Visiting Our Past

Fülszöveg

Cookfire and candleglow flood the big room with soft light and pungent warmth. On a tabletop polished by the centuries, shiny apples and fresh nuts lend a timeless air. What tales those broad floorboards and ponderous old beams could teli -for it was here in Pennsylvania's Thompson-Neely House that George Washington's bold revolutionaries ate and slept and plotted an attack onTrenton in December of 1776. One of them was 18-year-old Lt. James Monroe, destined to become the fifth President of the nation he now fought to free from British rule. As a hostess pokes the blazing brands, time begins to blur in the visitor's imagination. Is this today -or two hundred years ago? Such is the power of a house, a trail, a church, a battlefield, an islet in the stream of years where history dwells undisturbed. "Our main highways to the past remain what they were in the pre-electronic age before photography, before radio and television: our books and our landscape." In these words histórián Dániel... Tovább

Fülszöveg

Cookfire and candleglow flood the big room with soft light and pungent warmth. On a tabletop polished by the centuries, shiny apples and fresh nuts lend a timeless air. What tales those broad floorboards and ponderous old beams could teli -for it was here in Pennsylvania's Thompson-Neely House that George Washington's bold revolutionaries ate and slept and plotted an attack onTrenton in December of 1776. One of them was 18-year-old Lt. James Monroe, destined to become the fifth President of the nation he now fought to free from British rule. As a hostess pokes the blazing brands, time begins to blur in the visitor's imagination. Is this today -or two hundred years ago? Such is the power of a house, a trail, a church, a battlefield, an islet in the stream of years where history dwells undisturbed. "Our main highways to the past remain what they were in the pre-electronic age before photography, before radio and television: our books and our landscape." In these words histórián Dániel J. Boorstin, Pulitzer laureate and Librarian of Congress, keynotes the unforgettable adventure of 1Visiting Our Past. In the rich colors of more than 400 illustrations and the lively writings of Dr. Boorstin and seven other author-historians, you experience a compelling odyssey that sweeps from (Continued on back flap)
shore to shore, from bordér to bordér in search of America's historylands. Incisive sections bring pivotal eras to life. At treasured sites you sense the perils faced by colonists struggling for Footholds in a New World. You visit bastions of The Colonial Frontier. You feel the dread pulse of war as colonies rebel In Pursuit of Liberty. Watch Americans Spread Out to claim their new nation's riches. Tread the Hallowed Ground where the house divided became the Union preserved. Stride the rough-hewn frontier with cowpokes, traders, miners, and railroaders Taming the West. Jóin the thinkers and tinkerers in attics and workshops, busily Mechanizing a Nation and transforming it into an industrial giant. Eleven maps guide you to sites where yesteryear is now. "There is no substitute for going," writes Dr. Boorstin. When you and your family are ready to go visiting our past, take with you the handy supplement that accompanies the book. It's a unique guide to somé 400 time capsules of the past. Open it to any state -and find forts or Spanish missions, imposing monuments or simple old houses, historic mills, gloomy jails, cheery gardens, sites to fill a lifetime of weekends and vacations. More than 50 maps show you where those sites are. Visiting Our Past: America's Historylands is available only from National Geographic headquarters. For a free publications catalog and information on membership, write the Secretary---- Vissza