EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book The Invention of the Park

Download or read book The Invention of the Park written by Karen R. Jones and published by Polity. This book was released on 2005-07-11 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The word 'park' conjures a kaleidoscope of bucolic images. Childhood frolics in urban playgrounds. Strolls through the country estates of Stourhead and Versailles. Wilderness adventures in the Serengeti. White-knuckle thrill rides at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Coney Island. The Invention of the Park explores our fascination with making parks. In a broad-ranging environmental and social history, authors Karen Jones and John Wills search for a common set of ideas that inform park design. From Greek philosophers wandering sacred groves in the ancient world to today's kids watching Mickey Mouse in Disney's Magic Kingdom, the park has inspired and thrilled in equal measure. In a work spanning all five continents and several thousand years, Jones and Wills chart the evolution of the park idea. They ponder the intersection of the green pleasure ground with notions of democracy and freedom, welfare and consumption, conservation and nature. They forward the principle of a universal park idea malleable enough to survive war and revolution. Contributing to a growing literature on global environmental history, the Invention of the Park explores how the park idea has come to transcend national boundaries and found appeal among a worldwide audience. Jones and Wills situate the park as a complex product of natural and cultural forces. Their work is of interest not just to students and scholars of environmental philosophy, history, and landscape design, but to amateur gardeners, rollercoaster 'adrenalin junkies' and all those who like to take a 'walk in the park.'

Book The Politics of Park Design

Download or read book The Politics of Park Design written by Galen Cranz and published by MIT Press (MA). This book was released on 1982 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Galen Cranz surveys the rise of the park system from 1850 to the present through 4 stages - the pleasure ground, the reform park, the recreation facility and the open space system.

Book Disney s Land

Download or read book Disney s Land written by Richard Snow and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A propulsive and “entertaining” (The Wall Street Journal) history chronicling the conception and creation of the iconic Disneyland theme park, as told like never before by popular historian Richard Snow. One day in the early 1950s, Walt Disney stood looking over 240 acres of farmland in Anaheim, California, and imagined building a park where people “could live among Mickey Mouse and Snow White in a world still powered by steam and fire for a day or a week or (if the visitor is slightly mad) forever.” Despite his wealth and fame, exactly no one wanted Disney to build such a park. Not his brother Roy, who ran the company’s finances; not the bankers; and not his wife, Lillian. Amusement parks at that time, such as Coney Island, were a generally despised business, sagging and sordid remnants of bygone days. Disney was told that he would only be heading toward financial ruin. But Walt persevered, initially financing the park against his own life insurance policy and later with sponsorship from ABC and the sale of thousands and thousands of Davy Crockett coonskin caps. Disney assembled a talented team of engineers, architects, artists, animators, landscapers, and even a retired admiral to transform his ideas into a soaring yet soothing wonderland of a park. The catch was that they had only a year and a day in which to build it. On July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened its gates…and the first day was a disaster. Disney was nearly suicidal with grief that he had failed on a grand scale. But the curious masses kept coming, and the rest is entertainment history. Eight hundred million visitors have flocked to the park since then. In Disney’s Land, “Snow brings a historian’s eye and a child’s delight, not to mention superb writing, to the telling of this fascinating narrative” (Ken Burns) that “will entertain Disneyphiles and readers of popular American history” (Publishers Weekly).

Book The Invention of Public Space

Download or read book The Invention of Public Space written by Mariana Mogilevich and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The interplay of psychology, design, and politics in experiments with urban open space As suburbanization, racial conflict, and the consequences of urban renewal threatened New York City with “urban crisis,” the administration of Mayor John V. Lindsay (1966–1973) experimented with a broad array of projects in open spaces to affirm the value of city life. Mariana Mogilevich provides a fascinating history of a watershed moment when designers, government administrators, and residents sought to remake the city in the image of a diverse, free, and democratic society. New pedestrian malls, residential plazas, playgrounds in vacant lots, and parks on postindustrial waterfronts promised everyday spaces for play, social interaction, and participation in the life of the city. Whereas designers had long created urban spaces for a broad amorphous public, Mogilevich demonstrates how political pressures and the influence of the psychological sciences led them to a new conception of public space that included diverse publics and encouraged individual flourishing. Drawing on extensive archival research, site work, interviews, and the analysis of film and photographs, The Invention of Public Space considers familiar figures, such as William H. Whyte and Jane Jacobs, in a new light and foregrounds the important work of landscape architects Paul Friedberg and Lawrence Halprin and the architects of New York City’s Urban Design Group. The Invention of Public Space brings together psychology, politics, and design to uncover a critical moment of transformation in our understanding of city life and reveals the emergence of a concept of public space that remains today a powerful, if unrealized, aspiration.

