Growing up on Main Street is my memoir beginning with my earliest memories when I was five years old. In addition, in two other sections I tried to capture the emotional and tragic time when my grandfather and aunt died two months apart. The third section is the illustrious story of my maternal grandmother and her siblings who remain on property where they were born and grew up for the rest of their lives
Carol Milford dreams of living in a small, rural town. But Gopher Prairie, Minnesota, isn't the paradise she'd imagined. First published in 1920, this unabridged edition of the Sinclair Lewis novel is an American classic, considered by many to be his most noteworthy and lasting work. As a work of social satire, this complex and compelling look at small-town America in the early 20th century has earned its place among the classics.
After a big fight, sisters Flora and Ruby must come together in this stirring installment of Main StreetFlora and Ruby have always gotten along as sisters, but now they're coming apart. They're starting to fight all the time and nobody -- not their friends, not their grandmother -- knows what to do. It's all a part of growing up, but it's not an easy part. And Flora and Ruby are going to have to learn how to stay together... with a little help from their friends.
"Schwieder tells the story of this small town in the West River country, with its harsh and unpredictable physical environment, through the activities of her father, Walter Hubbard, and his family of ten children. Walter Hubbard's experiences as a business owner and town builder and his attitudes toward work, education, and family both reflected and shaped the lives of Presho's inhabitants and the town itself.".
You can leave Belvedere and Tiburon, but Belvedere-Tiburon never leaves you. Paige Peterson discovered that when she moved to New York City. For many years now, she has visited Belvedere, where she stays with her mother in the house her grandfather built on the Belvedere Lagoon.Paige and her sister packed sandwiches in paper bags and rode off on their bikes to explore the Tiburon Peninsula. Swimming, sailing, hiking, clamming, daredevil bike riding-their day was a long, unsupervised adventure. There was no interaction with parents until the Tiburon Fire Department blew the 4:30 whistle, signaling that it was time to head home. Her family's photographs confirm the story of fit, sun-kissed kids enjoying a charmed, idyllic childhood.Dave Gotz, the Archivist for the Belvedere-Tiburon Landmarks Society, deepens that personal story with archival photographs. His captions reveal his extensive knowledge of Tiburon Peninsula history: Mexican Ranchos, Portuguese dairymen, the many changes on Beach Road, Main Street, the Lagoon and the Cove, the importance of the railroad.Along the way, Paige and Dave showcase some of the area's remarkable characters. Tiburon's "Goat Lady," who so loved nature that she donated her land for open space. Blackie the horse. The artists who lived on West Shore and created a bohemian colony. And the residents of Belvedere and Tiburon who, again and again, rallied to protect open land and the special charm of their towns.Taken together, Paige's cinematic stories and Paige and Dave's curated images and capsule histories deliver an authoritative portrait of a historically diverse community.
For more than a century, the term "Main Street" has conjured up nostalgic images of American small-town life. Representations exist all around us, from fiction and film to the architecture of shopping malls and Disneyland. All the while, the nation has become increasingly diverse, exposing tensions within this ideal. In The Death and Life of Main Street, Miles Orvell wrestles with the mythic allure of the small town in all its forms, illustrating how Americans continue to reinscribe these images on real places in order to forge consensus about inclusion and civic identity, especially in times of crisis. Orvell underscores the fact that Main Street was never what it seemed; it has always been much more complex than it appears, as he shows in his discussions of figures like Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Frank Capra, Thornton Wilder, Margaret Bourke-White, and Walker Evans. He argues that translating the overly tidy cultural metaphor into real spaces--as has been done in recent decades, especially in the new urbanist planned communities of Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany--actually diminishes the communitarian ideals at the center of this nostalgic construct. Orvell investigates the way these tensions play out in a variety of cultural realms and explores the rise of literary and artistic traditions that deliberately challenge the tropes and assumptions of small-town ideology and life.
