Hope for the Dammed: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Greening of the Mississippi

Always, like the Great Mississippi, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been a conduit of hope and fear and scientific conjecture, of faith in American progress and terror of what progress has wrought. Always the Engineers have shouldered much of the credit and blame for massively spectacular projects. Always, since the 1820s, when the agency emerged as a builder and broker on the Mississippi, the Corps has enlisted science in the service of waterway engineering that defenders call monumental and detractors call grandiose. My involvement began in the aftermath of Earth Day when the Corps, said a famous critic, was the environment’s “public enemy number one.” The critic, quoted in the magazine Playboy in 1969, was Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Ten years later and eight blocks from Douglas’s courthouse, on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C., I labored on a dissertation about engineering traditions in the Corps office of history in Washington, D.C. The dissertation led to a book that Corps insiders applauded and elsewhere denounced. One intelligent reader was General Robert Flowers of the Corps’ Lower Mississippi Valley Division (since expanded northward to include the upper valley). Flowers admired the book but claimed I had understated the depths of the Corps’s commitment to environmental protection. Would I visit the Corps in Vicksburg and tour the river up close? Corps historian Michael Robinson, who worked closely with Flowers, arranged for a sabbatical grant. Tragically, in 1998, Robinson died of heart failure. Two years into the project, with four of five chapters complete, the research was suspended. Chapters and excepts were published in a dozen places—in online exhibits on the Vicksburg division’s web page, in Technology and Culture, Illinois Heritage, The Military Engineer, and Craig Colten’s edited volume of New Orleans essays published in 2001. Hope for the Dammed retrieves three regional parts of the 1990s research. Moving north against the current, and metaphorically against the flow of my own assumptions about the Corps on the Mississippi, the study extends from the Head of Passes to the locks of St. Louis. It sojourns in places besieged and bitterly contested—in St. Bernard Parish below New Orleans where swampers blame the rising ocean on shipping; in Louisiana’s Atchafalaya and Yazoo’s cotton plantations; in the dredged aquatic freightway of the Corps’ slackwater dams.https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/fac_books/1390/thumbnail.jp

Perspectives on Architectural Preservation. Essays 2010-2020

The volume collects essays and reflections written on my own or in collaboration with some colleagues and friends over the last ten years of work. The time span starting from the years of my PhD up to date has represented a moment of prosperous scientific production and constant personal and professional growth. The objective of this publication is to select some of the texts already disseminated in the last years and to republish them in English as an anthology of essays about the restoration and preservation of architectural heritage, which could hopefully have scientifically relevant repercussions at national and international level. The selected essays are grouped according to three different topics concerning, respectively, the study of alternative sources and the neglect architecture for a deeper comprehension of the heritage; international case studies that are helpful to understand the different shades of the concept of cultural heritage and memory; and the preservation of the archeological heritage, which has been my specific field of study in the last years. The choice of the English language is due to the precise will to launch a dialogue and a debate capable to open up to new and emerging preservation cultures and to different approaches to the discipline of restoration of the architectural heritage. In this respect, the publication will be available in open access and printed in few copies to be distributed in universities’ libraries for free, in order to achieve free circulation of knowledge, fully fledged and open dissemination of the results of the scientific research and a more ethical approach to culture

Report of the Secretary of War communicating the several Pacific railroad explorations.

Report on Pacific Railroad Explorations. [737] Encounters with, and descriptions of, Indians of the Plains, Southwest, Great Basin, Plateau, Northwest Coast, and California

Lost and Found. Processes of abandonment of the architectural and urban heritage in inner areas. Causes, effects, and narratives (Italy, Albania, Romania)

