Product Description
This book is an adventure story that pulls in the reader. Four kids and a TV talk show host are stuck in a runaway hot air balloonand as they travel around the state, readers try to figure out where theyare based on the geographical features glimpsed from above and cluesfrom the characters' conversations.Students get one point for everycorrect answer.Excellent for a classroom game, school-wide competitionor individual reading.This is a great geography skill-builder + encouragesresearch, map reading and more.Free teacher's guide gives specificsuggestions and instructions on how to get max educational value fromthis book.Put this title high on your list! ... Read more

Product Description
Publisher: Rutland, Vt., The Tuttle companyPublication date: 1907Notes: This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes.When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there. ... Read more

Product Description
In this book Jan Albers examines the history--natural, environmental, social, and ultimately human--of one of America's most cherished landscapes: Vermont. Albers shows how Vermont has come to stand for the ideal of unspoiled rural community, examining both the basis of the state's pastoral image and the equally real toll taken by the pressure of human hands on the land. She begins with the relatively light touch of Vermont's Native Americans, then shows how European settlers--armed with a conviction that their claim to the land was "a God-given right"--shaped the landscape both to meet economic needs and to satisfy philosophical beliefs. The often turbulent result: a conflict between practical requirements and romantic ideals that has persisted to this day. Making lively use of contemporary accounts, advertisements, maps, landscape paintings, and vintage photographs, Albers delves into the stories and personalities behind the development of a succession of Vermont landscapes. She observes the growth of communities from tiny settlements to picturesque villages to bustling cities; traces the development of agriculture, forestry, mining, industry, and the influence of burgeoning technology; and proceeds to the growth of environmental consciousness, aided by both private initiative and governmental regulation. She reveals how as community strengthens, so does responsible stewardship of the land. Albers shows that like any landscape, the Vermont landscape reflects the human decisions that have been made about it--and that the more a community understands about how such decisions have been made, the better will be its future decisions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

I love this book
This is such a wonderfully put together book.It's extremely well researched and filled with amazing photos.This is the kind of book that should be read by anyone concerned about "development," no matter where they live, because we all share the same issues.I, for one, live in Arkansas, and I would love it if Jan Albers wrote a similar book for my state.Hands On The Land is that good.

Interesting choice of topic
As an English Professor, I often try to root out the "story behind the story".Jan Albers holds a PhD from Yale, but fails to mention a background in newspaper journalism.How does one detect such a hidden past?By her consistent omission of the Oxford, or "serial" comma in her writing.

Newspaper writers often omit the final comma preceding the "and" in a series of items in a sentence to save precious column inches, thus:

"Joe had eggs, bacon and toast for breakfast."

Whereas the rest of the literary world generally includes commas to separate three or more words, phrases, or clauses written in a series, thus:

"Joe had eggs, bacon, and toast for breakfast."

Thus, I can but conclude the author's style was strongly influenced by a background in newspaper journalism.

Excellent book, just the same.History has long ignored the stage upon which the play was set.

Great Book
This is a fantastic book for those who love Vermont and the history of the land and environment.It's informative - has great photos and is just a joy to pick up at any time to take a browse.I highly recommened it.

Important, topical and beautiful.
Rarely has a volume of such physical grace and beauty contained such an important and topical message. I picked up my copy after returning to Vermont for a long weekend, and found the text both forceful, dynamic and informative, artistically combined with beautiful illustrations. Not a hagiography, and avoiding the temptation to airbrush the realities of Vermont into a pastiche of the country idyll in Yankee New England, Jan Albers has created an immensely readable but intellectually rigorous study of the development and land-use choices that Vermonters have made since the Abenaki were disturbed by white settlers.

This alone would be enough to qualify "Hands on the Land" for a place on the bookshelves of students of land-use and concerned citizens in rural and semi-rural areas everywhere. For a UK audience, the impact of sheep farming vs. cattle grazing (which denuded the forests of Vermont in the manner of the North York moors in the later 19th Century) only adds interest. That this study is so accessible and lavishly illustrated, (much in the style of the latest offerings from the OUP History of England series) commends it to the broadest possible audience. In fact, I was so taken with this that I bought two - one for my mother, a native and transplanted Vermonter, and one for me - your bookshelf will be a richer and happier place with a copy!

Glad I Read This
This remarkable book is essentially a history of Vermont told from the perspective of the relationship between human beings and the physical environment, i.e. how succeeding generations have tried to make a living out of a surprisingly inhospitable bit of territory.This provides useful lessons, as other reviewers note, on public policy and land use, but for me it was more interesting as a uniquely revealing approach to social and economic history.Among other revelations, the book highlights the fact that the popular image of Vermont as a throwback to an idyllic yesteryear is a recent creation promulgated to fuel the state's latest and arguably most successful land use ever -- tourism.The reality has been rather different.The book is easy to read, with pictures and graphics that contribute to the knowledge being conveyed.The overall conception would be worthy of emulation by historians and planners addressing other regions or periods. ... Read more