Download or read book City of Lake and Prairie written by Kathleen A. Brosnan and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Known as the Windy City and the Hog Butcher to the World, Chicago has earned a more apt sobriquet—City of Lake and Prairie—with this compelling, innovative, and deeply researched environmental history. Sitting at the southwestern tip of Lake Michigan, one of the largest freshwater bodies in the world, and on the eastern edge of the tallgrass prairies that fill much of the North American interior, early residents in the land that Chicago now occupies enjoyed natural advantages, economic opportunities, and global connections over centuries, from the Native Americans who first inhabited the region to the urban dwellers who built a metropolis in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As one millennium ended and a new one began, these same features sparked a distinctive Midwestern environmentalism aimed at preserving local ecosystems. Drawing on its contributors’ interdisciplinary talents, this volume reveals a rich but often troubled landscape shaped by communities of color, workers, and activists as well as complex human relations with industry, waterways, animals, and disease.
Download or read book Prairie City written by Angie Debo and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1998-09-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prairie City is the social history of a representative midwestern town - a composite of several Oklahoma small towns. Beginning with the "one flashing moment" of the 1889 land run, which opened the "Oklahoma Lands" for white settlement, Angie Debo depicts the struggles of the settlers on the vast prairie to build a community despite seasons of drought, prairie fire, and destitution. Solidly based on historical research, Prairie City chronicles the arrival of the railroad, the growth of political parties and educational institutions, KKK uprisings, the oil boom, the Depression and the New Deal, and the effects of two world wars on small-town America.
Download or read book Little Town on the Prairie written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seventh book in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s treasured Little House series, and the recipient of a Newbery Honor—now available as an ebook! This digital version features Garth Williams’s classic illustrations, which appear in vibrant full color on a full-color device and in rich black-and-white on all other devices. The settlement that weathered the long, hard winter of 1880-81 is now a growing town. With spring comes a new job for Laura, town parties, and more time to spend with Almanzo Wilder. Laura also tries to help Pa and Ma save money so that Mary is able to go to a college for the blind. The nine Little House books are inspired by Laura’s own childhood and have been cherished by generations of readers as both a unique glimpse into America’s frontier history and as heartwarming, unforgettable stories.
Download or read book Prairie City Iowa written by Douglas Bauer and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2008-11-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weary from the journalistic treadmill of "going from one assignment to the next, like an itinerant fieldworker moving to his harvests" and healing from a divorce, Douglas Bauer decided it was time to return to his hometown. Back in Prairie City, he helped on his father's farm, scooped grains at the Co-op, and tended bar at the Cardinal. The resultant memoir is a classic picture of an adult experiencing one's childhood roots as a grown-up and testing whether one can ever truly go home again. Bauer grew up "awkward with soil and with machines" in a small town east of Des Moines, As a teenager, he left the farm for college life twenty miles away and, after graduation, took a job with Better Homes and Gardens in Des Moines, writing in the junk-mail fictional persona of "Barbara Joyce,"asking millions of people to subscribe. After a few years he moved to Chicago to work as an editor and writer for Playboy and eventually as a freelance journalist. In the summer of 1975, he returned home to attend his grandmother's funeral and by autumn he moved back to Prairie City, where he stayed for the next three seasons. Bauer's book is neither a wistful nostalgia about returning to a simpler time and place nor a patronizing look at those who never leave the town in which they were born. What emerges is an unsentimental yet loving account of life in the Midwest. Not just a portrait of Prairie City, Iowa, but of everyone's small town, everywhere.
Download or read book The Great Lakes Water Wars written by Peter Annin and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Lakes are the largest collection of fresh surface water on earth, and more than 40 million Americans and Canadians live in their basin. Will we divert water from the Great Lakes, causing them to end up like Central Asia's Aral Sea, which has lost 90 percent of its surface area and 75 percent of its volume since 1960? Or will we come to see that unregulated water withdrawals are ultimately catastrophic? Peter Annin writes a fast-paced account of the people and stories behind these upcoming battles. Destined to be the definitive story for the general public as well as policymakers, The Great Lakes Water Wars is a balanced, comprehensive look behind the scenes at the conflicts and compromises that are the past-and future-of this unique resource.
