Jill P. May

Best remembered as an influential illustrator and teacher, Howard Pyle (1853–1911) produced magnificent artwork and engrossing books and magazine stories about King Arthur, Robin Hood, swashbuckling pirates, and the American Revolution. He also completed public murals and trained many famous artists and illustrators at the turn of the twentieth century, including N. C. Wyeth and Jessie Willcox Smith. This engaging portrait of the influential American artist, teacher, author, and muralist is the first fully documented treatment of Pyle's life and career.Drawing on numerous archival sources including Pyle's own letters to provide new perspectives on his life, Jill P. May and Robert E. May reveal Pyle to be a passionate believer that art should be understood and appreciated by the general public. His genteel values and artistic tastes shaped not only his own creative output but his influential work as a teacher, first at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry in Philadelphia and later at his own school in Delaware's Brandywine River Valley. May and May also show him to be far more supportive of women artists than is generally believed, explaining how he deployed club memberships and relationships with publishers and politicians to advance the prospects of his students. Duly measuring his influence on later artists, May and May detail his quest to lead a distinctively American school of art freed from European models.Amply illustrated with evocative photographs and color reproductions of his own and his students' work, this exceptional volume presents Howard Pyle's creative career and legacy for American popular culture as it has never been seen before.

Spearheading Environmental Change: The Legacy of Indiana Congressman Floyd J. Fithian describes the life of a four-term United States congressman, focusing on his role in the emerging environmental movement in late twentieth-century America. Spearheading Environmental Change highlights Fithian's legislative efforts regarding three water-related issues that profoundly concerned Hoosier and midwestern voters: creating a national park on the Indiana shoreline of Lake Michigan; canceling dam construction near Purdue University; and mitigating flooding in the Kankakee River Basin. The book also covers Fithian's positions on ecologically sensitive issues such as pesticides, noise pollution, fossil fuels, and nuclear power. Largely remembered for his participation in the Democratic reform wave that took over Congress in 1975 post-Watergate (the so-called Class of '74) and as an advocate for Hoosier farmers, Fithian has been overlooked for his role as a force to be reckoned with on the House floor when it came to the nation's environmental challenges. Fithian was a highly ethical, pragmatic reformer bent on preserving his country's natural resources. Spearheading Environmental Change gives Fithian the credit he deserves as an environmental warrior on the national stage.

Spearheading Environmental Change: The Legacy of Indiana Congressman Floyd J. Fithian describes the life of a four-term United States congressman, focusing on his role in the emerging environmental movement in late twentieth-century America. Spearheading Environmental Change highlights Fithian's legislative efforts regarding three water-related issues that profoundly concerned Hoosier and midwestern voters: creating a national park on the Indiana shoreline of Lake Michigan; canceling dam construction near Purdue University; and mitigating flooding in the Kankakee River Basin. The book also covers Fithian's positions on ecologically sensitive issues such as pesticides, noise pollution, fossil fuels, and nuclear power. Largely remembered for his participation in the Democratic reform wave that took over Congress in 1975 post-Watergate (the so-called Class of '74) and as an advocate for Hoosier farmers, Fithian has been overlooked for his role as a force to be reckoned with on the House floor when it came to the nation's environmental challenges. Fithian was a highly ethical, pragmatic reformer bent on preserving his country's natural resources. Spearheading Environmental Change gives Fithian the credit he deserves as an environmental warrior on the national stage.

This one family's journey across the unsettled West demonstrates how its understandings of family identity and selfhood were fostered. Beginning in the late 1880s, each member's perspective of the past and the future evolved as they moved from the Midwest to the West and finally settled in various regions of the United States. This chronicle of family movement and cultural assimilation contains an ideology of America that often frames stories told about family and history.