When The Mississippi Ran Backwards

Download or read book The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes written by Conevery Bolton Valencius and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013-09-25 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From December 1811 to February 1812, massive earthquakes shook the middle Mississippi Valley, collapsing homes, snapping large trees midtrunk, and briefly but dramatically reversing the flow of the continent’s mightiest river. For decades, people puzzled over the causes of the quakes, but by the time the nation began to recover from the Civil War, the New Madrid earthquakes had been essentially forgotten. In The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes, Conevery Bolton Valencius remembers this major environmental disaster, demonstrating how events that have been long forgotten, even denied and ridiculed as tall tales, were in fact enormously important at the time of their occurrence, and continue to affect us today. Valencius weaves together scientific and historical evidence to demonstrate the vast role the New Madrid earthquakes played in the United States in the early nineteenth century, shaping the settlement patterns of early western Cherokees and other Indians, heightening the credibility of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa for their Indian League in the War of 1812, giving force to frontier religious revival, and spreading scientific inquiry. Moving into the present, Valencius explores the intertwined reasons—environmental, scientific, social, and economic—why something as consequential as major earthquakes can be lost from public knowledge, offering a cautionary tale in a world struggling to respond to global climate change amid widespread willful denial. Engagingly written and ambitiously researched—both in the scientific literature and the writings of the time—The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes will be an important resource in environmental history, geology, and seismology, as well as history of science and medicine and early American and Native American history.

Download or read book The Rivers Ran Backward written by Christopher Phillips and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Americans imagine the Civil War in terms of clear and defined boundaries of freedom and slavery: a straightforward division between the slave states of Kentucky and Missouri and the free states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kansas. However, residents of these western border states, Abraham Lincoln's home region, had far more ambiguous identities-and contested political loyalties-than we commonly assume. In The Rivers Ran Backward, Christopher Phillips sheds light on the fluid political cultures of the "Middle Border" states during the Civil War era. Far from forming a fixed and static boundary between the North and South, the border states experienced fierce internal conflicts over their political and social loyalties. White supremacy and widespread support for the existence of slavery pervaded the "free" states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, which had much closer economic and cultural ties to the South, while those in Kentucky and Missouri held little identification with the South except over slavery. Debates raged at every level, from the individual to the state, in parlors, churches, schools, and public meeting places, among families, neighbors, and friends. Ultimately, the pervasive violence of the Civil War and the cultural politics that raged in its aftermath proved to be the strongest determining factor in shaping these states' regional identities, leaving an indelible imprint on the way in which Americans think of themselves and others in the nation. The Rivers Ran Backward reveals the complex history of the western border states as they struggled with questions of nationalism, racial politics, secession, neutrality, loyalty, and even place-as the Civil War tore the nation, and themselves, apart. In this major work, Phillips shows that the Civil War was more than a conflict pitting the North against the South, but one within the West that permanently reshaped American regions.

Download or read book Disaster Deferred written by Seth Stein and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coinciding with the 200th anniversary of the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12, Disaster Deferred revisits these earthquakes, the legends that have grown around them, and the predictions of doom that have followed in their wake. Seth Stein clearly explains the techniques seismologists use to study Midwestern quakes and estimate their danger.

Download or read book The New Madrid Earthquake written by Myron L. Fuller and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Manufacturing Hysteria written by Jay Feldman and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A riveting and unsettling history of the assault on civil rights and liberties in America—from World War I to the War on Terror—by the acclaimed author of When the Mississippi Ran Backwards. In this ambitious and wide-ranging account, Jay Feldman takes us from the run-up to World War I and its anti-German hysteria to the September 11 attacks and Arizona’s current anti-immigration movement. What we see is a striking pattern of elected officials and private citizens alike using the American people’s fears and prejudices to isolate minorities (ethnic, racial, political, religious, or sexual), silence dissent, and stem the growth of civil rights and liberties. Rather than treating this history as a series of discrete moments, Feldman considers the entire programmatic sweep on a scale no one has yet approached. In doing so, he gives us a potent reminder of how, even in America, democracy and civil liberties are never guaranteed.

Download or read book The New Madrid Earthquakes written by James L. Penick and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previously published as: The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812.

Download or read book The Angry Earth written by Sally Watson and published by Booklocker.com. This book was released on 2009-10-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1811, New Madrid, Missouri was shattered by a series of massive earthquakes. For weeks, the shocked citizens coped with a world gone mad. They all changed, fell apart, and endured. This is a fictionalized account of the true story of a family and a town who faced the terror and hardship of unthinkable, prolonged natural violence with courage, love, and even humor.