The Capital that Couldn't Stay Put
Author: June Oxford
Publisher:
Published: 1983
Total Pages: 112
ISBN-13:
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American Capitals
Author: Christian Montès
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2014-01-10
Total Pages: 405
ISBN-13: 022608051X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKState capitals are an indelible part of the American psyche, spatial representations of state power and national identity. Learning them by heart is a rite of passage in grade school, a pedagogical exercise that emphasizes the importance of committing place-names to memory. But geographers have yet to analyze state capitals in any depth. In American Capitals, Christian Montès takes us on a well-researched journey across America—from Augusta to Sacramento, Albany to Baton Rouge—shedding light along the way on the historical circumstances that led to their appointment, their success or failure, and their evolution over time. While all state capitals have a number of characteristics in common—as symbols of the state, as embodiments of political power and decision making, as public spaces with private interests—Montès does not interpret them through a single lens, in large part because of the differences in their spatial and historical evolutionary patterns. Some have remained small, while others have evolved into bustling metropolises, and Montès explores the dynamics of change and growth. All but eleven state capitals were established in the nineteenth century, thirty-five before 1861, but, rather astonishingly, only eight of the fifty states have maintained their original capitals. Despite their revered status as the most monumental and historical cities in America, capitals come from surprisingly humble beginnings, often plagued by instability, conflict, hostility, and corruption. Montès reminds us of the period in which they came about, “an era of pioneer and idealized territorial vision,” coupled with a still-evolving American citizenry and democracy.
Rooted in Barbarous Soil
Author: Kevin Starr
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2000-10-04
Total Pages: 384
ISBN-13: 0520224965
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe third in a four-volume series commemorating California's sesquicentennial, this volume brings together the best of the new scholarship on the social and cultural history of the Gold Rush, written in an accessible style and generously illustrated with with black and white and color photographs.
Sacramento's Capitol Park
Author: John E. Allen
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 129
ISBN-13: 0738596884
DOWNLOAD EBOOKConstruction on the California State Capitol began during the Civil War using stone, brick, and iron, showing confidence in the future. The capitol building showed that California had come a long way from the days of its transient, chaotic roots, born of the Gold Rush. Once the capitol was located in Sacramento in 1854, there was still no guarantee that the city would remain its permanent home. When it was completed in 1873, it was the largest structure of its day west of the Mississippi River. Its presence has continued to not only dominate the Sacramento landscape for a century and a half but has also come to shape the very outlook and future of Sacramento and of California itself. The state capitol and its majestic dome have become the iconic symbol of the city.
Religions and Missionaries Around the Pacific, 1500-1900
Author: Tanya Storch
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 464
ISBN-13: 9780754606673
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume takes an interdisciplinary approach to the study of religious cultural exchanges around the Pacific in the period 1500-1900, relating these to economic and political developments and to the expansion of communication across the area. It brings together twenty-two pieces, from diaries of religious exiles and missionary field observations, to studies from a variety of academic disciplines, so enabling a multitude of voices to be heard. The articles are grouped in sections dealing with the Islamic period, the Iberian Catholic period, the Jewish diaspora, the Russian Orthodox church, the epoch of Protestant culture and finally Asian immigrant religions in the West; a substantial introduction contextualizes these chapters in terms of both historical and contemporary approaches.
Sacramento and the Catholic Church
Author: Steven Avella
Publisher: University of Nevada Press
Published: 2008-08-22
Total Pages: 318
ISBN-13: 0874177669
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis work examines the interplay between the city of Sacramento and the Catholic Church since the 1850s. Avella uses Sacramento as a case study of the role of religious denominations in the development of the American West. In Sacramento, as in other western urban areas, churches brought civility and various cultural amenities, and they helped to create an atmosphere of stability so important to creating a viable urban community. At the same time, churches often had to shape themselves to the secularizing tendencies of western cities while trying to remain faithful to their core values and practices. Besides the numerous institutions that the Church sponsored, it brought together a wide spectrum of the city’s diverse ethnic populations and offered them several routes to assimilation. Catholic Sacramentans have always played an active role in government and in the city’s economy, and Catholic institutions provided a matrix for the creation of new communities as the city spread into neighboring suburbs. At the same time, the Church was forced to adapt itself to the needs and demands of its various ethnic constituents, particularly the flood of Spanish-speaking newcomers in the late twentieth century.
