COLLEEN RYAN gives the definitive account of the fate of Fairfax. It is the story of greedy media moguls, angry and ambitious politicians, foolhardy heirs and heiresses, zealous journalists, muddling management and the rise of digital media. The once-mighty Fairfax has been a victim of them all. A drama-filled saga that reveals how far Fairfax has fallen.
Fairfax is surrounded by oak-draped glens that have enchanted many, including its early owner and namesake, Lord Charles Snowden Fairfax. The hereditary baron, whose family once owned much of Virginia, entertained guests in grand Southern style on his lovely estate known as Bird's Nest Glen. Later the home became Pastori's, the beloved local landmark hotel and restaurant visited by famous guests like Irving Berlin, who once serenaded diners from a piano perched on a tree house. The 1906 earthquake chased refugees from San Francisco across the bay, and new Fairfax subdivisions appeared, along with the Fairfax Incline Railway, built to help sell hillside lots. In the same era, its meadows, hay fields, and dairy ranches provided the setting for early silent movie Westerns. Today Bird's Nest Glen is known as the Marin Town and Country Club property, and the city boasts a thriving business district and prosperous residential areas. But it has never lost its rustic charm and hospitality.
Born to Rule is the unauthorised biography that unravels the many layers of the man who has just become the 29th Prime Minister of Australia. The highs and lows of Malcolm Turnbull's remarkable career are documented here in technicolour detail by journalist Paddy Manning. Based on countless interviews and painstaking research, it is a forensic investigation into one of Australia's most celebrated overachievers. Turnbull's relentless energy and quest for achievement have taken him from exclusive Point Piper to Oxford University; from beating the Thatcher government in the Spycatcher trial to losing the referendum on the republic; from defending the late Kerry Packer—codenamed Goanna—in the Costigan Royal Commission to defending his own role in the failure of HIH, Australia's biggest corporate collapse. He was involved in the unravelling of the Tourang bid for Fairfax, struck it rich as co-founder of OzEmail, and fought his own hotly contested battle for Wentworth. As opposition leader he was duped by Godwin Grech's 'Utegate' fiasco; as the most tech-savvy communications minister he oversaw a nobbled NBN scheme. And now he has assumed the leadership of the Liberal Party for the second time after wresting the prime ministership from first-term PM Tony Abbott. Will Turnbull crash and burn as he has before or has his entire tumultuous life been a rehearsal for this moment?
Preeminent Civil War historian Frank Vandiver always longed to see an interpretive biography of Jefferson Davis. Finally, more than twenty years after Vandiver expressed that wish, publication of Jefferson Davis, Unconquerable Heart makes such an interpretive biography available. Felicity Allen begins this monumental work with Davis's political imprisonment at the end of the Civil War and masterfully flashes back to his earlier life, interweaving Davis's private life as a schoolboy, a Mississippi planter, a husband, a father, and a political leader. She follows him from West Point through army service on the frontier, his election to the U.S. House of Representatives, his regimental command in the Mexican War, his service as U.S. secretary of war and senator, and his term as president of the Confederate States of America. Although Davis's family is the nexus of this biography, friends and enemies also play major roles. Among his friends intimately met in this book are such stellar figures as Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Albert Sidney Johnston, and Robert E. Lee. With the use of contemporary accounts and Davis's own correspondence, Jefferson Davis, Unconquerable Heart casts new light upon this remarkable man, thawing the icy image of Davis in many previous accounts. Felicity Allen shows a strong, yet gentle man; a stern soldier who loved horses, guns, poetry, and children; a master of the English language, with a dry wit; a man of powerful feelings who held them in such tight control that he was considered cold; and a home-loving Mississippian who was drawn into a vortex of national events and eventual catastrophe. At all times, "duty, honor, country" ruled his mind. Davis's Christian view of life runs like a thread throughout the book, binding together his devotion to God, his family, and the land. Jefferson Davis, Unconquerable Heart brings Davis to life in a way that has never been done before. The variety of his experience, the breadth of his learning, and the consistency of his beliefs make this historical figure eminently worth knowing.
Despite the fact that more than one-half of the students in the United States are educated in suburban schools, relatively little is known about the development of suburban school systems. Education Empire chronicles the evolution of Virginia's Fairfax County public schools, the twelfth largest school system in the country and arguably one of the very best. The book focuses on how Fairfax has addressed a variety of challenges, beginning with explosive enrollment growth in the 1950s and continuing with desegregation, enrollment decline, economic uncertainty, demands for special programs, and intense politicization. Today, Fairfax, like many suburbs across the country, looks increasingly like an urban school system, with rising poverty, large numbers of recent immigrants, and constant pressure from an assortment of special interest groups. While many school systems facing similar developments have experienced a drop in performance, Fairfax students continue to raise their achievement. Daniel L. Duke reveals the keys to Fairfax's remarkable track record.