Book Creating Wilderness

    Book Details:
  • Author : Patrick Kupper
  • Publisher : Berghahn Books
  • Release : 2014-07-01
  • ISBN : 1782383743
  • Pages : 276 pages

Download or read book Creating Wilderness written by Patrick Kupper and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the Swiss National Park, from its creation in the years before the Great War to the present, is told for the first time in this book. Unlike Yellowstone Park, which embodied close cooperation between state-supported conservation and public recreation, the Swiss park put in place an extraordinarily strong conservation program derived from a close alliance between the state and scientific research. This deliberate reinterpretation of the American idea of the national park was innovative and radical, but its consequences were not limited to Switzerland. The Swiss park became the prime example of a “scientific national park,” thereby influencing the course of national parks worldwide.

Book A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks

Download or read book A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks written by Sabrina Mittermeier and published by Intellect (UK). This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The writing is academic, but it is not inaccessible. It will have wide disciplinary appeal within academia, as tourism studies cross into a variety of fields including history, American studies, fandom studies, performance studies and cultural studies. It will be invaluable to those working in the field of theme park scholarship and the study of Disney theme parks, theme parks in general and related areas like world's expositions and spaces of the consumer and lifestyle worlds. It will also be of interest to Disney fans, those who have visited any of the parks or are interested to know more about the parks and their cultural situation and context.

Book Civilizing Nature

    Book Details:
  • Author : Bernhard Gissibl
  • Publisher : Berghahn Books
  • Release : 2012-11-01
  • ISBN : 0857455273
  • Pages : 304 pages

Download or read book Civilizing Nature written by Bernhard Gissibl and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National parks are one of the most important and successful institutions in global environmentalism. Since their first designation in the United States in the 1860s and 1870s they have become a global phenomenon. The development of these ecological and political systems cannot be understood as a simple reaction to mounting environmental problems, nor can it be explained by the spread of environmental sensibilities. Shifting the focus from the usual emphasis on national parks in the United States, this volume adopts an historical and transnational perspective on the global geography of protected areas and its changes over time. It focuses especially on the actors, networks, mechanisms, arenas, and institutions responsible for the global spread of the national park and the associated utilization and mobilization of asymmetrical relationships of power and knowledge, contributing to scholarly discussions of globalization and the emergence of global environmental institutions and governance.

Book Genius of Place

    Book Details:
  • Author : Justin Martin
  • Publisher : Da Capo Press
  • Release : 2011-05-31
  • ISBN : 0306818817
  • Pages : 494 pages

Download or read book Genius of Place written by Justin Martin and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2011-05-31 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This definitive, first full-scale biography of Olmsted--famed designer of New York's Central Park--reveals him also as a brilliant political and social reformer.

Book Central Park  An American Masterpiece

Download or read book Central Park An American Masterpiece written by and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 2003-05 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marking the park's 150th anniversary, this first definitive history celebrates the splendor and significance of this national treasure. 316 illustrations, 200 in color.

Book A Brief History of the National Park Service

Download or read book A Brief History of the National Park Service written by James F. Kieley and published by . This book was released on 1940 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book National Parks Forever

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jonathan B. Jarvis
  • Publisher : University of Chicago Press
  • Release : 2022-06-03
  • ISBN : 0226819086
  • Pages : 248 pages

Download or read book National Parks Forever written by Jonathan B. Jarvis and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-06-03 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Wallace Stegner called the national park system one of the United States' best ideas. That good idea has led to an institution that has grown over the past one hundred years, and the park system now encompasses four hundred areas that host over three hundred million visitors in typical year. Jonathan Jarvis (as a ranger, biologist, and director of the National Park Service in the Obama administration) and Destry Jarvis (as an advocate, policy analyst, and lobbyist) have worked to better the parks for over forty years. They offer here a history of the National Park Service (NPS) and an argument for the NPS to become an independent agency--similar to the Smithsonian Institution and separated from the Department of the Interior. Their reasoning relates to politics, finances, and science, and their proposal aims to safeguard the future of our national parks"--

Book The Park and the People

    Book Details:
  • Author : Roy Rosenzweig
  • Publisher : Cornell University Press
  • Release : 1992
  • ISBN : 9780801497513
  • Pages : 642 pages

Download or read book The Park and the People written by Roy Rosenzweig and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Delineate the politicians, business people, artists, immigrant laborers, and city dwellers who are the key players in the tale. In tracing the park's history, the writers also give us the history of New York. They explain how squabbles over politics, taxes, and real estate development shaped the park and describe the acrimonious debates over what a public park should look like, what facilities it should offer, and how it should accommodate the often incompatible.

