Download or read book Sawdust Empire written by Robert S. Maxwell and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive story of logging, lumbering, and forest conservation in Texas records the industry's history from the earliest days of the Republic, when a few isolated operations provided for local needs, through the first four decades of the twentieth century. Supplemented by over one hundred photographs, many never before published, the text re-creates Texas' heyday as one of the nation's leading timber producers. At that time, the forested area equaled the state of Indiana. In the words of one visitor, the forest was "like a vast wave that has rolled in upon a level beach ... creeping forward, thinning out, and finally disappearing, except where, along a river course, it pushes far inland."
Download or read book Sawdust Empire written by Howard M. Brier and published by New York, Knopf, 1958 [c1957]. This book was released on 1958 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Southern Forest written by Laurence C. Walker and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2014-09-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the first European explorers reached the southern shores of North America in the early seventeenth century, they faced a solid forest that stretched all the way from the Atlantic coast to eastern Texas and Oklahoma. The ways in which they and their descendants used—and abused—the forest over the next nearly four hundred years form the subject of The Southern Forest. In chapters on the explorers, pioneers, lumbermen, boatbuilders, and foresters, Laurence Walker chronicles the constant demands that people have made on forest resources in the South. He shows how the land's very abundance became its greatest liability, as people overhunted the animals, clearcut the forests, and wore out the soil with unwise farming practices—all in a mistaken belief that the forest's bounty (including new ground to be broken) was inexhaustible. With the advent of professional forestry in the twentieth century, however, the southern forest has made a comeback. A professional forester himself, Walker speaks from experience of the difficulties that foresters face in balancing competing interests in the forest. How, for example, does one reconcile the country's growing demand for paper products with the insistence of environmental groups that no trees be cut? Should national forests be strictly recreational areas, or can they support some industrial logging? How do foresters avoid using chemical pesticides when the public protests such natural management practices as prescribed burning and tree cutting? This personal view of the southern forest adds a new dimension to the study of southern history and culture. The primeval southern forest is gone, but, with careful husbandry on the part of all users, the regenerated southern forest may indeed prove to be the inexhaustible resource of which our ancestors dreamed.
Download or read book The Promise of the New South written by Edward L. Ayers and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-09-07 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a public picnic in the South in the 1890s, a young man paid five cents for his first chance to hear the revolutionary Edison talking machine. He eagerly listened as the soundman placed the needle down, only to find that through the tubes he held to his ears came the chilling sounds of a lynching. In this story, with its blend of new technology and old hatreds, genteel picnics and mob violence, Edward Ayers captures the history of the South in the years between Reconstruction and the turn of the century. Ranging from the Georgia coast to the Tennessee mountains, from the power brokers to tenant farmers, Ayers depicts a land of startling contrasts. Ayers takes us from remote Southern towns, revolutionized by the spread of the railroads, to the statehouses where Democratic Redeemers swept away the legacy of Reconstruction; from the small farmers, trapped into growing nothing but cotton, to the new industries of Birmingham; from abuse and intimacy in the family to tumultuous public meetings of the prohibitionists. He explores every aspect of society, politics, and the economy, detailing the importance of each in the emerging New South. Central to the entire story is the role of race relations, from alliances and friendships between blacks and whites to the spread of Jim Crows laws and disfranchisement. The teeming nineteenth-century South comes to life in these pages. When this book first appeared in 1992, it won a broad array of prizes and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The citation for the National Book Award declared Promise of the New South a vivid and masterfully detailed picture of the evolution of a new society. The Atlantic called it "one of the broadest and most original interpretations of southern history of the past twenty years.
Download or read book New Deals written by Colin Gordon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-07-29 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, an economic history of the interwar era, is the first major reinterpretation of the New Deal in thirty years.