Download or read book Main Street written by Sinclair Lewis and published by BoD - Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-06-01 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carol Milford grows up in a mid-sized town in Minnesota before moving to Chicago for college. After her education, during which she’s exposed to big-city life and culture, she moves to Minneapolis to work as a librarian. She soon meets Will Kennicott, a small-town doctor, and the two get married and move to Gopher Prairie, Kennicott’s home town. Carol, inspired by big-city ideas, soon begins chafing at the seeming quaintness and even backwardness of the townsfolk, and their conservative, self-satisfied way of life. She struggles to try to reform the town in her image, while finding meaning in the seeming cultural desert she’s found herself in and in her increasingly cold marriage. Gopher Prairie is a detailed, satirical take on small-town American life, modeled after Sauk Centre, the town in which Lewis himself grew up. The town is fully realized, with generations of inhabitants interacting in a complex web of village society. Its bitingly satirical portrayal made Main Street highly acclaimed by its contemporaries, though many thought the satirical take was perhaps a bit too dark and hopeless. The book’s celebration and condemnation of small town life make it a candidate for the title of the Great American Novel. Main Street was awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, but the decision was overturned by the prize’s Board of Trustees and awarded instead to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence. When Lewis went on to win the 1926 Pulitzer for Arrowsmith, he declined it—with the New York Times reporting that he did so because he was still angry at the Pulitzers for being denied the prize for Main Street. Despite the book’s snub at the Pulitzers, Lewis went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930, with Main Street being cited as one of the reasons for his win.
Download or read book City of the Century written by Donald L. Miller and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2014-04-09 with total page 1084 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A wonderfully readable account of Chicago’s early history” and the inspiration behind PBS’s American Experience (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). Depicting its turbulent beginnings to its current status as one of the world’s most dynamic cities, City of the Century tells the story of Chicago—and the story of America, writ small. From its many natural disasters, including the Great Fire of 1871 and several cholera epidemics, to its winner-take-all politics, dynamic business empires, breathtaking architecture, its diverse cultures, and its multitude of writers, journalists, and artists, Chicago’s story is violent, inspiring, passionate, and fascinating from the first page to the last. The winner of the prestigious Great Lakes Book Award, given to the year’s most outstanding books highlighting the American heartland, City of the Century has received consistent rave reviews since its publication in 1996, and was made into a six-hour film airing on PBS’s American Experience series. Written with energetic prose and exacting detail, it brings Chicago’s history to vivid life. “With City of the Century, Miller has written what will be judged as the great Chicago history.” —John Barron, Chicago Sun-Times “Brims with life, with people, surprise, and with stories.” —David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of John Adams and Truman “An invaluable companion in my journey through Old Chicago.” —Erik Larson, New York Times–bestselling author of The Devil in the White City
Download or read book Little City by the Lake written by Celia Wilkins and published by . This book was released on 2003-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifteen-year-old Caroline Quiner, who will become the mother of Laura Ingalls Wilder, moves to Milwaukee in 1855 to experience city life and attend school.
Download or read book A Natural History of the Chicago Region written by Joel Greenberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In A Natural History of the Chicago Region, Greenberg takes you on a journey that begins with European explorers and settlers and hasn't ended yet. Along the way he introduces you to the physical forces that have shaped the area from southeastern Wisconsin to northern Indiana and Berrien County in Michigan; the various habitat types present in the region and how European settlement has affected them; and the insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds, fish, and mammals found in presettlement times, then amid the settlers and now amid the skyscrappers. In all, Greenberg chronicles the development of nineteen counties in Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin across centuries of ecological, technological, and social transformations."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Third Coast written by Thomas L. Dyja and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Chicago Tribune‘s 2013 Heartland Prize A critically acclaimed history of Chicago at mid-century, featuring many of the incredible personalities that shaped American culture Before air travel overtook trains, nearly every coast-to-coast journey included a stop in Chicago, and this flow of people and commodities made it the crucible for American culture and innovation. In luminous prose, Chicago native Thomas Dyja re-creates the story of the city in its postwar prime and explains its profound impact on modern America—from Chess Records to Playboy, McDonald’s to the University of Chicago. Populated with an incredible cast of characters, including Mahalia Jackson, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, Sun Ra, Simone de Beauvoir, Nelson Algren, Gwendolyn Brooks, Studs Turkel, and Mayor Richard J. Daley, The Third Coast recalls the prominence of the Windy City in all its grandeur.
