Results by title

3 books match the query 'North Country'

cover of Battles of the North Country: Wilderness Politics and Recreational Development in the Adirondack State Park, 1920-1980

Battles of the North Country

Wilderness Politics and Recreational Development in the Adirondack State Park, 1920-1980

Jonathan D. Anzalone

University of Massachusetts Press, 2018

The Adirondack region is trapped in a cycle of conflict. Nature lovers advocate for the preservation of wilderness, while sports enthusiasts demand infrastructure for recreation. Local residents seek economic opportunities, while environmentalists fight industrial or real estate growth. These clashes have played out over the course of the twentieth century and continue into the twenty-first.

Through a series of case studies, historian Jonathan D. Anzalone highlights the role of public and private interests in the region and shows how partnerships frayed and realigned in the course of several key developments: the rise of camping in the 1920s and 1930s; the 1932 Lake Placid Olympics; the construction of a highway to the top of Whiteface Mountain; the postwar rise of downhill skiing; the completion of I-87 and the resulting demand for second homes; and the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. Battles of the North Country reveals how class, economic self-interest, state power, and a wide range of environmental concerns have shaped modern politics in the Adirondacks and beyond.
[more]
cover of Minnesota Green: The Highs and Lows of Cannabis in the North Country

Minnesota Green

The Highs and Lows of Cannabis in the North Country

Tanner Berris

University of Minnesota Press, 2027

The socially fraught and surprisingly colorful history of cannabis in Minnesota

In a sweeping narrative, Minnesota Green presents the previously untold story of cannabis and its long and complex history of criminalization, activism, and legislative contention. Seamlessly blending historical research, political analysis, and lived experience, activist and industry insider Tanner Berris traces the highs and lows of the plant’s presence in a state often held up as a beacon of progressive policymaking. Trekking across this fraught history, Berris documents how nineteenth-century hemp cultivation coincided with the federal dispossession of Indigenous lands, how, by the 1930s, moral panic turned cannabis from a common crop into a criminal threat, and how the “Hemp for Victory” campaign during World War II temporarily lifted a federal ban before the postwar decades gave way to renewed policing and punishment.

Paying close attention to school-based antidrug curricula, racialized rhetoric, patient testimonies, eradication campaigns, and widespread propaganda, Berris uncovers the prohibitionist roots of the “marijuana menace” and how reformers worked to reclaim the plant’s maligned reputation throughout the twentieth century. The fight for medical cannabis during the AIDS crisis, the revival of industrial hemp, and Minnesota’s embrace of low-dose hemp-derived products—all are pivotal points in the state’s reshaping of both public opinion and regulatory imagination.

At its core, this story is about Minnesotans: farmers experimenting with commercial hemp, activists staging legalization protests, policymakers wrestling with public caution, entrepreneurs and tribal leaders navigating a complex regulatory landscape, and local communities confronting the unjust racial and social consequences of punitive—and often violently policed—prohibition. At once a regional history and civic memoir, Minnesota Green vividly documents how a once-criminalized plant reemerged as a symbol of renewal and self-determination in Minnesota.

Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

[more]
cover of Notes from the North Country

Notes from the North Country

O. B. Eustis

University of Michigan Press, 1983

In Notes from the North Country, O. B. Eustis observes and records the seasonal changes of the north country from his home in northern Michigan. Each observation in his year-long diary reflects a special insight about nature. He writes about those he has come to know so well—the deer and duck, mink and skunk, sparrow and chickadee. He writes about pussy willows, Juneberries, lilacs, and goldenrod; and he writes about winter's hardship, spring's blooming, summer's storms, and fall's first snow¬—truly a love affair with nature.
[more]