Lokalhistoria

A propulsive, layered examination of the conflict between the course of nature and human legacies of resistance and control.Floods, geoengineering, climate crisis. Her first year in Margaretville, New York, Jennifer Kabat wakes to a rain-bloated stream and three-foot waves in her basement.This is far from the first—and hardly the worst—natural disaster to devastate her town. As Kabat dives deeper into the region’s fraught environmental history, she discovers it was more than once the site of Cold War weather experimentation. She traces connections between noctilucent clouds, man-made precipitation, and the 1950 Rainmaker’s Flood—finding unlikely characters along the way, including Kurt Vonnegut’s brother, Bernard, a scientist at General Electric. And all the while she searches for ways to cope with the grief of her environmentalist father’s recent passing. “Because I need the water to speak to me too,” she writes.Curious and experimental, Nightshining uses place as the palimpsest of history, digging into questions of personal responsibility and planetary change. With “characteristically lyrical incision” (Marko Gluhaich), Kabat circles back to her own life experience and the essence of being human—the cosmos thrumming in our bodies, connecting readers to the land around us and time before us.

Now in paperback: This San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and California Book Award finalist drills down into Oakland's geological history and its impacts on the city's urban present."This book has turned me into a newcomer to my own city, but has also changed the way I will view any landscape. I can think of few greater gifts than that."—Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing and Saving Time"Spending time with Andrew Alden is like giving yourself x-ray eyes." —Roman Mars, host and creator of 99% InvisibleBeneath Oakland's streets and underfoot of every scurrying creature atop them, rocks roil, shift, crash, and collide in an ever-churning seismological saga. In Deep Oakland, geologist Andrew Alden excavates the ancient story of Oakland's geologic underbelly and reveals how its silt, soil, and subterranean sinews are intimately entwined with its human history—and future. Poised atop a world-famous fault line now slumbering, Alden charts how these quaking rocks gave rise to the hills and the flats; how ice-age sand dunes gave root to the city's eponymous oak forests; how the Jurassic volcanoes of Leona Heights gave way to mining boom times; how Lake Merritt has swelled and disappeared a dozen times over the course of its million-year lifespan; and how each epochal shift has created the terrain cradling Oaklanders today. With Alden as our guide—and with illustrations by Laura Cunningham, author of A State of Change—we see that just as Oakland is a human crossroads, a convergence of cultures from the world over, so too is the bedrock below, carried here from parts still incompletely known.

From 1874 until 1915, the "Storm Warriors" of the Fletchers Neck Life Saving Service and the citizens of the Village of Biddeford Pool shared a common history. Gleaned from local newspapers, stations logbooks, official records of the Life Saving Service, and the papers and memories of involved families, these are tales of men at odds with the fury of nature.

A compelling memoir about Kim Heacox's more than thirty-year relationship with the most iconic landscape in Alaska

Historical walking guide along the trails of Leuven scientists and their laboratories. Throughout its history, Leuven University has been home to many famous scientists. The names of cartographer Gerard Mercator, discoverer of gas lighting Jan Pieter Minckelers, chemist Jean-Baptist Van Mons, zoologist Pierre Joseph Van Beneden, and inventor of the Big Bang theory Georges Lemaître live on in the local street scene. The laboratories where they worked were housed in university colleges, repeatedly adapted over the centuries to the requirements of scientific research. With the last of these laboratories soon to move out of the inner city to a campus outside the city, this book outlines the urban history of Leuven's scientists and their laboratories, taking the reader along the still-visible traces of this remarkable heritage. Leuven's College Laboratories: An Urban Walking Guide through 600 Years of Science focuses on the material heritage of science. The book provides an engaging and accessible introduction to the university's urban history, appealing to a wide audience of interested parties such as alumni, visitors, and tourists.

This book examines how California Indigenous groups forged a new economy based on cattle, opening the door to the assertion and recognition of American Indian sovereignty over ancestral lands by the United States. Shanta reflects on how they survived, kept their cultures alive, and gained recognition of their sovereign status.

A comprehensive history of Philadelphia from the region's original Lenape inhabitants to the myriad of residents in the twenty-first centuryPhiladelphia is famous for its colonial and revolutionary buildings and artifacts, which draw tourists from far and wide to gain a better understanding of the nation's founding. Philadelphians, too, value these same buildings and artifacts for the stories they tell about their city. But Philadelphia existed long before the Liberty Bell was first rung, and its history extends well beyond the American Revolution.In Philadelphia: A Narrative History, Paul Kahan presents a comprehensive portrait of the city, from the region's original Lenape inhabitants to the myriad of residents in the twenty-first century.As any history of Philadelphia should, this book chronicles the people and places that make the city unique: from Independence Hall to Eastern State Penitentiary, Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross to Cecil B. Moore and Cherelle Parker. Kahan also shows us how Philadelphia has always been defined by ethnic, religious, and racial diversity-from the seventeenth century, when Dutch, Swedes, and Lenapes lived side by side along the Delaware; to the nineteenth century, when the city was home to a vibrant community of free Black and formerly enslaved people; to the twentieth century, when it attracted immigrants from around the world. This diversity, however, often resulted in conflict, especially over access to public spaces. Those two themes- diversity and conflict- have shaped Philadelphia's development and remain visible in the city's culture, society, and even its geography. Understanding Philadelphia's past, Kahan says, is key to envisioning future possibilities for the City of Brotherly Love.