G is for Golden
Author: David Domeniconi
Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press
Published: 2010-10-01
Total Pages: 42
ISBN-13: 1585366943
DOWNLOAD EBOOKColumnist David Domeniconi has researched close-to-home topics for his new book, G is for Golden: A California Alphabet. This is David's first children's book and it contains 40 pages of entertaining and educational facts about California. David captures California on so many fronts - its natural history, social sciences, inventors, and even its forty-niners. On the T is for Television page, the reader discovers Philo Farnsworth, a 21-year-old farmer who gleaned the idea to transmit the world's first television picture by looking at the patterns in the rows he had plowed in his field. Another California first was the creation of the United Nations Charter, signed by representatives of 50 countries at the San Francisco Opera House in 1945. Readers of G is for Golden also learn about the world's largest find of Ice Age fossils at the La Brea Tar Pits, the 21 missions that line El Camino Real, Cesar Chavez's vision, and Rodia's Watts Towers. The series employs a two-tiered approach to reach all students from Pre-K through 4th grade. A rhyme for each letter of the alphabet captures the attention of younger readers, while older students read the expository text on the same page and gain a richer understanding of the topic. About the Author: David Domeniconi is a third generation San Franciscan. He graduated from San Francisco State College with a degree in Anthropology, and studied creative writing at San Francisco State College. His illustrated travel column, "Travelog," is a regular feature in the Santa Barbara News Press. About the Illustrator: California native Pam Carroll was a finalist in Artist's Magazine's Still Life category for the past two years. Her distinct style of realism and appealing use of light creates an enchanting visual experience for children. G is for Golden is Pam's fourth children's book with Sleeping Bear Press.
The Chernagor Pirates
Author: Harry Turtledove
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-12-15
Total Pages: 475
ISBN-13: 1504027477
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOnly a long-lost talisman can save a besieged kingdom torn between two kings, as a malevolent god marshals his minions to attack, corrupt, and destroy Two lieges—King Lanius, who is of royal blood, and King Grus, the usurper—now share the throne of Avornis. The former wields no real power, kept impotent by the regents surrounding him. The latter mans the battle lines, determined to protect the kingdom from a fearsome, immortal god who was expelled from heaven. To the north, the city-state Chernagor is being torn asunder by a savage civil war that threatens to spill past the border at any moment. Catastrophe looms for Avornis and even two kings united may not be strong enough to save her. The kingdom’s final hope lies in the recovery of the Scepter of Mercy, lost for four centuries. But the mighty talisman is in the hands of the Menteshe—barbarian nomads who are vassals of the terrible exiled god—and now that the Banished One wants to consume the entire world, they will never relinquish its power. The Scepter of Mercy, Harry Turtledove’s epic fantasy trilogy, continues with The Chernagor Pirates, the second volume in an adventure that pits man against man, and man against immortal. Originally penned under the pseudonym Dan Chernenko, it is an unforgettable tale that demonstrates the unparalleled creativity and unique storytelling prowess of the Hugo Award–winning master world-builder.
An Ordinary Youth
Author: Walter Kempowski
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: 2023-11-14
Total Pages: 518
ISBN-13: 1681377217
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn Ordinary Youth is a novel drawn directly from the author's boyhood in Nazi Germany. Nine-year-old Walter's family is moving house when the novel opens, but Walter's main concerns are his tin soldiers and his older brother’s jazz records, his father’s fluctuating moods, and his mother’s ministrations and anxieties. While Walter is absorbed by his private life, the extraordinary accumulation of contemporary idioms that accompany his point of view—dialogue, song, literary quotations, commercials, and political slogans—tell a different story. Through this echo chamber of voices, Kempowski shows a hugely turbulent and murderously intolerant nation racing toward disaster. An immediate bestseller when it was first published in Germany in 1971 (as Tadellöser & Wolff) and the best known of Kempowski's novels in Germany, An Ordinary Youth is now available in English for the first time.
Tallgrass
Author: Sandra Dallas
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2007-04-03
Total Pages: 340
ISBN-13: 1429917172
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn essential American novel from Sandra Dallas, an unparalleled writer of our history, and our deepest emotions... During World War II, a family finds life turned upside down when the government opens a Japanese internment camp in their small Colorado town. After a young girl is murdered, all eyes (and suspicions) turn to the newcomers, the interlopers, the strangers. This is Tallgrass as Rennie Stroud has never seen it before. She has just turned thirteen and, until this time, life has pretty much been what her father told her it should be: predictable and fair. But now the winds of change are coming and, with them, a shift in her perspective. And Rennie will discover secrets that can destroy even the most sacred things. Part thriller, part historical novel, Tallgrass is a riveting exploration of the darkest--and best--parts of the human heart.
