BiblioVault - Books about Regional -

After the Wildfire

Ten Years of Recovery from the Willow Fire

John Alcock

University of Arizona Press, 2017

Swallowtail butterflies frolic on the wind. Vireos and rock wrens sing their hearts out by the recovering creek. Spiders and other predators chase their next meal. Through it all, John Alcock observes, records, and delights in what he sees. In a once-burnt area, life resurges. Plants whose seeds and roots withstood an intense fire become habitat for the returning creatures of the wild. After the Wildfire describes the remarkable recovery of wildlife in the Mazatzal Mountains in central Arizona.

It is the rare observer who has the dedication to revisit the site of a wildfire, especially over many years and seasons. But naturalist John Alcock returned again and again to the Mazatzals, where the disastrous Willow fire of 2004 burned 187 square miles. Documenting the fire’s aftermath over a decade, Alcock thrills at the renewal of the once-blackened region. Walking the South Fork of Deer Creek in all seasons as the years passed, he was rewarded by the sight of exuberant plant life that in turn fostered an equally satisfying return of animals ranging from small insects to large mammals.

Alcock clearly explains the response of chaparral plants to fire and the creatures that reinhabit these plants as they come back from a ferocious blaze: the great spreadwing damselfly, the western meadowlark, the elk, and birds and bugs of rich and colorful varieties. This book is at once a journey of biological discovery and a celebration of the ability of living things to reoccupy a devastated location. Alcock encourages others to engage the natural world—even one that has burnt to the ground.

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AIA Guide to Chicago

American Institute of Architects Chicago; Edited by Laurie McGovern Petersen

University of Illinois Press, 2022

Chicago’s architecture attracts visitors from around the globe. The fourth edition of the AIA Guide to Chicago is the best portable resource for exploring this most breathtaking and dynamic of cityscapes. The editors offer entries on new destinations like the Riverwalk, the St. Regis Chicago, and The 606 as well as updated descriptions of Willis Tower and other refreshed landmarks. Thirty-four maps and over 500 photos make it easy to find each of the almost 2000 featured sites. A special insert, new to this edition, showcases the variety of Chicago architecture with over 80 full-color images arranged chronologically. A comprehensive index organizes entries by name and architect.

Sumptuously detailed and user friendly, the AIA Guide to Chicago encourages travelers and residents alike to explore the many diverse neighborhoods of one of the world’s great architectural destinations.

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American Anti-Pastoral

Brookside, New Jersey and the Garden State of Philip Roth

Thomas Gustafson

Rutgers University Press, 2024

One of the best-known novels taking place in New Jersey, Philip Roth’s 1997 American Pastoral uses the fictional hamlet of Old Rimrock, NJ as a microcosm for a nation in crisis during the cultural upheavals of the 1960s-70s. Critics have called Old Rimrock mythic, but it is based on a very real place: the small Morris county town of Brookside, New Jersey.

American Anti-Pastoral reads the events in Roth’s novel in relation to the history of Brookside and its region. While Roth’s protagonist Seymour “Swede” Levov initially views Old Rimrock as an idyllic paradise within the Garden State, its real-world counterpart has a more complex past in its origins as a small industrial village, as well as a site for the politics of exclusionary zoning and a 1960s anti-war protest at its celebrated 4th of July parade. Literary historian and Brookside native Thomas Gustafson casts Roth’s canonical novel in a fresh light as he studies both Old Rimrock in comparison to Brookside and the novel in relationship to NJ literature, making a case for it as the Great New Jersey novel. For Roth fans and history buffs alike, American Anti-Pastoral peels back the myths about the bucolic Garden State countryside to reveal deep fissures along the fault-lines of race and religion in American democracy.

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American Mediterraneans

A Study in Geography, History, and Race

Susan Gillman

University of Chicago Press, 2022

The story of the “American Mediterranean,” both an idea and a shorthand popularized by geographers, historians, novelists, and travel writers from the early nineteenth century to the 1970s.

The naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, visiting the Gulf-Caribbean in the early nineteenth century, called it America’s Mediterranean. Almost a century later, Southern California was hailed as “Our Mediterranean, Our Italy!” Although “American Mediterranean” is not a household phrase in the United States today, it once circulated widely in French, Spanish, and English as a term of art and folk idiom. In this book, Susan Gillman asks what cultural work is done by this kind of unsystematic, open-ended comparative thinking.

