Download or read book Rocky Mountain Heartland written by Duane A. Smith and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a lively history of three Rocky Mountain states in the twentieth century. With the sure hand of an experienced writer and the engaging voice of a veteran storyteller, the well-known historian Duane A. Smith recounts the major social, political, and economic events of the period with verve and zest. Smith is thoroughly familiar with his subject and has a genuine enthusiasm for the history of the region. Written with the general reader in mind, Rocky Mountain Heartland will appeal to students, teachers, and “armchair historians” of all ages. This is the colorful saga of how the Old West became the New West. Beginning at the end of the nineteenth century and concluding after the turn of the twenty-first, Rocky Mountain Heartland explains how Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming evolved over the course of the century. Smith is mindful of all the factors that propelled the region: mining, agriculture, water, immigration, tourism, technology, and two world wars. And he points out how the three states responded in varying ways to each of these forces. Although this is a regional story, Smith never loses sight of the national events that influenced events in the region. As Smith skillfully shows, the vast natural resources of the three states attracted optimistic, hopeful Americans intent on getting rich, enjoying the outdoors, or creating new lives for themselves and their families. How they resolved these often-conflicting goals is the modern story of the Rocky Mountain region.

Download or read book Rocky Mountain Heartland written by Duane A. Smith and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2008-10-30 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a lively history of three Rocky Mountain states in the twentieth century. With the sure hand of an experienced writer and the engaging voice of a veteran storyteller, the well-known historian Duane A. Smith recounts the major social, political, and economic events of the period with verve and zest. Smith is thoroughly familiar with his subject and has a genuine enthusiasm for the history of the region. Written with the general reader in mind, Rocky Mountain Heartland will appeal to students, teachers, and “armchair historians” of all ages. This is the colorful saga of how the Old West became the New West. Beginning at the end of the nineteenth century and concluding after the turn of the twenty-first, Rocky Mountain Heartland explains how Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming evolved over the course of the century. Smith is mindful of all the factors that propelled the region: mining, agriculture, water, immigration, tourism, technology, and two world wars. And he points out how the three states responded in varying ways to each of these forces. Although this is a regional story, Smith never loses sight of the national events that influenced events in the region. As Smith skillfully shows, the vast natural resources of the three states attracted optimistic, hopeful Americans intent on getting rich, enjoying the outdoors, or creating new lives for themselves and their families. How they resolved these often-conflicting goals is the modern story of the Rocky Mountain region.

Download or read book Heartland written by Sarah Smarsh and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Finalist for the National Book Award* *Finalist for the Kirkus Prize* *Instant New York Times Bestseller* *Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, New York Post, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness, Bustle, and Publishers Weekly* An essential read for our times: an eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in America that will deepen our understanding of the ways in which class shapes our country and “a deeply humane memoir that crackles with clarifying insight”.* Sarah Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through her experiences growing up on a farm thirty miles west of Wichita, we are given a unique and essential look into the lives of poor and working class Americans living in the heartland. During Sarah’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, she enjoyed the freedom of a country childhood, but observed the painful challenges of the poverty around her; untreated medical conditions for lack of insurance or consistent care, unsafe job conditions, abusive relationships, and limited resources and information that would provide for the upward mobility that is the American Dream. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves with clarity and precision but without judgement, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country. Beautifully written, in a distinctive voice, Heartland combines personal narrative with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, challenging the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less. “Heartland is one of a growing number of important works—including Matthew Desmond’s Evicted and Amy Goldstein’s Janesville—that together merit their own section in nonfiction aisles across the country: America’s postindustrial decline...Smarsh shows how the false promise of the ‘American dream’ was used to subjugate the poor. It’s a powerful mantra” *(The New York Times Book Review).

Download or read book Rancher Farmer Fisherman Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland written by Miriam Horn and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a feature-length documentary on the Discovery channel narrated by Tom Brokaw. “Lush, gorgeously written…A profoundly hopeful book.” —Tina Rosenberg, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award A Kirkus Best Book of 2016 Many of the men and women doing today’s most consequential environmental work—restoring America’s grasslands, wildlife, soil, rivers, wetlands, and oceans—would not call themselves environmentalists; they would be too uneasy with the connotations of that word. What drives them is their deep love of the land: the iconic terrain where explorers and cowboys, pioneers and riverboat captains forged the American identity. They feel a moral responsibility to preserve this heritage and natural wealth, to ensure that their families and communities will continue to thrive. Unfolding as a journey down the Mississippi River, Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman tells the stories of five representatives of this stewardship movement: a Montana rancher, a Kansas farmer, a Mississippi riverman, a Louisiana shrimper, and a Gulf fisherman. In exploring their work and family histories and the essential geographies they protect, Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman challenges pervasive and powerful myths about American and environmental values.

