Excellent Sheep

Excellent Sheep

Author: William Deresiewicz

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2014-08-19

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 147670273X

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A groundbreaking manifesto about what our nation’s top schools should be—but aren’t—providing: “The ex-Yale professor effectively skewers elite colleges, their brainy but soulless students (those ‘sheep’), pushy parents, and admissions mayhem” (People). As a professor at Yale, William Deresiewicz saw something that troubled him deeply. His students, some of the nation’s brightest minds, were adrift when it came to the big questions: how to think critically and creatively and how to find a sense of purpose. Now he argues that elite colleges are turning out conformists without a compass. Excellent Sheep takes a sharp look at the high-pressure conveyor belt that begins with parents and counselors who demand perfect grades and culminates in the skewed applications Deresiewicz saw firsthand as a member of Yale’s admissions committee. As schools shift focus from the humanities to “practical” subjects like economics, students are losing the ability to think independently. It is essential, says Deresiewicz, that college be a time for self-discovery when students can establish their own values and measures of success in order to forge their own paths. He features quotes from real students and graduates he has corresponded with over the years, candidly exposing where the system is broken and offering clear solutions on how to fix it. “Excellent Sheep is likely to make…a lasting mark….He takes aim at just about the entirety of upper-middle-class life in America….Mr. Deresiewicz’s book is packed full of what he wants more of in American life: passionate weirdness” (The New York Times).


American Sheep

American Sheep

Author: Brett Bannor

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2024-10-01

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0820367184

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Why did Thomas Jefferson write that he would be happy if all dogs went extinct? What economic opportunity did attorney John Lord Hayes envision for the newly emancipated during Reconstruction? What American workers were mocked by Theodore Roosevelt as “morose, melancholy men”? What problems with revenue collection did Congressman James Beauchamp Clark mention when proposing an income tax? Why did Harley O. Gable of Armour & Company recommend that his meat-packing business manufacture violin strings? Why was Senator Lyndon Johnson angry at the Army and Navy Munitions Board at the start of the Korean War? The answers to all these questions involve sheep. From the colonial era through the mid-twentieth century, America’s flocks played a key role in the nation’s development. Furthermore, much consternation centered around the sheep the United States lacked, so that dependency on foreign wool—a headache in times of peace—became a full-blown crisis in wartime. But more than just providers of wool, sheep were valued for their meat, for their byproducts after slaughter, and even for their efficiency at lawn maintenance. Here is the story of the complex and fascinating relationship between Americans and their sheep. Brett Bannor explains how sheep have significantly impacted the broader growth and development of the United States. The history of America’s sheep encompasses topics that touch on many cornerstones of the American experience, such as enslavement, warfare, western expansion, industrialization, taxation, feminism, conservation, and labor relations, among others.


Mountain Sheep of North America

Mountain Sheep of North America

Author: Raul Valdez

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2021-11-09

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0816547122

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Mountain sheep epitomize wilderness for many people because they occupy some of the most inaccessible and rugged habitats known to man, from desert crags to alpine mountains. But of all hoofed mammals in North America, wild sheep present the greatest management problems to biologists. This book is a major reference on the natural history, ecology, and management of wild sheep in North America. Written by wildlife biologists who have devoted years of study to the animals, it covers Dall's and Stone's sheep and Rocky Mountain, California, and desert bighorn and examines a variety of factors pertinent to their life histories: habitat, diet, activity, social organization, reproduction, and population dynamics. Additional chapters consider distribution and abundance, adaptive strategies, and management guidelines. Discussions on diseases of wild sheep present a wealth of information that will be of particular use to wildlife biologists, including detailed clinical descriptions of conditions that threaten sheep populations, from pasteurellosis to capture myopathy. An appendix reviews the cytogenetics and genetics of wild sheep. North American wild sheep may face extinction in many areas unless critical questions concerning their management are answered soon. Prior to the publication of this book, there was no single reference available in which one could find such a synthesis of information. Mountain Sheep of North America provides that source and points toward the preservation of these magnificent wild creatures.


Historical Atlas of the American West

Historical Atlas of the American West

Author: Warren A. Beck

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 0806124563

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The 78 maps in this atlas add significant information to the study of the development of the American West, Defined for this resources as those 17 continental states west of the Missouri River. The maps range in chronology from explorations in the sixteenth century to the location of World War II prisoner of war and Japanese internment camps. The atlas includes maps of geographic, flora and fauna data. Maps are on the left pages and narratives about the maps re on the facing pages. Maps are black and white clear and easily read. An Appendix shows Spanish-Mexican land grants, and there is an index. This is an excellent atlas for both middle and high schools. Includes a section on Arkansas aboriginal setting and Native American tribes. Describes European contacts and settlements.