The recent pandemic season renovated the interest for depopulated small rural or mountain towns in inner areas, also thanks to their partial repopulation by “smart workers” during the various lockdowns. Experts in different fields have been wondering if such phenomena can solve the problem of depopulation, mainly in those areas where this phenomenon occurred mainly caused by physical (e.g., hydrogeologic risk, seismic risk) and/or socio-economic risks (e.g., poverty, marginalization, ethnic discrimination). The research Riba 2021 Lost and Found. Processes of abandonment of the architectural and urban heritage in inner areas: Causes, effects, and narratives (Italy, Albania, Romania), funded by the DAStU Department of the Politecnico di Milano, whose results are gathered in the volume, investigates how abandonment factors and their effects influenced the processes of construction of memory and identity over the 20th-century, to further understand how these processes can condition the contemporary perception and interaction with depopulated areas and abandoned heritage by different user groups. The results are important to assess the potentiality of repopulation and reuse of the abandoned built environment. The research also aims to compare some case studies in southern Calabria with similar cases in Europe, particularly Romania, and Albania, which present some common features concerning the reasons for abandonment and have currently experimented new strategies for repopulation. The final purpose is to investigate how a history-based approach for the study of marginal regions affected by depopulation can help in addressing possible strategies for “mitigating” the phenomenon and its consequence in terms of cultural heritage abandonment. The history-based approach is here intended as a methodology that places the deep-rooted reasons for abandonment, as well as its repercussions on territories and settlements, within a historical context. Such an approach should help assess the potentiality of the relaunch or, conversely, the end of a specific site, and to define, in a possible future, an interpretative model able to be applied to possible strategies for repopulation and reuse of the abandoned architectural heritage in Italy and the global context

Reports of explorations and surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. made under the direction of the Secretary of War, in 1853-4, according to Acts of Congress of March 3, 1853, May 31, 1854, and August 5, 1854.

Explorations of Railroad Routes from the Mississippi to the Pacific. [791-801] Journals of expeditions, including descriptions of Indians; a northern route from Minnesota, along the Upper Missouri, to Washington; a central route from Missouri, across the Great Basin, to California; a southern route from the Red River, along the Rio Grande and Colorado Rivers, to southern California; a report on Indian tribes of the Southwest is included in pt. 3 (Serials 760 and 793)

Annual Report Of the State Geologist, 1902, Vol. 13

What we do: Since 1892, the Iowa Geological and Water Survey (IGWS) has provided earth, water, and mapping science to all Iowans. We collect and interpret information on subsurface geologic conditions, groundwater and surface water quantity and quality, and the natural and built features of our landscape. This information is critical for: Predicting the future availability of economic water supplies and mineral resources. Assuring proper function of waste disposal facilities. Delineation of geologic hazards that may jeopardize property and public safety. Assessing trends and providing protection of water quality and soil resources. Applied technical assistance for economic development and environmental stewardship. Our goal: Providing the tools for good decision making to assure the long-term vitality of Iowa’s communities, businesses, and quality of life. Information and technical assistance are provided through web-based databases, comprehensive Geographic Information System (GIS) tools, predictive groundwater models, and watershed assessments and improvement grants. The key service we provide is direct assistance from our technical staff, working with Iowans to overcome real-world challenges. This report describes the basic functions of IGWS program areas and highlights major activities and accomplishments during calendar year 2011. More information on IGWS is available at http://www.igsb.uiowa.edu/

Report of the Secretary of War communicating the several Pacific railroad explorations.

Vols 738 & 739 not available33-1Report on Pacific Railroad Explorations. [737] Encounters with, and descriptions of, Indians of the Plains, Southwest, Great Basin, Plateau, Northwest Coast, and California.1854-11

A critical edition of Thomas Hardy's "A pair of blue eyes"

This thesis presents a critical edition of Thomas Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes. In the introduction the background to the novel's publication and growth —from its inception, through its different editions, to the author’s death—is described fully, making use of extracts from relevant letters and printing records as well as Hardy's own written account. A detailed analysis of the extant manuscript is offered, including an assessment of Emma Gifford's role in the novel's early stages, and the editorial and compositorial influence on the novel's text as serialized in Tinsleys* Magazine. An account is given of all the relevant forms of the text, showing their relationship and assessing their reliability. All other surviving documentary evidence concerning authorial revision is also discussed, and some mention is made of contemporary critical reaction and publication in America. The novel's textual situation is related to current scholarly critical theory and practice; the choice of copy-text is justified, and an editorial method is outlined. The text, edited according to the principles laid down in the introduction, is presented in a clear text form, and is followed by explanatory annotation and a full textual apparatus, which includes a Historical Collation of both substantive and accidentals variants