Book Before Central Park

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sara Cedar Miller
  • Publisher : Columbia University Press
  • Release : 2022-06-28
  • ISBN : 0231543905
  • Pages : 568 pages

Download or read book Before Central Park written by Sara Cedar Miller and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner - 2023 John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Prize, UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes With more than eight hundred sprawling green acres in the middle of one of the world’s densest cities, Central Park is an urban masterpiece. Designed in the middle of the nineteenth century by the landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, it is a model for city parks worldwide. But before it became Central Park, the land was the site of farms, businesses, churches, wars, and burial grounds—and home to many different kinds of New Yorkers. This book is the authoritative account of the place that would become Central Park. From the first Dutch family to settle on the land through the political crusade to create America’s first major urban park, Sara Cedar Miller chronicles two and a half centuries of history. She tells the stories of Indigenous hunters, enslaved people and enslavers, American patriots and British loyalists, the Black landowners of Seneca Village, Irish pig farmers, tavern owners, Catholic sisters, Jewish protesters, and more. Miller unveils a British fortification and camp during the Revolutionary War, a suburban retreat from the yellow fever epidemics at the turn of the nineteenth century, and the properties that a group of free Black Americans used to secure their right to vote. Tales of political chicanery, real estate speculation, cons, and scams stand alongside democratic idealism, the striving of immigrants, and powerfully human lives. Before Central Park shows how much of the history of early America is still etched upon the landscapes of Central Park today.

Book Museums  Monuments  and National Parks

Download or read book Museums Monuments and National Parks written by Denise D. Meringolo and published by Univ of Massachusetts Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rapid expansion of the field of public history since the 1970s has led many to believe that it is a relatively new profession. In this book, Denise D. Meringolo shows that the roots of public history actually reach back to the nineteenth century, when the federal government entered into the work of collecting and preserving the nation's natural and cultural resources. Yet it was not until the emergence of the education-oriented National Park Service history program in the 1920s and 1930s that public history found an institutional home. Even then, tensions between administrators in Washington and practitioners on the ground at National Parks, monuments, and museums continued to redefine the scope and substance of the field. The process of definition persists to this day as public historians establish a growing presence in major universities throughout the United States and abroad. Book jacket.

Book Value Engineering

Download or read book Value Engineering written by Richard Park and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After more than 50 years as a manager and VE pioneer, Richard J. Park presents Value Engineering: A Plan for Invention. Park demonstrates how to adopt VE as a thinking process that can enable you to increase your problem solving skills, cultivate innovation, reduce costs, improve productivity, and more. Features

Book The Disney Monorail

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jeff Kurtti
  • Publisher : Disney Editions
  • Release : 2020-07-28
  • ISBN : 9781484737675
  • Pages : 0 pages

Download or read book The Disney Monorail written by Jeff Kurtti and published by Disney Editions. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All aboard a lavish visual celebration of one of Disney's most iconic and beloved creations: the Disney Monorail. Through a lively and succinct narrative and a stunning collection of unique historical photographs and rare concept and development art (much of it never before published) readers will be transported through the imagination of one of the great twentieth century geniuses, and into a future where yesterday's dreams are tomorrow's realities! Walt Disney is renowned as a cartoonist, filmmaker, showman, and entertainment icon. But he was also a far-sighted futurist, a transportation buff with practical roots in the past, and visionary sights set on the future. In imagining his Disneyland park, Walt saw it not only as a destination for diversion and entertainment, but also as a means of presenting practical demonstrations of new ideas and new technology with real-world applications. As Walt said, "Tomorrow offers new frontiers in science, adventure, and ideals: the Atomic Age . . . the challenge of outer space . . . and the hope for a peaceful and unified world." In The Disney Monorail: Imagineering a Highway in the Sky, readers will discover the parallel stories of the development of a new form of transportation and the evolution of Walt's prophetic creative mind, which resulted in the first daily operating monorail in the Western Hemisphere. From that day in June 1959, this mid-century modern marvel has captured the hearts and imaginations not only of theme park and Disney fans everywhere. It has also inspired, as Walt had hoped, the creation of working monorails in practical transit applications in varied locations all around the world.