From the Reliance Building and Coney Island to the Kimbell Museum and Disney Hall, the United States has been at the forefront of modern architecture. American life has generated many of the quintessential images of modern life, both generic types and particular buildings. Gwendolyn Wright’s USA is an engaging account of this evolution from the late nineteenth century to the twenty-first. Upending conventional arguments about the origin of American modern architecture, Wright shows that it was not a mere offshoot of European modernism brought across the Atlantic Ocean by émigrés but rather an exciting, distinctive and mutable hybrid.

USA traces a history that spans from early skyscrapers and suburbs in the aftermath of the American Civil War up to the museums, schools and ‘green architecture’ of today. Wright takes account of diverse interests that affected design, ranging from politicians and developers to ambitious immigrants and middle-class citizens. Famous and lesser-known buildings across America come together--model dwellings for German workers in rural Massachusetts, New York’s Rockefeller Center, Cincinnati’s Carew Tower, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West in the Arizona desert, the University of Miami campus, the Texas Instruments Semiconductor Plant, and the Corning Museum of Glass, among others--to show an extraordinary range of innovation.

Ultimately, Wright reframes the history of American architecture as one of constantly evolving and volatile sensibilities, engaged with commerce, attuned to new media, exploring multiple concepts of freedom. The chapters are organized to show how changes in work life, home life and public life affected architecture--and vice versa. This book provides essential background for contemporary debates about affordable and luxury housing, avant-garde experiments, local identities, inspiring infrastructure and sustainable design.

A clear, concise and richly illustrated account of modern American architecture, this timely book will be essential for all those who wonder about the remarkable legacy of American modernity in its most potent cultural expression.

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Gwendolyn Wright - USA, Modern Architectures in Hi story (2008).pdf

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Laura L. Scheiber, Bonnie J. Clark - Archaeologica l Landscapes on the High Plains (2008).jpg

Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains combines history, anthropology, archaeology, and geography to take a closer look at the relationships between land and people in this unique North American region.

Focusing on long-term change, this book considers ethnographic literature, archaeological evidence, and environmental data spanning thousands of years of human presence to understand human perception and construction of landscape. The contributors offer cohesive and synthetic studies emphasizing hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers.

Using landscape as both reality and metaphor, Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains explores the different and changing ways that people interacted with place in this transitional zone between the Rocky Mountains and the eastern prairies.

The contemporary archaeologists working in this small area have chosen diverse approaches to understand the past and its relationship to the present. Through these ten case studies, this variety is highlighted but leads to a common theme--that the High Plains contains important locales to which people, over generations or millennia, return. Providing both data and theory on a region that has not previously received much attention from archaeologists, especially compared with other regions in North America, this volume is a welcome addition to the literature.

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Laura L. Scheiber, Bonnie J. Clark - Archaeologica l Landscapes on the High Plains (2008).pdf

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Sarah M. Nelson - Denver, An Archaeological Histor y (2008).jpg

"An innovative look at the archaeology of a region (the Central Great Plains) through a longitudinal study of human occupation in a specific place--Denver, Colorado. It is an exciting, well-written account that sheds light on how people have survived changes in climate, plant life, animals, and human events over the past 14,000 years."

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Sarah M. Nelson - Denver, An Archaeological Histor y (2008).pdf

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Thomas H. Lee, James J. Mongan - Chaos and Organiz ation in Health Care (2009).jpg

One of the most daunting challenges facing the new U.S. administration is health care reform. The size of the system, the number of stakeholders, and ever-rising costs make the problem seem almost intractable. But in Chaos and Organization in Health Care, two leading physicians offer an optimistic prognosis. In their frontline work as providers, Thomas Lee and James Mongan see the inefficiency, the missed opportunities, and the occasional harm that can result from the current system. The root cause of these problems, they argue, is chaos in the delivery of care. If the problem is chaos, the solution is organization, and in this timely and outspoken book, they offer a plan.

In many ways, this chaos is caused by something good: the dramatic progress in medical science—the explosion of medical knowledge and the exponential increase in treatment options. Imposed on a fragmented system of small practices and individual patients with multiple providers, progress results in chaos. Lee and Mongan argue that attacking this chaos is even more important than whether health care is managed by government or controlled by market forces.

Some providers are already tightly organized, adapting management principles from business and offering care that is by many measures safer, better, and less costly. Lee and Mongan propose multiple strategies that can be adopted nationwide, including electronic medical records and information systems for sharing knowledge; team-based care, with doctors and other providers working together; and disease-management programs to coordinate care for the sickest patients.

