The construction of the Erie Canal may truly be described as a major event in the growth of the young United States. At a time when the internal links among the states were scanty, the canal's planners boldly projected a system of transportation that would strike from the eastern seaboard, penetrate the frontier, and forge a bond between the East and the growing settlements of the West. In this comprehensive history, Ronald E. Shaw portrays the development of the canal as viewed by its contemporaries, who rightly saw it as an engineering marvel and an achievement of great economic and social significance not only for New York but also for the nation.

This profile on the coastal wetlands of western Lake Erie is one of a series of community profiles that deal with marine and freshwater habitats of ecological importance. The estuaries, lagoons, and coastal marshes which fringe the Ohio, Michigan, and Ontario shores of western Lake Erie are among the most productive areas in the Great Lakes. Biological information available for the Lake Erie wetlands is discussed in detail, and ecological processes contributing to the evolution of wetlands, biological production, and community organization in the wetlands are examined.

"This report presents simulation results and observational data relating to the water quality conditions of Lake Erie for the twelve-year period from 1967 to 1978"--Abstract.

Discusses the history of this man-made waterway as well as basic engineering, architecture, and mechanical procedures involved in its construction.

The first extensive catalogue of this significant collection presents over 200 highlights of the Society's vast holdings of works on paper

A compelling blend of legal and political history, this book chronicles the largest tenant rebellion in U.S. history. From its beginning in the rural villages of eastern New York in 1839 until its collapse in 1865, the Anti-Rent movement impelled the state's governors, legislators, judges, and journalists, as well as delegates to New York's bellwether constitutional convention of 1846, to wrestle with two difficult problems of social policy. One was how to put down violent tenant resistance to the enforcement of landlord property and contract rights. The second was how to abolish the archaic form of land tenure at the root of the rent strike. Charles McCurdy considers the public debate on these questions from a fresh perspective. Instead of treating law and politics as dependent variables--as mirrors of social interests or accelerators of social change--he highlights the manifold ways in which law and politics shaped both the pattern of Anti-Rent violence and the drive for land reform. In the process, he provides a major reinterpretation of the ideas and institutions that diminished the promise of American democracy in the supposed "golden age" of American law and politics.

Food expert and celebrated food historian Andrew F. Smith recounts in delicious detail the creation of contemporary American cuisine. The diet of the modern American wasn't always as corporate, conglomerated, and corn-rich as it is today, and the style of American cooking, along with the ingredients that compose it, has never been fixed. With a cast of characters including bold inventors, savvy restaurateurs, ruthless advertisers, mad scientists, adventurous entrepreneurs, celebrity chefs, and relentless health nuts, Smith pins down the truly crackerjack history behind the way America eats. Smith's story opens with early America, an agriculturally independent nation where most citizens grew and consumed their own food. Over the next two hundred years, however, Americans would cultivate an entirely different approach to crops and consumption. Advances in food processing, transportation, regulation, nutrition, and science introduced highly complex and mechanized methods of production. The proliferation of cookbooks, cooking shows, and professionally designed kitchens made meals more commercially, politically, and culturally potent. To better understand these trends, Smith delves deeply and humorously into their creation. Ultimately he shows how, by revisiting this history, we can reclaim the independent, locally sustainable roots of American food.

"In the early nineteenth century a ten-mile stretch along the Kanawha River in western Virginia became the largest salt-producing area in the antebellum United States. Production of this basic commodity stimulated settlement, the livestock industry, and the rise of agricultural processing, especially pork packing, in the American West. The Virginia saltmakers dominated their locality in capital access, labor supply, and manipulation of public policy. Salt extraction was then and is now a fundamental industry." "In his illuminating study, John Stealey examines the legal basis of this industry, its labor practices, and its marketing and distribution patterns. To control output and markets, the saltmakers created legal combinations - output pools, lease/re-lease contracts, joint stock companies, and a proposed trust - that are the earliest such examples in the United States. These combinations drew national opposition from western consumers and a crusade to reduce the salt tariff that revealed the international aspects of salt commerce." "By eliminating middlemen in distribution, the Virginia salt producers anticipated later nineteenth-century manufacturers who tried to control prices and marketing. Their struggle with rationalization of factory management and marketing operations marks them as premodern business pioneers. Through technological innovation, they harnessed coal and steam as well as men and animals, constructed a novel evaporative system, and invented drilling tools later employed in oil and natural gas exploration. Thus in many ways the salt industry was the precursor of the American extractive and chemical industries." "Stealey's informative study is an important contribution to American economic, business, labor, and legal history."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved