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The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel, Jr., Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor

2013-02-18 Biography & Autobiography
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Release : 2013-02-18
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 800/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel, Jr., Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor by : Marguerite Holloway

Download or read book The Measure of Manhattan: The Tumultuous Career and Surprising Legacy of John Randel, Jr., Cartographer, Surveyor, Inventor written by Marguerite Holloway. This book was released on 2013-02-18. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Randel is endlessly fascinating, and Holloway’s biography tells his life with great skill." —Steve Weinberg, USA Today John Randel Jr. (1787–1865) was an eccentric and flamboyant surveyor. Renowned for his inventiveness as well as for his bombast and irascibility, Randel was central to Manhattan’s development but died in financial ruin. Telling Randel’s engrossing and dramatic life story for the first time, this eye-opening biography introduces an unheralded pioneer of American engineering and mapmaking. Charged with “gridding” what was then an undeveloped, hilly island, Randel recorded the contours of Manhattan down to the rocks on its shores. He was obsessed with accuracy and steeped in the values of the Enlightenment, in which math and science promised dominion over nature. The result was a series of maps, astonishing in their detail and precision, which undergird our knowledge about the island today. During his varied career Randel created surveying devices, designed an early elevated subway, and proposed a controversial alternative route for the Erie Canal—winning him admirers and enemies. The Measure of Manhattan is more than just the life of an unrecognized engineer. It is about the ways in which surveying and cartography changed the ground beneath our feet. Bringing Randel’s story into the present, Holloway travels with contemporary surveyors and scientists trying to envision Manhattan as a wild island once again. Illustrated with dozens of historical images and antique maps, The Measure of Manhattan is an absorbing story of a fascinating man that captures the era when Manhattan—indeed, the entire country—still seemed new, the moment before canals and railroads helped draw a grid across the American landscape.

City on a Grid

2015-11-10 History
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Release : 2015-11-10
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 849/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis City on a Grid by : Gerard Koeppel

Download or read book City on a Grid written by Gerard Koeppel. This book was released on 2015-11-10. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The never-before-told story of the grid that ate Manhattan

A $500 House in Detroit

2017-04-11 Social Science
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Release : 2017-04-11
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 01X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis A $500 House in Detroit by : Drew Philp

Download or read book A $500 House in Detroit written by Drew Philp. This book was released on 2017-04-11. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young college grad buys a house in Detroit for $500 and attempts to restore it—and his new neighborhood—to its original glory in this “deeply felt, sharply observed personal quest to create meaning and community out of the fallen…A standout” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Drew Philp, an idealistic college student from a working-class Michigan family, decides to live where he can make a difference. He sets his sights on Detroit, the failed metropolis of abandoned buildings, widespread poverty, and rampant crime. Arriving with no job, no friends, and no money, Philp buys a ramshackle house for five hundred dollars in the east side neighborhood known as Poletown. The roomy Queen Anne he now owns is little more than a clapboard shell on a crumbling brick foundation, missing windows, heat, water, electricity, and a functional roof. A $500 House in Detroit is Philp’s raw and earnest account of rebuilding everything but the frame of his house, nail by nail and room by room. “Philp is a great storyteller…[and his] engrossing” (Booklist) tale is also of a young man finding his footing in the city, the country, and his own generation. We witness his concept of Detroit shift, expand, and evolve as his plan to save the city gives way to a life forged from political meaning, personal connection, and collective purpose. As he assimilates into the community of Detroiters around him, Philp guides readers through the city’s vibrant history and engages in urgent conversations about gentrification, racial tensions, and class warfare. Part social history, part brash generational statement, part comeback story, A $500 House in Detroit “shines [in its depiction of] the ‘radical neighborliness’ of ordinary people in desperate circumstances” (Publishers Weekly). This is an unforgettable, intimate account of the tentative revival of an American city and a glimpse at a new way forward for generations to come.

Gotham Unbound

2014-06-03 History
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Release : 2014-06-03
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 247/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Gotham Unbound by : Theodore Steinberg

Download or read book Gotham Unbound written by Theodore Steinberg. This book was released on 2014-06-03. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the history of New York City as it was transformed over a four-hundred-year period by politicians and developers from a Hudson River estuary with rolling hills, rivers, and forests into the concrete flatland that exists today.

Footprints in New York

2014-04-15 Travel
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Release : 2014-04-15
Genre : Travel
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 404/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Footprints in New York by : James Nevius

Download or read book Footprints in New York written by James Nevius. This book was released on 2014-04-15. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NYC tour guides and authors James and Michelle Nevius explore the lives of 20 iconic New Yorkers—from Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant to Alexander Hamilton, park architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux to JP Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, Jr.—and use them to guide the reader through four centuries of the city’s story. Beginning with the oldest standing building in the city, , a 1652 farmhouse in Brooklyn, and journeying all the way to the rebuilding of the World Trade Center, the book follows in the footsteps of these iconic New Yorkers. The authors tell the stories of everyone from slave traders and long-forgotten politicians to the movers and shakers of Gilded Age society and the Greenwich Village folk scene. One part history and one part personal narrative, Footprints in New York creates a different way of looking at the past, exploring new connections and forgotten chapters in the story of America’s greatest metropolis. Visit www.footprintsinny.com for more.

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