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Edited By G. Thomas Edwards And Carlos A. Schwantes ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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Edited by G. Thomas Edwards and Carlos A. Schwantes Experiences in a Promised Land: Essays in Pacific Northwest History
University of Washington Press 1986 029596328X / 9780295963280 cloth 416 pages, bibliog
The Pacific Northwest, like many other regions of the United States, has been touted as the Promised Land. As early as the 1830s, "Oregon fever" brought missionaries, promoters, speculators, politicians, and settlers to the nation's far West. Spared the ravages of the Civil War and the scars of rapid northern industrialization, the region continued to offer Golden Opportunity. Its promise encompassed the bounties of sea and land, a mild and healthful climate, and an unusually homogeneous population.
Practically since the turn of the century, the Northwest has been a region of paradoxes. Women, who in Washington had acquired suffrage and lost it in the 1880s, regained it and later elected a woman mayor of Seattle. Exploitation of workers, despite, or perhaps because of, abundance has been extreme - and has engendered some of America's most radical labor movements. Both racial backlash and enlightened reforms characterize the region.
Until now, no single-volume history has taken up the modern issues of women, minorities, radicalism and environment. The editors of "Experiences in the Promised Land," G. Thomas Edwards and Carlos Schwantes, themselves teachers and writers of Northwest history, have carefully compiled a selection of essays that treats the full scope of the region's history, with a special emphasis on 20th century topics. They have gathered together the best of recent scholarship: the work of regional authorities as well as contributions by some of the most promising of the new generation of scholars.
A variety of writing styles and approaches, subjects ranging from individual biographies to studies of broad policies and movements, a chronological organization enhanced by concise, insightful chapter commentaries, and an extensive bibliography make this volume indispensable for teachers, students, and the general reader of Northwest history.
Price:
35.00 USD
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Carlos A. Schwantes Railroad Signatures across the Pacific Northwest
University Press of Washington 1993 0-295-97535-0 / 9780295975351 paperback 360 pages, 245 illus., 36 in color, tables, notes, bibliog., index
Remembering the trains that ran by his boyhood home, Carlos Schwantes says, "Never once did it occur to me to ponder whether we lived on the right or wrong side of the tracks. I only felt fortunate to have a front-row seat." Out of his lifelong fascination, blended with a historian's insight, he has fashioned a pathbreaking photohistory that shows the impact of the railroads on everyday life in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana.
The desert expanses were so great and the forests so dense in the Pacific Northwest that until the railroads scrawled their signatures across the land, it was doomed to remain an array of scattered, isolated settlements. But with the arrival of the twin ribbons of steel came enormous and lasting social and economic changes. Farmers in the Palouse had access to eastern markets for their grain; larger quantities of logs and ore arrived at distant mills and smelters; Willamette Valley fruit growers and orchardists found new consumers; Mount Rainier, Glacier National Park, Crater Lake, and Idaho's scenic spots became destinations for eager tourists; cities had links to the East. Railroad Signatures across the Pacific Northwest describes how the railroads fostered settlement, promoted tourism and economic growth, and helped to create the region's character.
Carlos Schwantes chronicles the complex and sometimes stormy history of the major railroads-the Northern Pacific, the Great Northern, the Union Pacific, and the Milwaukee-and also shows the role of smaller railroads such as the Sumpter Valley and the Idaho and Washington Northern. He includes portraits of the railroad titans-Henry Villard, James J. Hill, and E. H. Harriman-whose egos, ambitions, and competitiveness shaped the railroads that in turn shaped the region. The engaging and authoritative text and illustrations bring to life the experiences of both railroad passengers and workers.
The book includes more than 200 photographs, most previously unpublished, that document the trains, towns, people, and landscape of the Northwest. The exuberant posters and brochures that the railroads published in order to lure settlers and tourists to the region are reproduced in color.
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"Railroad Signatures across the Pacific Northwest is a masterful combination of social, cultural, intellectual, and business history, an examination of the life and times of the railroad, not just its construction and operation. I expected ties and spikes and locomotives and watered stock, and got, in addition, a wonderful parade of how the railroad actually reached into the life of the Northwest, molded its communities and its citizens, and forever changed and shaped our images of the region."-Alfred Runte, author of Trains of Discovery: Western Railroads and the National Parks
Table of Contents
Price:
40.00 USD
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