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Thomas H. Lee, James J. Mongan - Chaos and Organiz ation in Health Care (2009).pdf

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Victor Davies Hanson - Mexifornia, A State of Beco ming (2003).jpg

"Massive illegal immigration from Mexico into California," Victor Davis Hanson writes, "coupled with a loss of confidence in the old melting pot model of transforming newcomers into Americans, is changing the very nature of state. Yet we Californians have been inadequate in meeting this challenge, both failing to control our borders with Mexico and to integrate the new alien population into our mainstream." Part history, part political analysis, and part memoir, "Mexifornia" is an intensely personal work by one of our most important writers. Hanson is perhaps known best for his military histories and especially his social commentary about America and its response to terror after 9/11. But he is also a fifth-generation Californian who runs a family farm in the Central Valley and has written eloquent elegies for the decline of the small farm such as "Fields Without Dreams" and "The Land Was Everything." Like these books, "Mexifornia" is an intensely personal look at what has changed in California over the last quarter century. In this case, however, Hanson's focus is on how not only California, the Southwest, and indeed the entire nation has been affected by America's hemorrhaging borders and how those hurt worst are the Mexican immigrants themselves.

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Victor Davies Hanson - Mexifornia, A State of Beco ming (2003).rar

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Patricia Klindienst - The Earth Knows My Name, Foo d, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of E thnic America (2006).jpg

USA Books - Patricia Klindienst - The Earth Knows My Name, Food, C... Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic America 2006.jpg

“Why have we tamed the history of gardening in America?” Patricia Klindienst asks in The Earth Knows My Name. We are a democracy of gardeners yet, with few exceptions, the garden is presented as the province of the privileged and the white. Garden writing tends to exclude the stories of the ethnic peoples who have shaped our landscape for centuries. As a result, the idea of the garden has been stripped of its cultural weight. The Earth Knows My Name speaks directly to this gap in our understanding, exploring the deeper implications of what it means to cultivate a garden and to grow one’s own food.
The fifteen gardens presented in The Earth Knows My Name have all been fashioned by people usually thought of as other Americans: Native Americans, immigrants, and ethnic peoples who were here long before our national boundaries were drawn, including Hispanics of the Southwest, descended from the Conquistadors, and Gullah gardeners of South Carolina, descendants of West African slaves. All of these gardeners straddle two cultures—mainstream America and their culture of origin. Their stewardship of the land is an expression of the desire to preserve their heritage against all that threatens it. And so each garden becomes an island of hope and offers a model, on a truly sustainable scale, of a restorative ecology that renders justice to both the land and the people who cultivate it. Patricia Klindienst is a master gardener and an award-winning writing teacher. She lives and gardens in Guilford, Connecticut. This is her first book.

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Patricia Klindienst - The Earth Knows My Name, Foo d, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of E thnic America (2006).pdf

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David Robertson - Hard As the Rock Itself, Place A nd Identity in the American Mining Town (2006).jpg

The first intensive analysis of sense of place in American mining towns, Hard as the Rock Itself: Place and Identity in the American Mining Town provides rare insight into the struggles and rewards of life in these communities. David Robertson contends that these communities--often characterized in scholarly and literary works as derelict, as sources of debasing moral influence, and as scenes of environmental decay--have a strong and enduring sense of place and have even embraced some of the signs of so-called dereliction.

Robertson documents the history of Toluca, Illinois; Cokedale, Colorado; and Picher, Oklahoma, from the mineral discovery phase through mine closure, telling for the first time how these century-old mining towns have survived and how sense of place has played a vital role.

Acknowledging the hardships that mining's social, environmental, and economic legacies have created for current residents, Robertson argues that the industry's influences also have contributed to the creation of strong, cohesive communities in which residents have always identified with the severe landscape and challenging, but rewarding way of life.

Robertson contends that the tough, unpretentious appearance of mining landscapes mirrors qualities that residents value in themselves, confirming that a strong sense of place in mining regions, as elsewhere, is not necessarily wedded to an attractive aesthetic or even to a thriving economy.

Mining historians, geographers, and other students of place in the American landscape will find fascinating material in Hard As the Rock Itself.

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Amos Jay Cummings - A Remarkable Curiosity, Dispat ches from a New York City Journalist's 1873 Railro ad Trip (2008).jpg

USA Books - Amos Jay Cummings - A Remarkable Curiosity, Dispatches...om a New York City Journalists 1873 Railroad Trip 2008.jpg

In 1873, Amos Jay Cummings, a decorated Civil War veteran and journalist for the New York Sun newspaper, set out on a westward journey aboard the newly completed transcontinental railroad. For some time, miners, settlers, and entrepreneurs had already been heading west to make their fortunes, and Cummings made the trip in part to see what all the fuss was about. During his six-month expedition from Kansas to California, Cummings sent extraordinary and engaging accounts of the American West back to his readers in New York.

Collected in this volume for the first time are Cummings's portraits of a land and its assortment of characters unlike anything back East. Characters like Pedro Armijo, the New Mexican sheep tycoon who took Denver by storm, and more prominently the Mormon prophet Brigham Young and his 19th wife, Ann Eliza Young, who was filing for divorce at the time of Cummings's arrival.