Download or read book Colorado Powder Keg written by Michael W. Childers and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2016-05-23 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Downhill skiing is a vital economic engine for many communities in the Rocky Mountain states, attracting 20 million skier days per season. Colorado is by far the most popular destination, with more than two dozen major ski resorts creating a thriving industry that adds billions to the state's coffers. But, many ask, at what cost? Michael Childers traces the rise of Colorado's ski industry alongside that of the burgeoning environmental movement, which sprang up in opposition to rampant commercial development on mountains that had been designated as public lands. Combining official ski resort figures, U.S. Forest Service documents, real estate and tourism records, wildlife data, newspaper articles, and public comments, Childers shows how what started as an innocent leisurely pursuit has morphed into a multi-billion dollar business that forever changed the landscape of Colorado and brought with it serious environmental consequences. This first environmental history of skiing in Colorado traces the recreation's rise in popularity as a way of examining major changes in public land management in the American West during the last century. As more people headed to Colorado's mountains in search of thrills on the slopes, the USFS quickly became overwhelmed by the demand and turned resort development over to the private sector. The result has been a decades-long battle between developers and environmentalists-with skiers and Colorado residents caught in the middle. Childers examines the history of the ski industry within Colorado throughout the twentieth century along with the challenges the industry's growth posed in balancing the private development of public lands and mounting environmental concerns over issues such as rural growth, wildlife management, and air and water pollution. He then traces the history of radical environmentalism back to the 1960s to show how it picked up momentum, culminating in the Earth Liberation Front's 1998 arson at Vail Ski Resort--which ended up doing more harm than good to the environmentalist cause by recasting the mega-resorts as victims and turning public opinion against all environmental activists in the area. As Americans weigh their desire for fresh powder against their concern for protecting unspoiled lands, Childers's book provides valuable food for thought. Colorado Powder Keg opens a new window on the history of skiing in the American West as it adds to the broader debate over the management and purpose of national forests.

Download or read book High Country Summers written by Melanie Shellenbarger and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2012-11-01 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: High Country Summers considers the emergence of the “summer home” in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains as both an architectural and a cultural phenomenon. It offers a welcome new perspective on an often-overlooked dwelling and lifestyle. Writing with affection and insight, Melanie Shellenbarger shows that Colorado’s early summer homes were not only enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy but crossed boundaries of class, race, and gender. They offered their inhabitants recreational and leisure experiences as well as opportunities for individual re-invention—and they helped shape both the cultural landscapes of the American West and our ideas about it. Shellenbarger focuses on four areas along the Front Range: Rocky Mountain National Park and its easterly gateway town, Estes Park; “recreation residences” in lands managed by the US Forest Service; Lincoln Hills, one of only a few African-American summer home resorts in the United States; and the foothills west of Denver that drew Front Range urbanites, including Denver’s social elite. From cottages to manor houses, the summer dwellings she examines were home to governors and government clerks; extended families and single women; business magnates and Methodist ministers; African-American building contractors and innkeepers; shop owners and tradespeople. By returning annually, Shellenbarger shows, they created communities characterized by distinctive forms of kinship. High Country Summers goes beyond history and architecture to examine the importance of these early summer homes as meaningful sanctuaries in the lives of their owners and residents. These homes, which embody both the dwelling (the house itself) and dwelling (the act of summering there), resonate across time and place, harkening back to ancient villas and forward to the present day.