Download or read book The Path to a Modern South written by Walter L. Buenger and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-06-28 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The forces that turned Northeast Texas from a poverty-stricken region into a more economically prosperous area. Winner, Texas State Historical Association Coral H. Tullis Memorial Award for best book on Texas history, 2001 Federal New Deal programs of the 1930s and World War II are often credited for transforming the South, including Texas, from a poverty-stricken region mired in Confederate mythology into a more modern and economically prosperous part of the United States. By contrast, this history of Northeast Texas, one of the most culturally southern areas of the state, offers persuasive evidence that political, economic, and social modernization began long before the 1930s and prepared Texans to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the New Deal and World War II. Walter L. Buenger draws on extensive primary research to tell the story of change in Northeast Texas from 1887 to 1930. Moving beyond previous, more narrowly focused studies of the South, he traces and interconnects the significant changes that occurred in politics, race relations, business and the economy, and women's roles. He also reveals how altered memories of the past and the emergence of a stronger identification with Texas history affected all facets of life in Northeast Texas.
Download or read book Nameless Towns written by Thad Sitton and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive history of the sawmill towns of East Texas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sawmill communities were once the thriving centers of East Texas life. Many sprang up almost overnight in a pine forest clearing, and many disappeared just as quickly after the company “cut out” its last trees. But during their heyday, these company towns made Texas the nation’s third-largest lumber producer and created a colorful way of life that lingers in the memories of the remaining former residents and their children and grandchildren. Drawing on oral history, company records, and other archival sources, Sitton and Conrad recreate the lifeways of the sawmill communities. They describe the companies that ran the mills and the different kinds of jobs involved in logging and milling. They depict the usually rough-hewn towns, with their central mill, unpainted houses, company store, and schools, churches, and community centers. And they characterize the lives of the people, from the hard, awesomely dangerous mill work to the dances, picnics, and other recreations that offered welcome diversions. Winner, T. H. Fehrenbach Award, Texas Historical Commission “After completing the book, I truly understood life in the sawmill communities, intellectually and emotionally. It was very satisfying. Conrad and Sitton write in such a manner to make one feel the hard life, smell the sawdust, and share the danger of the mills. The book is compelling and stimulating.” —Robert L. Schaadt, Director-Archivist, Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center
Download or read book Building a Market written by Richard Harris and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-08-27 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each year, North Americans spend as much money fixing up their homes as they do buying new ones. This obsession with improving our dwellings has given rise to a multibillion-dollar industry that includes countless books, consumer magazines, a cable television network, and thousands of home improvement stores. Building a Market charts the rise of the home improvement industry in the United States and Canada from the end of World War I into the late 1950s. Drawing on the insights of business, social, and urban historians, and making use of a wide range of documentary sources, Richard Harris shows how the middle-class preference for home ownership first emerged in the 1920s—and how manufacturers, retailers, and the federal government combined to establish the massive home improvement market and a pervasive culture of Do-It-Yourself. Deeply insightful, Building a Market is the carefully crafted history of the emergence and evolution of a home improvement revolution that changed not just American culture but the American landscape as well.
Download or read book The Environment in American History written by Jeff Crane and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-27 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From pre-European contact to the present day, people living in what is now the United States have constantly manipulated their environment. The use of natural resources – animals, plants, minerals, water, and land – has produced both prosperity and destruction, reshaping the land and human responses to it. The Environment in American History is a clear and comprehensive account that vividly shows students how the environment played a defining role in the development of American society. Organized in thirteen chronological chapters, and extensively illustrated, the book covers themes including: Native peoples’ manipulation of the environment across various regions The role of Old World livestock and diseases in European conquests Plantation agriculture and slavery Westward expansion and the exploitation of natural resources Environmental influences on the Civil War and World War II The emergence and development of environmental activism Industrialization, and the growth of cities and suburbs Ecological restoration and climate change Each chapter includes a selection of primary documents, and the book is supported by a robust companion website that provides further resources for students and instructors. Drawing on current scholarship, Jeff Crane has created a vibrant and engaging survey that is a key resource for all students of American environmental history.
Download or read book The Natural History of Texas written by Brian R. Chapman and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 752 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From two veteran ecologists comes a new and sweeping exploration of the natural history of Texas in all its biological diversity and geological variation. Few states, if any, can match Texas for its myriad species, past and present, and its many distinctive landscapes, from prairie grasslands and hardwood forests to coastal lagoons and desert mountains. Beginning with the stories of how biologists and naturalists have over time defined the ecological areas of this very big state, the authors visit each of the eleven regions, including the Texas coast. They describe the dominant flora and fauna of each, explain the defining geologic features, and highlight each region’s unique characteristics, such as carnivorous plants in the Piney Woods and returning black bears in the Trans-Pecos. Throughout, the authors remain especially conscious of the conservation and management issues affecting the natural resources of each region, revealing their deep affection for and knowledge about the state. Bolstered by a glossary, further reading suggestions, a description of state symbols, and an appendix of scientific names, this is an educational and essential volume for all Texans. ECOREGIONS Piney Woods Post Oak Savanna Blackland Prairies Cross Timbers and Prairies Rolling Plains Edwards Plateau High Plains Trans-Pecos South Texas Brushland Coastal Prairies Texas Gulf Coast
Download or read book Patrick White s The Eye of the Storm Voss and Other Novels written by Herbert Reaske and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1977 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Legendary Louisiana Outlaws written by Keagan LeJeune and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2016-03-21 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the infamous pirate Jean Laffite and the storied couple Bonnie and Clyde, to less familiar bandits like train-robber Eugene Bunch and suspected murderer Leather Britches Smith, Legendary Louisiana Outlaws explores Louisiana's most fascinating fugitives. In this entertaining volume, Keagan LeJeune draws from historical accounts and current folklore to examine the specific moments and legal climate that spawned these memorable characters. He shows how Laffite embodied Louisiana's shift from an entrenched French and Spanish legal system to an American one, and relates how the notorious groups like the West and Kimbrell Clan served as community leaders and law officers but covertly preyed on Louisiana's Neutral Strip residents until citizens took the law into their own hands. Likewise, the bootlegging Dunn brothers in Vinton, he explains, demonstrate folk justice's distinction between an acceptable criminal act (operating an illegal moonshine still) and an unacceptable one (cold-blooded murder). Recounting each outlaw's life, LeJeune also considers their motives for breaking the law as well as their attempts at evading capture. Running from authorities and trying to escape imprisonment or even death, these men and women often relied on the support of ordinary citizens, sympathetic in the face of oppressive and unfair laws. Through the lens of folk life, LeJeune's engaging narrative demonstrates how a justice system functions and changes and highlights Louisiana's particular challenges in adapting a system of law and order to work for everyone.
Download or read book Bulldozer Revolutions written by Andrew C. Baker and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By examining the metropolitan fringes of Houston in Montgomery County, Texas, and Washington, D.C., in Loudoun County, Virginia, this book combines rural, environmental, and agricultural history to disrupt our view of the southern metropolis. Andrew C. Baker examines the local boosters, gentlemen farmers, historical preservationists, and nature-seeking suburbanites who abandoned the city to live in the metropolitan countryside during the twentieth century. These property owners formed the vanguard of the antigrowth movement that has defined metropolitan fringe politics across the nation. In the rural South, subdivisions, reservoirs, homesteads, and historical villages each obscured the troubling legacies of racism and rural poverty and celebrated a refashioned landscape. That landscape’s historical and environmental “authenticity” served as a foil to the alienation and ugliness of suburbia. Using a source base that includes the records of preservation organizations and local, state, and federal government agencies, as well as oral histories, Baker explores the distinct roots of the environmental politics and the shifting relationship between city and country within these metropolitan fringe regions.
Download or read book The Birth of Big Business in the United States 1860 1914 written by David O. Whitten and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2005-11-30 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The economic and cultural roots of contemporary American business can be traced directly to developments in the era between the Civil War and World War I. The physical expansion of the country combined with development of transportation and communication infrastructures to create a free market of vast proportion and businesses capable of capitalizing on the accompanying economies of scale, through higher productivity, lower costs, and broader distribution. The Birth of Big Business in the United States illuminates the conditions that changed the face of American business and the national economy, giving rise to such titans as Standard Oil, United States Steel, American Tobacco, and Sears, Roebuck, as well as institutions such as the United States Post Office. During this period, commercial banking and law also evolved, and, as the authors argue, business and government were not antagonists but partners in creating mass consumer markets, process innovations, and regulatory frameworks to support economic growth. The Birth of Big Business in the United States is not only an incisive account of modern business development but a fascinating glimpse into a dynamic period of American history.
