Best of
Americana

1972

The Foxfire Book: Hog Dressing; Log Cabin Building; Mountain Crafts and Foods; Planting by the Signs; Snake Lore, Hunting Tales, Faith Healing


Eliot Wigginton - 1972
    This is the original book compilation of Foxfire material which introduces Aunt Arie and her contemporaries and includes log cabin building, hog dressing, snake lore, mountain crafts and food, and "other affairs of plain living."

No Beast So Fierce


Edward Bunker - 1972
    Reissue.

Round River


Aldo Leopold - 1972
    These daily journal entries on hunting, fishing and exploring, written in camp during his many field trips in lower California, New Mexico, Canada, and Wisconsin, indicate the source of Leopold's ideas on land ethics found in his longer essays. The excerpts from these journals—many taken from notes written around a camp fire, spattered with a slapped mosquito or a drop of coffee—show in direct context what he did in his own leisure time. The essays are taken from more contemplative notes which were still in manuscript when Leopold died, fighting a grass fire in 1948. Round River has been edited by Leopold's son, Luna, a geologist well-known in the field of conservation. It is also illustrated throughout with line drawings by Charles W. Schwartz. All admirers of Leopold's work—indeed, all lovers of nature—will find this book richly rewarding.

Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community


Martin Duberman - 1972
    Dutton edition originally published in 1972 a celebration of a fine (and poignantly nostalgic) college that endured from 1933 to 1956. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

The Dorling Kindersley History Of The World


Peter Somerset Fry - 1972
    Packed with full-color photographs of real artifacts, tools, and art from around the globe, as well as detailed illustrations of the people who lived in each era, this visual chronology of world history is an excellent tool for stirring interest in young readers.

Complete Poetry and Selected Prose


Walt Whitman - 1972
    Representative writings of the nineteenth-century American poet and philosopher are supplemented by textual notes.

American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950


Alec Wilder - 1972
    It has since become the standard work of the great songwriters who dominated popular music in the United States for half a century. Now Wilder's classic is available again, with a new introduction by Gene Lees. Uniquely analytical yet engagingly informal, American Popular Song focuses on the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic qualities that distinguish American popular music and have made it an authentic art form. Wilder traces the roots of the American style to the ragtime music of the 1890s, shows how it was incorporated into mainstream popular music after 1900, and then surveys the careers of every major songwriter from World War I to 1950. Wilder devotes desparate chapters to such greats as Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, and Harold Arlen. Illustrated with over seven hundred musical examples, Wilder's sensitive analyses of the most distinctive, creative, and original songs of this period reveal unexpected beauties in songs long forgotten and delightful subtleties in many familiar standards. The result is a definitive treatment of a strangely unsung and uniquely American art.

Bacon and Beans From a Gold Pan


George Hoeper - 1972
    He decided to capitalize on his life-long fascination with gold mining, his knowledge of the woodlands, and the enthusiastic support of his wife to move to the rich Mother Lode country along the foothills of the Sierra. For more than 4 years they mined the region's creeks and rivers, gleaning from a few cents to a few dollars a day in tiny, hard-earned nuggets and gold dust. At least, they always made enough with their gold pan and sluice box to "buy bacon and beans."But, they struck it rich in many other ways: in their closeness to the natural world, in the warm companionship of the foothill natives and other "snipers" (as the depression-day prospectors were called), and in the satisfaction of their own freedom and independence. As this nostalgic, entertaining memoir shows, Jesse and Dot Coffey had good reason to regard these experiences as "the best years of our lives."

The Truth About Unicorns


Bonnie Jones Reynolds - 1972
    What dark and secret spell beguiled Oriskany Forks?Why did Crazy Lizzy paint her body with strange symbols? Who stole Cass's newborn baby girl? Why did the round house have a windowless second story -- and no way to reach it? Was the circular pit in the woods a meeting place for a witches' coven?Who would believe there could be so much evil in such a pretty little town?

Executive Order 9066: The Internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans


Maisie Conrat - 1972
    Prefaces by Michael McCone and Don T. Nakanishi. The days following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were dark days of the American spirit. Unable to strike back effectively against the Japanese Empire, Americans in the Western states lashed out at fellow citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry. Executive Order 9066, signed by President Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, was the instrument that allowed military commanders to designate areas "from which any or all persons may be excluded." Under this order all Japanese and Americans of Japanese ancestry were removed from Western coastal regions to guarded camps in the interior. Former Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark, who represented the Department of Justice in the "relocation," writes in the Epilogue to this book: "The truth is--as this deplorable experience proves--that constitutions and laws are not sufficient of themselves. Despite the unequivocal language of the Constitution of the United States that the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, and despite the Fifth Amendment's command that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, both of these constitutional safeguards were denied by military action under Executive Order 9066."