The Story of the King's Highway PDF Download

Author: Sidney Webb
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Local government
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Author: Eric Jaffe
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439176108
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
A VIVID AND FASCINATING LOOK AT AMERICAN HISTORY THROUGH THE PRISM OF THE COUNTRY’S MOST STORIED HIGHWAY, THE BOSTON POST ROAD During its evolution from Indian trails to modern interstates, the Boston Post Road, a system of over-land routes between New York City and Boston, has carried not just travelers and mail but the march of American history itself. Eric Jaffe captures the progress of people and culture along the road through four centuries, from its earliest days as the king of England’s “best highway” to the current era. Centuries before the telephone, radio, or Internet, the Boston Post Road was the primary conduit of America’s prosperity and growth. News, rumor, political intrigue, financial transactions, and personal missives traveled with increasing rapidity, as did people from every walk of life. From post riders bearing the alarms of revolution, to coaches carrying George Washington on his first presidential tour, to railroads transporting soldiers to the Civil War, the Boston Post Road has been essential to the political, economic, and social development of the United States. Continuously raised, improved, rerouted, and widened for faster and heavier traffic, the road played a key role in the advent of newspapers, stagecoach travel, textiles, mass-produced bicycles and guns, commuter railroads, automobiles—even Manhattan’s modern grid. Many famous Americans traveled the highway, and it drew the keen attention of such diverse personages as Benjamin Franklin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, P. T. Barnum, J. P. Morgan, and Robert Moses. Eric Jaffe weaves this entertaining narrative with a historian’s eye for detail and a journalist’s flair for storytelling. A cast of historical figures, celebrated and unknown alike, tells the lost tale of this road. Revolutionary printer William Goddard created a postal network that united the colonies against the throne. General Washington struggled to hold the highway during the battle for Manhattan. Levi Pease convinced Americans to travel by stagecoach until, half a century later, Nathan Hale convinced them to go by train. Abe Lincoln, still a dark-horse candidate in early 1860, embarked on a railroad speaking tour along the route that clinched the presidency. Bomb builder Lester Barlow, inspired by the Post Road’s notorious traffic, nearly sold Congress on a national system of expressways twenty-five years before the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. Based on extensive travels of the highway, interviews with people living up and down the road, and primary sources unearthed from the great libraries between New York City and Boston—including letters, maps, contemporaneous newspapers, and long-forgotten government documents—The King’s Best Highway is a delightful read for American history buffs and lovers of narrative everywhere.

Author: Daniel Sullivan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781495169137
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Sidney Webb
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Local government
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Author: Amor Towles
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735222371
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 593

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “Fantastic. Set in 1954, Towles uses the story of two brothers to show that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope.” —Bill Gates “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” —NPR The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. “Once again, I was wowed by Towles’s writing—especially because The Lincoln Highway is so different from A Gentleman in Moscow in terms of setting, plot, and themes. Towles is not a one-trick pony. Like all the best storytellers, he has range. He takes inspiration from famous hero’s journeys, including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men. He seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as an interstate highway. But, he suggests, when something (or someone) tries to steer us off course, it is possible to take the wheel.” – Bill Gates

Author: Pete Davies
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780805072976
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Davies recounts these treacherous travels in a brisk and readable style . . . he has put history, sociology, politics, and human nature into well-tuned balance. The Boston Globe

Author: William B. Magnan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780963144867
Category : Saint Louis (Mo.)
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
With a historical narrative and comprehensive index of street names as well as a thorough appendix of state governors, city mayors and city schools, the Magnans show how the famous, infamous and unknown have left their marks on the city with a street sign.

Author: Brandon Sanderson
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0765376679
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1013

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Book Description
A new epic fantasy series from the New York Times bestselling author chosen to complete Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time® Series

Author: Chuck Missler
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781880532560
Category : Agape
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Chuck and Nancy Missler share principles for learning to love and be loved, a principle they see as epitomizing the essence of the will of God. They call their program, "The Way of Agape".

Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Pocket Books
ISBN: 9781668084281
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Only Stephen King, writing as Richard Bachman, can imagine the horror of a good and angry man who fights back against bureaucracy when it threatens to destroy his vitality, home, and memories. “Under any name King mesmerizes the reader” (Chicago Sun-Times). It’s all coming to an end for Barton Dawes. The city’s Highway 784 extension is in the process of being constructed right across town and inexorably through every aspect of Bart’s existence—whether it’s about to barrel over the laundry plant where he makes a living, or soon to smash through the very home where he makes a life. But as a result, something’s been happening inside Bart’s head that a heartless local bureaucracy isn’t prepared for—a complete and irrevocable burnout of the mental circuit breaker that keeps a mild-mannered person from turning to violent means. As the wheels of progress and a demolition crew continue unabated throughout Bart’s neighborhood, he’s not about to give everything up without a fight. As a matter of fact, he’s ready and waiting to ignite an explosive confrontation with the legislative forces gathered against him…