Download or read book A Little Prairie House written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published by Paw Prints. This book was released on 2009-07-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ingalls family builds a log cabin with the help of their neighbor
Download or read book Lake Wobegon Days written by Garrison Keillor and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1990-04-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Lake Wobegon Days is about the way our beliefs, desires and fears tail off into abstractions--and get renewed from time to time. . . this book, unfolding Mr. Keillor's full design, is a genuine work of American history.” —The New York Times “A comic anatomy of what is small and ordinary and therefore potentially profound and universal in American life…Keillor’s strength as a writer is to make the ordinary extraordinary.” —Chicago Tribune “Keillor’s laughs come dear, not cheap, emerging from shared virtue and good character, from reassuring us of our neighborliness and strength….His true subject is how daily life is shot with grace. Keillor writes a prose that can be turned to laughter, to tears…to compassion or satire, to a hundred effects. He is a brilliant parodist.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Download or read book The Prairie Club of Chicago written by Cathy Jean Maloney and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally formed in 1908, as an outgrowth of the Playground Association of Chicago, the Prairie Club was incorporated as a separate entity in 1911. Embodying the typical reform mentality of the Progressive era, the club emphasized outdoor recreation and preservation, and sponsored walking trips around Chicago's countryside. Captured here in over 200 vintage photographs are the footsteps of the Prairie Club as they built a constituency for exploring and preserving the forests and fields surrounding the Windy City.Like many large American cities in the early 1900s, Chicago's industrialization and waves of immigration spawned crowded, unhealthy urban conditions. The Prairie Club turned to nature for relief from these societal ills. From its first outing on Saturday, April 18, 1908, around Mount Forest District near Willow Springs, members sponsored hikes and outdoor activities from Palos and Tinley, through Hinsdale and Downers Grove, and up to the North Shore. With each of these walks, public support grew for what ultimately became victorious efforts to establish the forest preserves, Indiana Dunes, and other nature spots around the burgeoning cityscape.
Download or read book Little House on the Prairie written by Laura Ingalls Wilder and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third book in Laura Ingalls Wilder's treasured Little House series—now available as an ebook! This digital version features Garth Williams's classic illustrations, which appear in vibrant full color on a full-color device and in rich black-and-white on all other devices. The adventures continue for Laura Ingalls and her family as they leave their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin and set out for the big skies of the Kansas Territory. They travel for many days in their covered wagon until they find the best spot to build their house. Soon they are planting and plowing, hunting wild ducks and turkeys, and gathering grass for their cows. Just when they begin to feel settled, they are caught in the middle of a dangerous conflict. The nine Little House books are inspired by Laura's own childhood and have been cherished by generations of readers as both a unique glimpse into America's frontier history and as heartwarming, unforgettable stories.
Download or read book SUMMER ON THE LAKES IN 1843 written by Margaret 1810-1850 Fuller and published by . This book was released on 2016-08-28 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In Search of Lake Wobegon written by Garrison Keillor and published by Studio. This book was released on 2001 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book combines text and image to reveal the real-life origins of the place where "the women are strong, the men are good-looking and the children above average." Keillor meditates on the enduring culture of the county and on the years he spent there as a young writer and an outsider. And a short story of Lake Wobegon, "October," appears here for the first time in print."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book The Man Made City written by Gerald D. Suttles and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1990-03-21 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With its extraordinary uniform street grid, its magnificent lake-side park, and innovative architecture and public sculpture, Chicago is one of the most planned cities of the modern era. Yet over the past few decades Chicago has come to epitomize some of the worst evils of urban decay: widespread graft and corruption, political stalemates, troubled race relations, and economic decline. Broad-shouldered boosterism can no longer disguise the city's failure to keep pace with others, its failure to attract new "sunrise" industries and world-class events. For Chicago, as for other rust-belt cities, new ways of planning and managing the urban environment are now much more than civic beautification; they are the means to survival. Gerald D. Suttles here offers an irreverent, highly critical guide to both the realities and myths of land-use planning and development in Chicago from 1976 through 1987.