Download or read book A Century of American Alpinism written by William Lowell Putnam and published by Light Technology Publishing. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Ernest Fay (1846?1931), the ?Mr. American Mountaineering? of his day, was chairman of the meeting that led to the foundation of the Appalachian Mountain Club in 1876. Thereafter he served several terms as that club?s president and was the editor of its Journal, APPALACHIA, for 40 years. In 1902 he was elected as the first president of The American Alpine Club, and reelected for a second three-year term. In 1917, he was elected president once more, thus becoming not only the Club?s first president but also its longest serving. During all this period he was Professor of Modern Languages at Tufts College in Medford, Massachusetts, where he shared offices with the junior editor ? albeit with a hiatus of 18 years between their respective occupancies. Allen Herbert Bent (1867?1926), a native of Boston, Massachusetts, started his life of scholarly research into alpinism by dropping our of college ? anything but a promising beginning. Soon, however, he began the serious study of the history of mountaineering, ultimately writing extensively on this topic. He became the first person elected to The American Alpine Club, during its days of ?exclusivity,? under the ?or the equivalent? clause of membership prerequisites, for he was never a serious alpinist ? always contenting himself with the study of its literature. Howard Palmer (1883?1944), a lawyer by training, inherited the management of his family?s mattress manufacturing business in New London, Connecticut. Starting in 1907, he compiled an enviable record of first ascents in the mountains of western Canada and in 1914 published the North American classic, MOUNTAINEERING AND EXPLORATION IN THE SELKIRKS. He served as editor of the Club?s first guidebook and several editions of its JOURNAL. He also furthered the organization as its secretary, a director and as its president. James Monroe Thorington (1894?1989), of Philadelphia, was an ophthalmologist by profession, following in the footsteps of his father. After the end of World War I, Roy, as he was known to his intimates, spent most of his vacation time in the mountains of western Canada and served as editor of the Club?s guidebooks to that region for several editions. A diligent student of alpine literature, he compiled a number of scholarly researches into the history of American alpinism, served many years as a director of the Club, one term as its president, then for 10 years as editor of the AMERICAN ALPINE JOURNAL, and gave the Club some of the most valuable items in its museum. In 2000, the UIAA gave its first award for research into the history of alpinism under the name of James Monroe Thorington. After graduating from Harvard in 1942, Andrew John Kauffman (b. 1921) the son of two distinguished American literary figures, spent his entire working career in various diplomatic capacities. Between State Department assignments in Washington, Paris, Managua and Calcutta, he spent weekends and holidays in the Alps and the mountains of Peru, Colombia, Alaska, Canada, and finally in the Karakoram, where he demonstrated a high level of acromania by becoming one of the only two Americans to make the first ascent of an 8000 meter peak. He also served the Club as a counselor and as vice-president and was elected to Honorary Membership. William Lowell Putnam (b. 1924) has been an official of the Harvard Mountaineering Club, the Appalachian Mountain Club, then The American Alpine Club and finally the International Association of Alpine Societies (UIAA), and has been honored by several other mountaineering societies. His major employment was in television broadcasting, but his heart remains in the mountains of western Canada. At this writing he is the sole trustee of Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. While many have wished for the opportunity, people have not yet read his obituary.

Download or read book Making a Modern U S West written by Sarah Deutsch and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 523 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To many Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the West was simultaneously the greatest symbol of American opportunity, the greatest story of its history, and the imagined blank slate on which the country's future would be written. From the Spanish-American War in 1898 to the Great Depression's end, from the Mississippi to the Pacific, policymakers at various levels and large-scale corporate investors, along with those living in the West and its borderlands, struggled over who would define modernity, who would participate in the modern American West, and who would be excluded. In Making a Modern U.S. West Sarah Deutsch surveys the history of the U.S. West from 1898 to 1940. Centering what is often relegated to the margins in histories of the region--the flows of people, capital, and ideas across borders--Deutsch attends to the region's role in constructing U.S. racial formations and argues that the West as a region was as important as the South in constructing the United States as a "white man's country." While this racial formation was linked to claims of modernity and progress by powerful players, Deutsch shows that visions of what constituted modernity were deeply contested by others. This expansive volume presents the most thorough examination to date of the American West from the late 1890s to the eve of World War II.

Download or read book The City That Ate Itself written by Brian James Leech and published by University of Nevada Press. This book was released on 2018-02-28 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Mining History Association Clark Spence Award for the Best Book in Mining History, 2017-2018 Brian James Leech provides a social and environmental history of Butte, Montana’s Berkeley Pit, an open-pit mine which operated from 1955 to 1982. Using oral history interviews and archival finds, The City That Ate Itself explores the lived experience of open-pit copper mining at Butte’s infamous Berkeley Pit. Because an open-pit mine has to expand outward in order for workers to extract ore, its effects dramatically changed the lives of workers and residents. Although the Berkeley Pit gave consumers easier access to copper, its impact on workers and community members was more mixed, if not detrimental. The pit’s creeping boundaries became even more of a problem. As open-pit mining nibbled away at ethnic communities, neighbors faced new industrial hazards, widespread relocation, and disrupted social ties. Residents variously responded to the pit with celebration, protest, negotiation, and resignation. Even after its closure, the pit still looms over Butte. Now a large toxic lake at the center of a federal environmental cleanup, the Berkeley Pit continues to affect Butte’s search for a postindustrial future.

Download or read book A Life Wild and Perilous written by Robert M. Utley and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[This] richly documented book is the definitive study of the decisive role mountain men played in the exploration and expansion of the Western frontier.” —Jay P. Dolan, The New York Times Book Review Early in the nineteenth century, the mountain men emerged as a small but distinctive group whose knowledge and experience of the trans-Mississippi West extended the national consciousness to continental dimensions. Though Lewis and Clark blazed a narrow corridor of geographical reality, the West remained largely terra incognita until trappers and traders—such as Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Jedediah Smith—opened paths through the snow-choked mountain wilderness. These and other Mountain Men opened the way west to Fremont and played a major role in the pivotal years of 1845–1848 when Texas was annexed, the Oregon question was decided, and the Mexican War ended with the Southwest and California in American hands—thus making the Pacific Ocean America’s western boundary.

