The companion volume to the twelve-hour PBS series from theacclaimed filmmaker behind The Civil War, Baseball, and TheWar America’s national parks spring from an idea as radical as theDeclaration of Independence: that the nation’s most magnificent andsacred places should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, butfor everyone. In this evocative and lavishly illustrated narrative,Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan delve into the history of the parkidea, from the first sighting by white men in 1851 of the valleythat would become Yosemite and the creation of the world’s firstnational park at Yellowstone in 1872, through the most recentadditions to a system that now encompasses nearly four hundredsites and 84 million acres. The authors recount the adventures, mythmaking, and intensepolitical battles behind the evolution of the park system, and theenduring ideals that fostered its growth. They capture theimportance and splendors of the individual parks: from Haleakala inHawaii to Acadia in Maine, from Denali
From the Ferris wheel to the integrated circuit, feats ofengineering have changed our environment in countless ways, big andsmall. In Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering, DukeUniversity's Henry Petroski focuses on the big: Malaysia's1,482-foot Petronas Towers as well as the Panama Canal, a cutthrough the continental divide that required the excavation of 311million cubic yards of earth. Remaking the World tells the stories behind the man-made wondersof the world, from squabbles over the naming of the Hoover Dam tothe effects the Titanic disaster had on the engineering communityof 1912. Here, too, are the stories of the personalities behind the wonders, from the jaunty IsambardKingdom Brunel, designer of nineteenth-century transatlanticsteamships, to Charles Steinmetz, oddball genius of the GeneralElectric Company, whose office of preference was a batteredtwelve-foot canoe. Spirited and absorbing, Remaking the World is acelebration of the creative instinct and of the men and women
The Case Study House program (1945 1966) was an exceptional, innovative event in the history of American architecture and remains to this day unique. The program, which concentrated on the Los Angeles area and oversaw the design of 36 prototype homes, sought to make available plans for modern residences that could be easily and cheaply constructed during the postwar building boom. Highly experimental, the program generated houses that were designed to redefine the modern home, and thus had a pronounced influence on architecture American and international both during the program's existence and even to this day. This compact guide includes all projects featured in our XL version, with over 150 photos and plans and a map of where all houses are (or were) located.