American Mediterraneans tracks two centuries of this geohistorical concept, from Humboldt in the early 1800s, to writers of the 1890s reflecting on the Pacific world of the California coast, to writers of the 1930s and 40s speculating on the political past and future of the Caribbean. Following the term through its travels across disciplines and borders, American Mediterraneans reveals a little-known racialized history, one that paradoxically appealed to a range of race-neutral ideas and ideals.

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The Amphibians and Reptiles of Arkansas

Stanley Trauth

University of Arkansas Press, 2004

The product of fifteen years of work by top herpetologists, this book is a comprehensive examination of the amphibians and reptiles of Arkansas, featuring over 136 species and subspecies. With over five hundred four-color photos, line drawings, and over one hundred maps, this user-friendly book will become the definitive text on the subject.

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Appalachia Inside Out, Volume 1

Conflict andn Change

Robert J. Higgs

University of Tennessee Press, 1995

These two volumes constitute the most comprehensive anthology of writings on Appalachia ever assembled. Representing the work of approximately two hundred authors—fiction writers, poets, scholars in disciplines such as history, literary criticism, and sociology—Appalachia Inside Out reveals the fascinating diversity of the region and lays to rest many of the reductive stereotypes long associated with it.
Intended as a sequel to the widely respected collection Voices of the Hills published twenty years ago, these volumes reflect the recent proliferation of imaginative and critical writing about Appalachia—a proliferation that suggests nothing less than a renaissance of collective self-assessment. The selections are organized around a variety of themes (including "War and Revolution," "Feuds and Violence," "Nature and Progress," "Dialect and Language," "Exile, Return, and Sense of Place," and "Majority and Minority") and reveal both the radical changes the region has undergone as well as the persistence of certain defining features.
The title Appalachia Inside Out refers in part to the fact that Appalachia has never existed in timeless isolation from the rest of country and the world; rather, it has both absorbed outside influences and exerted influence of its own. The title also indicates the editors' effort to look not only at the visible Appalachia but at the forces that underlie its history and culture. What emerges in these pages is an Appalachia both familiar and strange: a mirror of lived life on the one hand and, on the other, a haunted realm of unimaginable loss and bewitching possibility.

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Appalachia Inside Out, Volume 2

Culture and Custom

Robert J. Higgs

University of Tennessee Press, 1995

The two volumes of Appalachia Inside Out constitute the most comprehensive anthology of writings on Appalachia ever assembled. Representing the work of approximately two hundred authors-fiction writers, poets, scholars in disciplines such as history, literary criticism, and sociology-Appalachia Inside Out reveals the fascinating diversity of the region and lays to rest many of the reductive stereotypes long associated with it.

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Architects of Little Rock

1833-1950

Charles Witsell

University of Arkansas Press, 2014

Architects of Little Rock provides biographical and historical sketches of the architects working in Little Rock from 1830 to 1950. Thirty-five architects are profiled, including George R. Mann, Thomas Harding, Charles L. Thompson, Max. F. Mayer, Edwin B. Cromwell, George H. Wittenberg, Lawson L. Delony, and others. Readers will learn who these influential professionals were, where they came from, where they were educated, how they lived, what their families were like, how they participated in the life of the city, and what their buildings contributed to the city. Famous buildings, including the Historic Arkansas Museum, the Old State House, the Arkansas State Capitol, St. Andrews Cathedral, Little Rock City Hall, the Pulaski County Court House, Little Rock Central High School, and Robinson Auditorium are showcased, bringing attention to and encouraging appreciation of the city’s historic buildings.

Published in collaboration with the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

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Architectural Missionary

D. Fred Charlton in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, 1887–1918

Steven C. Brisson

Michigan State University Press, 2021

The first and most prolific professional architect to reside permanently in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, D. Fred Charlton used the local Lake Superior sandstone to craft the distinctive style found in buildings throughout Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Born in England and trained there as a civil engineer, Charlton came to Detroit in the late 1870s, seeking work as a draftsman. Much like his peers of the time, he had no formal training as an architect and learned his trade by working at several prominent firms. The last, Scott & Company, sent him to Marquette in 1887 to open a branch office. Three years later, Charlton opened his own firm, and over the next twenty-eight years, he designed more than four hundred buildings, including residences, commercial structures, schools, courthouses, and churches throughout the region, which offer an invaluable insight into the tastes of Americans before the World War I and provide a unique vantage point for studying the evolution of the architectural profession. Deftly adapting national trends, he provided the communities of the Upper Peninsula with modern structures worthy of any place in the nation. Many of his buildings remain to this day, monuments to the skill of this English-born architect who made a place for himself upon the shores of Lake Superior. Anyone interested in architecture and in the history of the upper Midwest will find this read both fascinating and informative.