From January to July of 1862, the armies and navies of the Union and Confederacy conducted an incredibly complex and remarkably diverse range of operations in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Under the direction of leaders like Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, George McClellan, Joseph E. Johnston, John Rodgers, Robert E. Lee, Franklin Buchanan, Irvin McDowell, and Louis M. Goldsborough, men of the Union and Confederate armed forces marched over mountains and through shallow valleys, maneuvered on and along great tidal rivers, bridged and waded their tributaries, battled malarial swamps, dug trenches and constructed fortifications, and advanced and retreated in search of operational and tactical advantage. In the course of these operations, the North demonstrated it had learned quite a bit from its setbacks of 1861 and was able to achieve significant operational and tactical success on both land and sea. This enabled Union arms to bring a considerable portion of Virginia under Federal control—in some cases temporarily and in others permanently. Indeed, at points during the spring and early summer of 1862, it appeared the North just might succeed in bringing about the defeat of the rebellion before the year was out. A sweeping study of the operations on land and sea, From the Mountains to the Bay is the only modern scholarly work that looks at the operations that took place in Virginia in early 1862, from the Romney Campaign that opened the year to the naval engagement between the Monitor and Merrimac to the movements and engagements fought by Union and Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley, on the York-James Peninsula, and in northern Virginia, as a single, comprehensive campaign. Rafuse draws from extensive research in primary sources to provide a fast-paced, complete account of operations throughout Virginia, while also incorporating findings of recent scholarship on the factors that shaped these campaigns. The work provides invaluable insights into the factors and individuals who shaped these operations, how they influenced the course of the war, the relationships between political leaders and men in uniform, and how all these factors affected the development and execution of strategy, operations, and tactics.
In The Environment and the People in American Cities, Dorceta E. Taylor provides an in-depth examination of the development of urban environments, and urban environmentalism, in the United States. Taylor focuses on the evolution of the city, the emergence of elite reformers, the framing of environmental problems, and the perceptions of and responses to breakdowns in social order, from the seventeenth century through the twentieth. She demonstrates how social inequalities repeatedly informed the adjudication of questions related to health, safety, and land access and use. While many accounts of environmental history begin and end with wildlife and wilderness, Taylor shows that the city offers important clues to understanding the evolution of American environmental activism. Taylor traces the progression of several major thrusts in urban environmental activism, including the alleviation of poverty; sanitary reform and public health; safe, affordable, and adequate housing; parks, playgrounds, and open space; occupational health and safety; consumer protection (food and product safety); and land use and urban planning. At the same time, she presents a historical analysis of the ways race, class, and gender shaped experiences and perceptions of the environment as well as environmental activism and the construction of environmental discourses. Throughout her analysis, Taylor illuminates connections between the social and environmental conflicts of the past and those of the present. She describes the displacement of people of color for the production of natural open space for the white and wealthy, the close proximity between garbage and communities of color in early America, the cozy relationship between middle-class environmentalists and the business community, and the continuous resistance against environmental inequalities on the part of ordinary residents from marginal communities.
The saga continues with Dr. Burel's children moving west. His son James led the Mississippi-bound wagons from South Carolina into another untamed frontier. Their first Christmas in Attalaville, Mississippi, was a grand celebration of their newfound life, only to have the New Year bring tragedy. Mississippi's Golden Years brought prosperity to the pioneers as landowners and independent farmers. Too soon the Civil War swept across their land leaving King Cotton reeling and survivors coping with shattered lives. Sympathetic eyes of the world watched as they searched for ways to survive the aftermath of total war. Lisbeth Burel struggled with the heartbreak of losing the war, her husband James, and her youngest son. Bracing to survive post-war defeat and economic ruination, Lisbeth and her oldest son learned to cope with the nagging pain and hatred of a useless war. With the burden of the world on William Riley's back, he turned to God and self-reliance to get them through the bleak future. Recovery was slow, and families joined hands to plant new fields of cotton, corn, and sorghum cane. Thirty years of worry and hard work turned William into an old, sick man long before his time. On a cold October morning, the stooped and frail man shuffled toward the sugarcane mill and furnace. Assuring the old family recipe and tradition continued, he taught his grandson how to cook molasses to be as smooth as silk. A couple months later William's family celebrated the biggest Christmas since the war. Sadly, two days later the celebration was marred as his thirteen proud children mourned the loss of their Pa. After the war, William Riley took great pain to instill the belief that they, and their kind, were the moral fiber offering the best hope for rebuilding the New South. And they were.