America's Ancient Forests

America's Ancient Forests

Author: Thomas M. Bonnicksen

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2000-02-07

Total Pages: 614

ISBN-13: 9780471136224

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At the time of European discovery, the ancient North Americanforests stretched across nearly half the continent. And while todaylittle remains of this past glory, efforts are underway to bringback some of the diverse ecosystems of that era. America's AncientForests: From the Ice Age to the Age of Discovery providesscientists and professionals with essential information for forestrestoration and conservation projects, while presenting acompelling and far-reaching account of how the North Americanlandscape has evolved over the past 18,000 years. The book weaves historical accounts and scientific knowledge into adynamic narrative about the ancient forests and the events thatshaped them. Divided into two major parts, it covers first theglaciers and forests of the Ice Age and the influences of nativepeoples, and then provides an in-depth look at these majesticforests through the eyes of the first European explorers. Changesin climate and elevation, the movement of trees northward, theassembly of modern forests, and qualities that all ancient forestsshared are also thoroughly examined. A special feature of this book is its self-contained introductionto the early history of Native American peoples and theirenvironment. The author draws on his roots in the Osage nation aswell as painstaking research through the historical record,offering a complete discussion of how the cultural practices ofhunting, agriculture, and fire helped form the ancient forests.


The Woolly West

The Woolly West

Author: Andrew Gulliford

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2018-06-13

Total Pages: 594

ISBN-13: 1623496535

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Winner, 2019 National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Western Heritage Award for the Best Nonfiction Book Winner, 2019 Colorado Book Awards History Category, sponsored by Colorado Center for the Book In The Woolly West, historian Andrew Gulliford describes the sheep industry’s place in the history of Colorado and the American West. Tales of cowboys and cattlemen dominate western history—and even more so in popular culture. But in the competition for grazing lands, the sheep industry was as integral to the history of the American West as any trail drive. With vivid, elegant, and reflective prose, Gulliford explores the origins of sheep grazing in the region, the often-violent conflicts between the sheep and cattle industries, the creation of national forests, and ultimately the segmenting of grazing allotments with the passage of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. Deeper into the twentieth century, Gulliford grapples with the challenges of ecological change and the politics of immigrant labor. And in the present day, as the public lands of the West are increasingly used for recreation, conflicts between hikers and dogs guarding flocks are again putting the sheep industry on the defensive. Between each chapter, Gulliford weaves an account of his personal interaction with what he calls the “sheepscape”—that is, the sheepherders’ landscape itself. Here he visits with Peruvian immigrant herders and Mormon families who have grazed sheep for generations, explores delicately balanced stone cairns assembled by shepherds now long gone, and ponders the meaning of arborglyphs carved into unending aspen forests. The Woolly West is the first book in decades devoted to the sheep industry and breaks new ground in the history of the Colorado Basque, Greek, and Hispano shepherding families whose ranching legacies continue to the present day.


American Beasts

American Beasts

Author: Roman Bartosch

Publisher: Neofelis Verlag

Published: 2017-01-18

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 3958081002

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In American history, animals are everywhere. They are a ubiquitous presence in myriad historical, literary, biographical, scientific and other documents and narratives of the American past – a past that, just like the present, was shaped by a multiplicity of relations between humans and other creatures ranging from coexistence and conviviality to hostility, subjugation and extermination. While such quintessentially American species as the bison, the mustang or the grizzly continue to roam the discursive, imaginary and, now to a much lesser degree, the geographical spaces of the nation, the less iconic creatures of civilization – the various species of domesticated working and companion animals – have arguably played an even more critical role in the genesis of modern American culture and society throughout the 'long nineteenth century.' Until recently, however, despite their ubiquity in historical documents, social relations and cultural productions, animals have rarely been of serious interest to mainstream historians. American Beasts argues that an adequate understanding of American history, and indeed of 'human' history more broadly, requires a sustained engagement with its multifaceted more-than-human dimensions. The contributions collected here offer various insights into the broad relevance of animality and human-animal relations – from the culture of pet-keeping and the role of animals and animality in the context of slavery and abolition to the emergence of animal athletes at the turn of the twentieth century – as aspects that have always influenced all areas of American society. In addition, by highlighting the ways in which human-animal relations crucially shaped the relations (of power) between different groups of humans, American Beasts shows that a stronger concern with animals and animality also allows us to address the complex intersections between the history of human-animal relations and the histories of (for example) race, class and gender in the United States in the time from the early national period to the Progressive Era.