Download or read book After Lewis and Clark written by Robert M. Utley and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1807, a year after Lewis and Clark returned from the shores of the Pacific, groups of trappers and hunters began to drift West to tap the rich stocks of beaver and to trade with the Native nations. Colorful and eccentric, bold and adventurous, mountain men such as John Colter, George Drouillard, Hugh Glass, Andrew Henry, and Kit Carson found individual freedom and financial reward in pursuit of pelts. Their knowledge of the country and its inhabitants served the first mapmakers, the army, and the streams of emigrants moving West in ever-greater numbers. The mountain men laid the foundations for their own displacement, as they led the nation on a westward course that ultimately spread the American lands from sea to sea.

Download or read book Air Pollution and Its Impacts on U S National Parks written by Timothy J. Sullivan and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-02-03 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A variety of air pollutants are emitted into the atmosphere from human-caused and natural emissions sources throughout the United States and elsewhere. These contaminants impact sensitive natural resources in wilderness, including the national parks. The system of national parks in the United States is among our greatest assets. This book provides a compilation and synthesis of current scientific understanding regarding the causes and effects of these pollutants within national park lands. It describes pollutant emissions, deposition, and exposures; it identifies the critical (tipping point) loads of pollutant deposition at which adverse impacts are manifested.

Download or read book Comprehensive Framework Study Plan of development and management written by Missouri Basin Inter-agency Committee and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Comprehensive Framework Study written by Missouri Basin Inter-agency Committee and published by . This book was released on 1971 with total page 1028 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Emerging Republican Majority written by Kevin P. Phillips and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-23 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most important and controversial books in modern American politics, The Emerging Republican Majority (1969) explained how Richard Nixon won the White House in 1968—and why the Republicans would go on to dominate presidential politics for the next quarter century. Rightly or wrongly, the book has widely been seen as a blueprint for how Republicans, using the so-called Southern Strategy, could build a durable winning coalition in presidential elections. Certainly, Nixon's election marked the end of a "New Deal Democratic hegemony" and the beginning of a conservative realignment encompassing historically Democratic voters from the South and the Florida-to-California "Sun Belt," in the book’s enduring coinage. In accounting for that shift, Kevin Phillips showed how two decades and more of social and political changes had created enormous opportunities for a resurgent conservative Republican Party. For this new edition, Phillips has written a preface describing his view of the book, its reception, and how its analysis was borne out in subsequent elections. A work whose legacy and influence are still fiercely debated, The Emerging Republican Majority is essential reading for anyone interested in American politics or history.

Download or read book Rocky Mountain Divide written by John B. Wright and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-07-22 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The opposing forces of conservation and development have shaped and will continue to shape the natural environment and scenic beauty of the American West. Perhaps nowhere are their opposite effects more visible than in the neighboring states of Colorado and Utah, so alike in their spectacular mountain environments, yet so different in their approaches to land conservation. This study explores why Colorado has over twenty-five land trusts, while Utah has only one. John Wright traces the success of voluntary land conservation in Colorado to the state’s history as a region of secular commerce. As environmental consciousness has grown in Colorado, people there have embraced the businesslike approach of land trusts as simply a new, more responsible way of conducting the real estate business. In Utah, by contrast, Wright finds that Mormon millennialism and the belief that growth equals success have created a public climate opposed to the formation of land trusts. As Wright puts it, "environmentalism seems to thrive in the Centennial state within the spiritual vacuum which is filled by Mormonism in Utah." These findings remind conservationists of the power of underlying cultural values that affect their efforts to preserve private lands.

Download or read book Freeing Tibet written by John B. ROBERTS and published by AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. This book was released on 2009-02-02 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In March of 1959, a 23-year-old Tibetan youth named Tenzin Gyatso burst onto the world stage. Fleeing his native country to govern in exile from India, the Dalai Lama would go on to become one of the great leaders of our time. Then, in March 2008, the diplomat, icon, and winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize was blamed for inciting violence in Tibet’s traditional capital of Lhasa. As 2009 marks the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s rule in exile, the situation in Tibet has become more volatile than ever. Now, China must decide if it will give Tibet the right to govern itself and what the consequences will be for its economy and its place on the world stage. Freeing Tibet is the incredible, heroic story of Tibet’s arduous struggle to keep freedom alive. From the national uprising in 1959, which cost more than 85,000 Tibetans their lives, to the rise of the Tibetan freedom fighters; the aftereffects of Nixon’s historic visit to China, and preparations for the Dalai Lama’s successor, this seminal history offers an insider’s view of the 50-year struggle for autonomy. As a former Reagan White House political strategist, author John B. Roberts has had unprecedented access to the Dalai Lama’s inner circle. Based on interviews with CIA and political insiders, this epic story gives readers a new understanding of a conflict that continues to fascinate the world. Timely, impeccably researched, and hopeful, this is the book that will change the way we understand Tibet.