Mindy Thompson Fullilove traverses the central thoroughfares of our cities to uncover the ways they bring together our communities After an 11-year study of Main Streets in 178 cities and 14 countries, Fullilove discovered the power of city centers to “help us name and solve our problems.” In an era of compounding crises including racial injustice, climate change, and COVID-19, the ability to rely on the power of community is more important than ever. However, Fullilove describes how a pattern of disinvestment in inner-city neighborhoods has left Main Streets across the U.S. in disrepair, weakening our cities and leaving us vulnerable to catastrophe. In the face of urban renewal programs built in response to a supposed lack of “personal responsibility,” Fullilove offers “a different story, that of a series of forced displacements that had devastating effects on inner-city communities. Through that lens, we can appreciate the strength of segregated communities that managed to temper the ravages of racism through the Jim Crow era, and build political power and many kinds of wealth. . . . Only a very well-integrated, powerful community—one with deep spiritual principles—could have accomplished such a feat.” This is the power she hopes we will find again. Throughout Main Street, readers glimpse strong, vibrant communities who have conquered a variety of disasters, from the near loss of a beloved local business to the devastation of a hurricane. Using case studies to illustrate her findings, Fullilove turns our eyes to the cracks in city centers, the parts of the city that tend to be avoided or ignored. Providing a framework for those who wish to see their communities revitalized, Fullilove’s Main Street encourages us all to look both inward and outward to find the assets that already exist to create meaningful change.
The Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir about coming of age in America between the world wars: “So warm, so likable and so disarmingly funny” (The New York Times). One of the New York Times’ “50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years” Ranging from the backwoods of Virginia to a New Jersey commuter town to the city of Baltimore, this remarkable memoir recounts Russell Baker’s experience of growing up in pre–World War II America, before he went on to a celebrated career in journalism. With poignant, humorous tales of powerful love, awkward sex, and courage in the face of adversity, Baker reveals how he helped his mother and family through the Great Depression by delivering papers and hustling subscriptions to the Saturday Evening Post—a job which introduced him to bullies, mentors, and heroes who endured this national disaster with hard work and good cheer. Called “a treasure” by Anne Tyler and “a blessing” by Time magazine, this autobiography is a modern-day classic—“a wondrous book [with scenes] as funny and touching as Mark Twain’s” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). “In lovely, haunting prose, he has told a story that is deeply in the American grain.” —The Washington Post Book World “A terrific book.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Should teenagers have jobs while they're in high school? Doesn't working distract them from schoolwork, cause long-term problem behaviors, and precipitate a precocious transition to adulthood? This report from a remarkable longitudinal study of 1,000 students, followed from the beginning of high school through their mid-twenties, answers, resoundingly, no. Examining a broad range of teenagers, Jeylan Mortimer concludes that high school students who work even as much as half-time are in fact better off in many ways than students who don't have jobs at all. Having part-time jobs can increase confidence and time management skills, promote vocational exploration, and enhance subsequent academic success. The wider social circle of adults they meet through their jobs can also buffer strains at home, and some of what young people learn on the job--not least responsibility and confidence--gives them an advantage in later work life.
In this unusual blend of chronological and personal history, Dorothy Hubbard Schwieder combines scholarly sources with family memories to create a loving and informed history of Presho, South Dakota, and her family's life there from the time of settlement in 1905 to the mid 1950s. Schwieder tells the story of this small town in the West River country, with its harsh and unpredictable physical environment, through the activities of her father, Walter Hubbard, and his family of ten children. Walter Hubbard’s experiences as a business owner and town builder and his attitudes toward work, education, and family both reflected and shaped the lives of Presho's inhabitants and the town itself. While most histories of the Plains focus on farm life, Schwieder writes entirely about small-town society. She uses newspaper accounts, state and county histories, census data, interviews with residents, and the childhood memories of herself and her nine siblings to create an entwined, first-hand social and economic portrait of life on main street from the perspective of its citizens.
