Gold Rush through the end of the 19th century. This is the second in a series of four volumes comemmorating the state's sesquicentennial.

Download or read book Contest for California written by Stephen G. Hyslop and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: California’s early history was both colorful and turbulent. After Europeans first explored the region in the sixteenth century, it was conquered and colonized by successive waves of adventurers and settlers. In Contest for California, award-winning author Stephen G. Hyslop draws on a wide array of primary sources to weave an elegant narrative of this epic struggle for control of the territory that many saw as a beautiful, sprawling land of promise. In vivid detail, Hyslop traces the story of early California from its founding in 1769 by Spanish colonists to its annexation in 1848 by the United States. He describes the motivations and activities of colonizers and colonized alike. Using eyewitness accounts, he allows all participants—Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American—to have their say. Soldiers, settlers, missionaries, and merchants testify to the heroic and commonplace, the colorful and tragic, in California’s pre-American history. Even as he acknowledges the dark side of this story, Hyslop avoids a simplistic perspective. Moving beyond the polarities that have marked late-twentieth-century California historiography, he offers nuanced portraits of such controversial figures as Junípero Serra and treats the Californios and their distinctive Hispanic culture with a respect lacking in earlier histories. Attentive to tensions within the invading groups—priests and the military during the Spanish era, merchants and settlers during the American era—he also never loses sight of their impact on the original inhabitants of the region: California’s Native peoples. He also recounts the journeys of colonists from Russia, England, and other countries who influenced the development of California as it passed from the hands of Spaniards and Mexicans to Americans. Exhaustively researched yet concise, this book offers a much-needed alternative history of early California and its evolution from Spanish colony to American territory.

Download or read book The Bidwell Bartleson Party written by Doyce Blackman Nunis and published by Western Tanager. This book was released on 1991 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Party and their guide left the California-bound settlers. Thirty-four undaunted adventurers persisted, often without water, between the bleak salt flats and the trackless mountains, pushing late in the season into the Sierras. They survived on the last of their pack animals and even a coyote for food. The party, including Nancy Kelsey, the first white woman to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains, straggled into the San Joaquin Valley on October 30, after six arduous months.

Download or read book The Plains Across written by John D. Unruh and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 590 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most honored book ever released by the University of Illinois Press, The Plains Across was the result of more than a decade's work by its author. Here, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Oregon Trail, is a paperback reissue that includes the notes, bibliography, and illustrations contained in the 1979 cloth edition.

Download or read book From Sea to Shining Sea for Young Readers Discovering God s Plan for America Book 2 written by Peter Marshall and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the very beginning it would seem that God had a plan for America. From its discovery by Europeans to its settlement, from the Revolution to Manifest Destiny, from the stirrings of civil unrest to civil war, America was on a path. In our pluralistic world, when textbooks are being rewritten in ways that obscure the Judeo-Christian beginnings of our country, the books in the Discovering God's Plan for America series help ground young readers in a distinctly evangelical way of understanding early American history. As young readers look at their nation's development from God's point of view, they will begin to have a clearer idea of how much we owe to a very few--and how much is still at stake. These engaging books bring history alive in a way that will inspire young people to do their important part in shaping this nation into the future.

Download or read book From Sea to Shining Sea written by Peter Marshall and published by Revell. This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Revolutionary War, our newborn country went through an exciting era of growth and innovation. Was God intervening on behalf of the struggling nation? In this fast-paced sequel to the bestelling The Light and the Glory, you'll learn how America's future was threatened by greed, pride, and self-righteousness. You'll also see how, in the midst of turmoil, God raised up leaders to shape our unique country and character. --