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The Architecture and Cities of Northern Mexico from Independence to the Present

By Edward R. Burian

University of Texas Press, 2015

The states of Northern Mexico—Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Durango, Sonora, Sinaloa, and Baja California Norte and Sur—have architecture, urbanism, and landscape design that offer numerous lessons in how to build well, but this constructed environment is largely undervalued or unknown. To make this architecture better known to a wide professional, academic, and public audience, this book presents the first comprehensive overview in either English or Spanish of the architecture, urban landscapes, and cities of Northern Mexico from the country’s emergence as a modern nation in 1821 to the present day.

Profusely illustrated with color and black-and-white photographs, maps, and analytical drawings of urban cores of major cities, The Architecture and Cities of Northern Mexico systematically examines significant works of architecture in large cities and small towns in each state, from the earliest buildings in the urban core to the newest at the periphery. Edward R. Burian describes the most memorable works of architecture in each city in greater detail in terms of their spatial organization, materials, and sensory experience. He also includes a concise geographical and historical summary of the region that provides a useful background for the discussions of the works of architecture. Burian concludes the book with a brief commentary on lessons learned and possible futures for the architectural culture of the region, as well as the first comprehensive biographical listing of the architects practicing in Northern Mexico during the past two centuries.

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Architecture in Salem

An Illustrated Guide

Bryant F. Tolles, Jr.

Brandeis University Press, 2023

The definitive guide to Salem’s architecture, now available in a new edition.

Salem, Massachusetts is home to one of the largest extant collections of historical architecture in the entire nation. In this long-awaited new edition, noted architectural historian Bryant F. Tolles, Jr., presents an illustrated guide and walking tour covering more than three centuries of building styles and types. The book discusses over 350 buildings and complexes, with individual entries and photographs of nearly 230 structures. The material has been arranged according to eight tour districts, each accompanied by an introduction and a map.

A joy for the avid walker and arm-chair enthusiast alike, this book is an essential guide to the architecture of Salem from the early seventeenth century through the Georgian, Federal, Victorian, modern, and contemporary periods. Updated with new maps; color illustrations; a preface by Lynda Roscoe Hartigen, executive director and CEO of the Peabody Essex Museum; and a foreword by Steven Mallory, manager of historic structures and landscapes at the Peabody Essex Museum.

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An Arkansas Florilegium

The Atlas of Botanist Edwin Smith Illustrated by Naturalist Kent Bonar

Edwin Smith

University of Arkansas Press, 2017

An Arkansas Florilegium is a late-flowering extension of the work initiated sixty years ago with University of Arkansas botanist Edwin B. Smith’s first entries in his pioneering Atlas and Annotated List of the Vascular Plants of Arkansas. Soon after this seminal survey of the state’s flora was published in 1978, Kent Bonar, a Missouri-born Thoreau acolyte employed as a naturalist by the Arkansas Park Service, began lugging the volume along on hikes through the woods surrounding his Newton County home, entering hundreds upon hundreds of meticulous illustrations into Smith’s work.

Thirty-five years later, with Smith retired and Bonar long gone from the park service but still drawing, Bonar’s weathered and battered copy of the atlas was seized by a diverse cadre of amateur admirers motivated by fears of its damage or loss. Their fears were certainly justified; after all, the pages were now jammed to the margins with some 3,500 drawings, and the volume had already survived one accidental dunking in an Ozark stream.

An Arkansas Florilegium brings Smith’s and Bonar’s knowledge and lifelong diligence to the world in this unique mix of art, science, and Arkansas saga.

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Arkansas Mammals

Their Natural History, Classification, and Distribution

John A. Sealander

University of Arkansas Press, 1990

Heavily illustrated with color photographs, Arkansas Mammals is the comprehensive guide to the state’s mammal population. Endangered or threatened species of mammals and missing species known to have been present in recent times are discussed, along with non-native species that have become an important part of the mammal fauna in Arkansas and adjacent states.

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Art in Red Wing

Lawrence Schmeckebier

University of Minnesota Press, 1946

Art in Red Wing was first published in 1946. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.What happens to the American small community in periods of war and challenge, change and uncertainty? In an age of planning, why not look at the community basis for planning?With these two questions as a basis, the University of Minnesota, in 1943, began one of the most exhaustive studies of an American community undertaken in recent times. Red Wing, Minnesota, on the banks of the Mississippi River in Goodhue County was chosen as the “typical small American city.”Professors of education, economics, sociology, art, home economics, journalism, and public health joined with city officials and civic leaders in studying every aspect of the city and its people. Their findings are published in eleven bulletins, each devoted to an individual topic. The entire survey, entitled The Community Basis for Postwar Planning, was coordinated by Roland S. Vaile, professor of economics and marketing at the University of Minnesota, and made possible by a grant from the Graduate School.The present study, Art in Red Wing, considers the public role of art and architecture in the reconstruction of the postwar Red Wing community; examining a variety of artistic expression including housing style, civic architecture, window displays, public sculpture, and pottery.

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Arts and Crafts Architecture

History and Heritage in New England

Maureen Meister

University Press of New England, 2014

This book offers the first full-scale examination of the architecture associated with the Arts and Crafts movement that spread throughout New England at the turn of the twentieth century. Although interest in the Arts and Crafts movement has grown since the 1970s, the literature on New England has focused on craft production. Meister traces the history of the movement from its origins in mid-nineteenth-century England to its arrival in the United States and describes how Boston architects including H. H. Richardson embraced its tenets in the 1870s and 1880s. She then turns to the next generation of designers, examining buildings by twelve of the region’s most prominent architects, eleven men and a woman, who assumed leadership roles in the Society of Arts and Crafts, founded in Boston in 1897. Among them are Ralph Adams Cram, Lois Lilley Howe, Charles Maginnis, and H. Langford Warren. They promoted designs based on historical precedent and the region’s heritage while encouraging well-executed ornament. Meister also discusses revered cultural personalities who influenced the architects, notably Ralph Waldo Emerson and art historian Charles Eliot Norton, as well as contemporaries who shared their concerns, such as Louis Brandeis. Conservative though the architects were in the styles they favored, they also were forward-looking, blending Arts and Crafts values with Progressive Era idealism. Open to new materials and building types, they made lasting contributions, with many of their designs now landmarks honored in cities and towns across New England.

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At Fault

A Scholarly Edition with Background Readings

Kate Chopin

University of Tennessee Press, 2001

Celebrated for her depictions of life among Louisiana’s Creole and Cajun peoples, Kate Chopin (1850–1904) is today seen as a major figure in southern literature. Her short stories and her last novel, The Awakening (1899), are widely read and studied. Unjustly neglected, however, is her first novel, At Fault, which Chopin published in 1890 at her own expense. This edition of At Fault—the first printing to appear since Chopin’s Complete Works was issued in 1969—now makes the book available to a wide audience.

The novel centers on Therese Lafirme, a widow who owns and runs a plantation in post–Civil War Louisiana. She encounters David Hosmer, who buys timber rights to her property to secure raw materials for his newly constructed sawmill. When David remarries, a love triangle develops between David, Fanny (his alcoholic wife), and Therese, who tries to balance her strong moral sensibility against her growing love for David. In depicting these relationships, Chopin acutely dramatizes the conflict between growing industrialism and the agrarian traditions of the Old South—as well as the changes to the land and the society that inevitably resulted from that conflict.

Editors Suzanne Disheroon Green and David J. Caudle provide meticulous annotations to the text of At Fault, facilitating the reader’s understanding of the complex and exotic culture and language of nineteenth-century Louisiana. Also included is a substantial body of supporting materials thatcontextualize the novel, ranging from a summary of critical responses to materials illuminating the economic, social, historical, and religious influences on Chopin’s texts.

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At the Glacier’s Edge

A Natural History of Long Island from the Narrows to Montauk Point

Betsy McCully

Rutgers University Press, 2024

Vast salt marshes, ancient grasslands, lush forests, pristine beaches and dunes, and copious inland waters, all surrounded by a teeming sea. These are probably not the first things you imagine when you think of Long Island, but just beyond its highways and housing developments lies a stunning landscape full of diverse plant and animal life.

Combining science writing, environmental history, and first-hand accounts from a longtime resident, At the Glacier’s Edge offers a unique narrative natural history of Long Island. Betsy McCully tells the story of how the island was formed at the end of the last ice age, how its habitats evolved, and how humans in the last few hundred years have radically altered and degraded its landscape. Yet as she personally recounts the habitat losses and species declines she has witnessed over the past few decades, she describes the vital efforts that environmental activists are making to restore and reclaim this land—from replanting salt marshes, to preserving remaining grasslands and forests, to cleaning up the waters. At the Glacier’s Edge provides an in-depth look at the flora, fauna and geology that make Long Island so special.

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