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"As an introduction to Vermont history and politics and agriculture, readers would be advised to pick up The Vermont Encyclopedia, the first such comprehensive reference work in more than 70 years. It's an elegantly produced and written volume—more than 1,000 entries written by 140 contributors—that covers a good deal of ground, from agriculture to the arts to manufacturing to town histories to such idiosyncratic personalities as Hetty Green, the Witch of Wall Street, Champ, Lake Champlain's purported denizen of the deep, and of course, Fred Tuttle."—Valley News
The definitive sourcebook for Vermont facts, figures, people, events, and history.
When outsiders think of Vermont, they conjure up images of pumpkin picking against a backdrop of stunning fall foliage, skiing the Green Mountains in wintertime, harvesting maple syrup in mud season, and canoeing on Lake Champlain in the summer. Ethan Allen comes to mind, as do Robert Frost, Norman Rockwell, Calvin Coolidge, and, more recently, James Jeffords. Other Vermont touchstones include Ben & Jerry’s, Holstein cows in hillside pastures, and tranquil village greens featuring a single white church. This is romantic Vermont, a place that seems to have changed little since it joined the union in 1791.
In reality, Vermont is much more complex. It is a place of dramatic contrasts, with a rich and provocative history. First a contested frontier region and then an independent republic, Vermont eventually became one of the most politically conservative states while gaining a reputation for innovation in areas such as the production of machine tools. Although agriculture was its mainstay, Vermont became famous for its high-grade marble and granite and, later, for the development of skiing, now one of its most important economic activities.
Beginning in the 1950s, Vermont became a mecca for enterprising individuals from other parts of the country whose alliance with native-born Vermonters gradually changed the state into a liberal political bastion. Active in the preservation of the good life through conservation and land management, Vermonters also pioneered the legal recognition of gay relationships. The state has preserved such civic forms as the town meeting and the citizen legislature while also providing a welcome for environmentally sound new industries and start-up businesses.
Most existing encyclopedias on Vermont were published more than seventy years ago. The Vermont Encyclopedia’s thousand-plus entries, the work of 140 contributors, present a completely up-to-date and comprehensive collection of information on the Green Mountain State. Drawn from the most recent research available, its subjects range from prehistoric settlement to events in today’s headlines. Entries include famous and infamous Vermonters, features of the physical landscape; political, economic, and social history; organizations like the 251 Club; and tidbits on nudism, the Wasp (the only car ever made in Vermont), the fabled fur-bearing trout, and the invention of the jogbra.
Four topical essays introduce the volume. These treat the geography, climate, and natural history of the state; offer an account of settlement from precolonial times to the present; analyze and discuss contemporary features of Vermont’s demography, commerce, and culture; and describe the evolution and current structure of the Vermont Constitution as well as state, county and municipal government. The essays are followed by the individual entries, arranged alphabetically. Supplemented by charts, maps, and photographs, The Vermont Encyclopedia will serve as the quintessential guide to the Green Mountain state for years to come.
"Duffy, Hand, and Orth and 141 other contributors offer a comprehensive, accurate, reasonably priced, readable compilation devoted to all aspects of the most rural and one of the most liberal states. Seventy illustrations and an easy-to-read three-column format enhance the volume."—Choice
"Anyone with an interest in the state of Vermont and its past will welcome The Vermont Encyclopedia. There has never been a compact reference book about Vermont at once as comprehensive and accessible as this volume . . . Samuel B. Hand's essay on Vermont's history is the best concise survey of the subject that I have read."—Vermont History
"The Vermont Encyclopedia, the first comprehensive history of the state in nearly 70 years, manages to compile nearly all pertinent facts about Vermont in a single volume. Furthermore, unbelievably, it makes for excellent reading . . . it can be dipped into easily by young adults, or digested by scholars."—Vermont Sunday Magazine
FROM THE BOOK
"[The Vermont Encyclopedia] will provide Vermonters and other readers interested in or attracted to this place a one-volume collection of information on some of Vermont’s most noteworthy people, places, events, natural features, organizations, artifacts, flora and fauna, and it will help them verify a name, date, or fact, enliven a discussion, strengthen an argument, write a report, proposal, or student paper, or just learn something interesting. The editors subscribe to the notion that knowing Vermont today is enhanced by knowing the who, why, and when of how it came to be as it is, so The Vermont Encyclopedia both looks back in time and attends to the present. It is an historical dictionary and a current report."—from the Preface
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JOHN J. DUFFY of Isle La Motte is Emeritus Professor of English and Humanities at Johnson State College. He is the author and editor of several books and numerous articles on topics in American and especially Vermont literary and cultural history. He was the chief editor of Ethan Allen and His Kin: Correspondence, 1772–1819 (1998), which the Vermont Book Professionals Association named the Best Non-Fiction Vermont book for 1998.
SAMUEL B. HAND of Burlington, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Vermont, was named "Dean of Vermont Historians" by the Rutland Herald in 1999. He was the President of the Vermont Historical Society and is the author and editor of many articles and books on Vermont history, including Vermont Voices (1999) and The Star that Set: The Vermont Republication Party, 1854–1974 (2002).
RALPH H. ORTH of Shelburne is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Vermont. He was chief editor of The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1976–82) and The Poetry Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1978–80). He was an editor of Ethan Allen and His Kin: Correspondence, 1772–1819 (1998).
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