Kirjahaku

The once arid valleys and isolated coastal plains of California are today the center of fruit production in the United States. Steven Stoll explains how a class of capitalist farmers made California the nation's leading producer of fruit and created the first industrial countryside in America. This brilliant portrayal of California from 1880 to 1930 traces the origins, evolution, and implications of the fruit industry while providing a window through which to view the entire history of California. Stoll shows how California growers assembled chemicals, corporations, and political influence to bring the most perishable products from the most distant state to the great urban markets of North America. But what began as a compromise between a beneficent environment and intensive cultivation ultimately became threatening to the soil and exploitative of the people who worked it. Invoking history, economics, sociology, agriculture, and environmental studies, Stoll traces the often tragic repercussions of fruit farming and shows how central this story is to the development of the industrial countryside in the twentieth century.

An early environmental debate is illuminated in this fascinating exploration of farmers in nineteenth-century America who argued over whether to improve conditions in the East or farm new lands in the West. Reprint.

Short-listed for the Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Book AwardIn Ramp Hollow, Steven Stoll offers a fresh, provocative account of Appalachia, and why it matters. He begins with the earliest European settlers, whose desire for vast forests to hunt in was frustrated by absentee owners--including George Washington and other founders--who laid claim to the region. Even as Daniel Boone became famous as a backwoods hunter and guide, the economy he represented was already in peril. Within just a few decades, Appalachian hunters and farmers went from pioneers to pariahs, from heroes to hillbillies, in the national imagination, and the area was locked into an enduring association with poverty and backwardness. Stoll traces these developments with empathy and precision, examining crucial episodes such as the Whiskey Rebellion, the founding of West Virginia, and the arrival of timber and coal companies that set off a devastating "scramble for Appalachia." At the center of Ramp Hollow is Stoll's sensitive portrayal of Appalachian homesteads. Perched upon ridges and tucked into hollows, they combined small-scale farming and gardening with expansive foraging and hunting, along with distilling and trading, to achieve self-sufficiency and resist the dependence on cash and credit arising elsewhere in the United States. But the industrialization of the mountains shattered the ecological balance that sustained the households. Ramp Hollow recasts the story of Appalachia as a complex struggle between mountaineers and profit-seeking forces from outside the region. Drawing powerful connections between Appalachia and other agrarian societies around the world, Stoll demonstrates the vitality of a peasant way of life that mixes farming with commerce but is not dominated by a market mind-set. His original investigation, ranging widely from history to literature, art, and economics, questions our assumptions about progress and development, and exposes the devastating legacy of dispossession and its repercussions today.

September 1939 the peace in Europe is shattered when Germany invades Poland, in Six weeks of hard fighting the Polish Royal Family flees for England. The Polish Air Force and Army are destroyed and the remnants surrender. France and England declare war but do not act on the declaration. In March of 1940 Germany invades Norway, the British rush troops to Aid Norway. Within a month the British Army is withdrawn. In April and May of 1940 Germany invades Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg and France. Within a Month the Nazi War Machine defeated the combined armies Western Europe and the BEF, what remains of them are forced into the port city of Dunkirk. To save as much of the BEF Prime Minister Winston Churchill orders the largest sea borne evacuation in history. Civilian pleasure and fishing craft work side by side with the Royal Navy to save tens of thousands of men. After Dunkirk the Free French forces and the British are all that stand against the Nazi war machine that has consumed all of Europe. The call goes thru out the British Empire that men are needed, from the far flung corners of her empire men pour into England an Army is being rebuilt. Churchill asks the United States President FDR for help, and FDR responds with Food, Fuel and the tools of War. However what England needs are men willing to fight. FDR will not commit US combat troops, but Thousands of her young men and women heed the call and volunteer for the Lend Lease act. Mike Muller Jr is one of these men. Mike and Sarah have been married for 15 years when Mike heeds the call and Volunteers for the Lend Lease. In the summer of 1940 Mike leaves his wife and 15 year old daughter April. Mike finds himself in England as a Paratrooper.

For 200,000 years the flame of humanity has burned brightly on earth. From time to time that fame has fickered, However it has never threatened to extinguish until the Tunguskin flu. The Tunguskin flu is a 10,000-year old virus locked in the permafrost of remote Siberia until a cataclysmic event frees it. As the world's governments scramble to set up labs in remote locations, the virus burns through the population. Chief Troy Jackson is a 20-year veteran of the US Army Rangers undertaking a difficult mission. He is tasked with safe guarding epidemiologist Doctor Emily Rose, who holds the key to the cure in her head. The task becomes even more dangerous as the two grow closer. Sex, war, politics, and desire to just survive drive this post-apocalyptic first novel by Steven Stoll.

In the 20 years since the great war, the world has been plunged into the chaos. Things have changed, but not as much as the War for Intelligence. In order to win, the British Empire has recruited individuals from all over the world. They are trained in Canada at aTop-Secret base, Code named Camp X. Alice Maxio is one of the first American's to come through the program post-Pearl Harbor. The rules are simple; observe everything, blend in and take the war to the Nazi's in occupied Europe. In short: set Europe ablaze and win the hearts and minds of the enslaved population. The stakes are high, and the training is intense, yet lust has a way of finding it's way into most places, but what happens when lust turns into something else?The time has come to set Europe ablaze before it can be set free with the second novel by Steven Stoll