Although today he is virtually unknown, during his lifetime Cummings was one of the most famous newspapermen in the United States, in part because of stories like these. Complete with a biographical sketch and historical introduction, A Remarkable Curiosity is an enjoyable read for anybody interested in the American West in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

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Amos Jay Cummings - A Remarkable Curiosity, Dispat ches from a New York City Journalist's 1873 Railro ad Trip (2008).pdf

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Robert C. Fuller - Spiritual, but not Religious, U nderstanding Unchurched America (2001).jpg

Over the past 30 years, sociologists of religion have coined the phrase "spiritual seeker" to describe those who are unaffiliated with organized religion but who are nonetheless looking for ways to enhance their understanding of religious questions. Fuller (Alternative Medicine in American Religious Life) observes that these seekers differentiate between spirituality and religion, connecting the former with a privately expressed faith and the latter with the creeds and rituals publicly expressed in religious institutions. These "spiritual but not religious" individuals, Fuller writes, pick and choose elements from a variety of beliefs and practices as they construct an individualized spirituality.

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Robert C. Fuller - Spiritual, but not Religious, U nderstanding Unchurched America (2001).pdf

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Franklyn S. Haiman - Religious Expression and the American Constitution (2003).jpg

This work focuses on the state of American law with respect to a broad range of controversial issues affecting religious expression, both verbal and nonverbal, along with a review of the up-to-date history of each issue to provide a full understanding.

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Franklyn S. Haiman - Religious Expression and the American Constitution (2003).pdf

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Alexander Tsesis - The Thirteenth Amendment and Am erican Freedom, A Legal History (2004).jpg

In this narrative history and contextual analysis of the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery and freedom take center stage. Alexander Tsesis demonstrates how entrenched slavery was in pre-Civil War America, how central it was to the political events that resulted in the Civil War, and how it was the driving force that led to the adoption of an amendment that ultimately provided a substantive assurance of freedom for all American citizens.

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Alexander Tsesis - The Thirteenth Amendment and Am erican Freedom, A Legal History (2004).pdf

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Warschip 15 - USN Commander W. H. Cracknell - USS Enterprise, (CVAN-65) Nuclear Attack Carrier (1972 ).jpg

One of a series of booklets covering individual warships from around the world with an authoritative text and many black and white illustrations. Color profile center spread.

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Warschip 15 - USN Commander W. H. Cracknell - USS Enterprise, (CVAN-65) Nuclear Attack Carrier (1972 ).pdf

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Warschip 21 - William H. Cracknell - USS Tennessee (BB 43), Battleship 1920-1959 (1972).jpg

One of a series of booklets covering individual warships from around the world with an authoritative text and many black and white illustrations.

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Warschip 21 - William H. Cracknell - USS Tennessee (BB 43), Battleship 1920-1959 (1972).pdf

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Carroll Pursell - The Machine in America, A Social History of Technology (2007).jpg

From the medieval farm implements used by the first colonists to the invisible links of the Internet, the history of technology in America is a history of society as well. Arguing that "the tools and processes we use are a part of our lives, not simply instruments of our purpose," historian Carroll Pursell analyzes technology's impact on the lives of women and men, on their work, politics, and social relationships -- and how, in turn, people influence technological development. Pursell shows how both the idea of progress and the mechanical means to harness the forces of nature developed and changed as they were brought from the Old World to the New. He describes the ways in which American industrial and agricultural technology began to take on a distinctive shape as it adapted and extended the technical base of the industrial revolution. He discusses the innovation of an American system of manufactures and the mechanization of agriculture; new systems of mining, lumbering, and farming, which helped conquer and define the West; and the technologies that shaped the rise of cities. In the second edition of The Machine in America, Pursell brings this classic history up to date with a revised chapter on war technology and new discussions on information technology, globalization, and the environment.

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John Weeks - The Winchester Arms Company (1972).jpg

The story of the Wild West of the United States is a story compounded of a few simple items. Men, horses, cattle, sheep and guns. Guns that come in two forms, pistols or rifles. And these shoulder weapons are always Winchesters.

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John Weeks - The Winchester Arms Company (1972).pdf

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Judith Tick, Paul Beaudoin - Music in the USA, A D ocumentary Companion (2008).jpg

Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion charts a path through American music and musical life using as guides the words of composers, performers, writers and the rest of us ordinary folks who sing, dance, and listen. The anthology of primary sources contains about 160 selections from 1540 to 2000. Sometimes the sources are classics in the literature around American music, for example, the Preface to the Bay Psalm Book, excerpts from Slave Songs of the United States, and Charles Ives extolling Emerson. But many other selections offer uncommon sources, including a satirical story about a Yankee music teacher; various columns from 19th-century German American newspapers; the memoirs of a 19th-century diva; Lottie Joplin remembering her husband Scott; a little-known reflection of Copland about Stravinsky; an interview with Muddy Waters from the Chicago Defender; a letter from Woody Guthrie on the "spunkfire" attitude of a folk song; a press release from the Country Music Association; and the Congressional testimony around "Napster." "Sidebar" entries occasionally bring a topic or an idea into the present, acknowledging the extent to which revivals of many kinds of music play a role in American contemporary culture. This book focuses on the connections between theory and practice to enrich our understanding of the diversity of American musical experiences. Designed especially to accompany college courses which survey American music as a whole, the book is also relevant to courses in American history and American Studies.

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