"In June 1854, to celebrate completion of the first railroad to reach the Mississippi River, the owners of the Chicago & Rock Island invited hundreds of shareholders, bondholders, notables, and fashionables to travel by rail to Rock Island, Illinois, and from there by steamboat to St. Anthony Falls in fledgling Minnesota ... Relying largely on the excursionists' own accounts of the roundtrip journey, Steven Keillor's portrait of a week in the lives of this microcosm of antebellum society captures the prevailing sectionalism, the railroad-driven economy, reform movements, the ongoing literary renaissance, westward expansion, the second-party system, the postmillennial optimism and pre-Darwinian religious fervor, the gradually changing notions of gender and class, and the romantic idealism of this period before realism." -- jacket.
In June 1854 the Grand Excursion celebrated in festive style the completion of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad to the Mississippi River. Hundreds of dignitaries including newspaper editors and other journalists; politicians; academics, writers and artists; business and industry leaders; and railroad officials were among those who traveled by rail from Chicago to Rock Island, Illinois, then by steamboat to St. Paul in Minnesota Territory. The travelers were shown a region undergoing rapid settlement by Europeans—an area of great natural beauty offering many promises for additional development. One hundred and fifty years later, the thirteen essays in this volume examine the activities and environments of the 1854 Grand Excursion and place them in the context of an evolving regional identity for the Upper Mississippi River Valley based on the economy, culture, geography, and history of the area. In a series of “excursions,” the contributors explore the building of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, eastern newspaper accounts of the 1854 excursion, steamboating, the area’s pictorial landscape, passenger trains along the scenic river, the genesis and features of river towns, the control of the river for navigation, the development of preserves, parks, and recreation areas, the lumber industry, and commercial fishing. The book concludes by examining the resurgence of river-oriented development, as river towns are once again embracing the Mississippi. Generously illustrated with maps, engravings, ephemera, and historic and present-day photographs, Grand Excursions on the Upper Mississippi River will be of interest to tourists and residents of the area, river aficionados, railroad and steamboat history buffs, as well as academics interested in the history, geography, and regional development of the area.
A gripping novel about a seemingly charmed marriage and a mysterious disappearance at sea In 1905, a tourist agent and amateur antiques collector named Armand de Potter mysteriously disappeared off the coast of Greece. His body is never recovered and his wife is left to manage his affairs on her own. But as she starts to piece together his life, she realizes that everything was not as he had said. Infused with details from letters and diary entries, the narrative twists forward and backward through time, revealing a lost world of fake identities, underground antiques networks, and a husband who wasn't what he seemed. Originally from Belgium, young Armand de Potter comes to New York without a penny in his pocket. With cunning ambition, he quickly makes a name for himself as both a worldwide travel guide and a trusted—if illegal—antiques dealer. After marrying, he moves the family to a luxurious villa in Cannes and embraces an aristocratic life. But as he grows increasingly entangled in the antiques trade and his touring business begins to falter, Armand's control starts to fray. As the world closes in, he believes he only has one option left. Told with masterful narrative agility, De Potter's Grand Tour is a tale as grand as the tour guide at its center. Drawing on real letters, legal documents, and a trove of diaries only recently discovered, Joanna Scott points delicately toward the story's historical basis and unfolds a detective tale of the highest order.
'Both moving and hilarious' Spectator, Books of the Year 'A tale of gloriously eccentric British pensioners. Aitken rivals Alan Bennett in the ear he has for an eavesdropped remark ... boy, can he write.' Daily Mail, Book of the Week FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE ACCLAIMED A CHIP SHOP IN POZNAN. One millennial, six coach trips, one big generation gap. When Ben Aitken learnt that his gran had enjoyed a four-night holiday including four three-course dinners, four cooked breakfasts, four games of bingo, a pair of excursions, sixteen pints of lager and luxury return coach travel, all for a hundred pounds, he thought, that's the life, and signed himself up. Six times over. Good value aside, what Ben was really after was the company of his elders - those with more chapters under their belt, with the wisdom granted by experience, the candour gifted by time, and the hard-earned ability to live each day like it's nearly their last. A series of coach holidays ensued - from Scarborough to St Ives, Killarney to Lake Como - during which Ben attempts to shake off his thirty-something blues by getting old as soon as possible.
A Unified Grand Tour of Theoretical Physics invites its readers to a guided exploration of the theoretical ideas that shape our contemporary understanding of the physical world at the fundamental level. Its central themes, comprising space-time geometry and the general relativistic account of gravity, quantum field theory and the gauge theories of