Download or read book Transforming the Appalachian Countryside written by Ronald L. Lewis and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1880, ancient-growth forest still covered two-thirds of West Virginia, but by the 1920s lumbermen had denuded the entire region. Ronald Lewis explores the transformation in these mountain counties precipitated by deforestation. As the only state that lies entirely within the Appalachian region, West Virginia provides an ideal site for studying the broader social impact of deforestation in Appalachia, the South, and the eastern United States. Most of West Virginia was still dominated by a backcountry economy when the industrial transition began. In short order, however, railroads linked remote mountain settlements directly to national markets, hauling away forest products and returning with manufactured goods and modern ideas. Workers from the countryside and abroad swelled new mill towns, and merchants ventured into the mountains to fulfill the needs of the growing population. To protect their massive investments, capitalists increasingly extended control over the state's legal and political systems. Eventually, though, even ardent supporters of industrialization had reason to contemplate the consequences of unregulated exploitation. Once the timber was gone, the mills closed and the railroads pulled up their tracks, leaving behind an environmental disaster and a new class of marginalized rural poor to confront the worst depression in American history.
Download or read book Writing the Story of Texas written by Patrick L. Cox and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the Lone Star state is a narrative dominated by larger-than-life personalities and often-contentious legends, presenting interesting challenges for historians. Perhaps for this reason, Texas has produced a cadre of revered historians who have had a significant impact on the preservation (some would argue creation) of our state’s past. An anthology of biographical essays, Writing the Story of Texas pays tribute to the scholars who shaped our understanding of Texas’s past and, ultimately, the Texan identity. Edited by esteemed historians Patrick Cox and Kenneth Hendrickson, this collection includes insightful, cross-generational examinations of pivotal individuals who interpreted our history. On these pages, the contributors chart the progression from Eugene C. Barker’s groundbreaking research to his public confrontations with Texas political leaders and his fellow historians. They look at Walter Prescott Webb’s fundamental, innovative vision as a promoter of the past and Ruthe Winegarten’s efforts to shine the spotlight on minorities and women who made history across the state. Other essayists explore Llerena Friend delving into an ambitious study of Sam Houston, Charles Ramsdell courageously addressing delicate issues such as racism and launching his controversial examination of Reconstruction in Texas, Robert Cotner—an Ohio-born product of the Ivy League—bringing a fresh perspective to the field, and Robert Maxwell engaged in early work in environmental history.
Download or read book Faded Glory written by Thomas E. Alexander and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-24 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each of the wars fought by Texans spawned the creation of scores of military sites across the state, from the lonely frontier outpost at Adobe Walls to the once-bustling World War II shipyards of Orange. Today, although vestiges of the sites still exist, many are barely discernible, their once-proud martial trappings now faded by time, neglect, the elements and, most of all, public apathy. ?In Faded Glory: A Century of Forgotten Texas Military Sites, Then and Now, Thomas E. Alexander and Dan K. Utley revisit twenty-nine sites—many of them largely forgotten—associated with what was arguably the most tumultuous hundred-year period in a five-century span of Texas history.? Whether in the war with Mexico, the American Civil War, in clashes between Indians and the frontier army, or in two worldwide conflicts fought on foreign shores, Texas and Texans have often answered the call to arms. Beginning in 1845 and continuing through 1945, the Lone Star State and its people were fully involved in seven major conflicts. ?In this thoroughly researched and absorbing guide, Alexander and Utley recount the full story of the sites from their days of fame to the present. Comparing historic sketches, paintings, and period photographs of the original installations with recent photographs, they illustrate how time has dealt with these important places. Providing maps to aid readers in locating each site, the authors close with a resounding call for preservation and interpretation for future generations. ?The descriptions and images restore, at least in the mind’s eye, a touch of vitality and color to these forgotten and disappearing sites. Thanks to Faded Glory: A Century of Forgotten Texas Military Sites, Then and Now, both the traveler and the armchair tourist can recover a sense of these places and events that did so much to shape the military history of Texas.
