Hallowed Ground; Preserving America's Heritage
Kenneth Garrett (Photographer) and Jack Kotz (Phot Charlottesville, VA: Thomasson-Grant & Lickle, Lickle Publishing Inc., 1996. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. The format is approximately 9.375 inches by 12.25 inches. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Illustrated endpapers. Profusely illustrated (color). Foreword by James M. McPherson. Contents include A Masterpiece of Nature, Virginia's New Frontier, Cradle of Democracy, A Killing Ground, Landscape in Peril, Organizations, Suggested Reading, and Index. Rudy Abramson was a native Appalachian, born in Florence, Ala., on Aug. 31, 1937. After graduating from the University of Mississippi in 1958, he became a reporter for the Nashville Tennessean. He was a former longtime Washington reporter for The Times who wrote a highly praised biography of American statesman W. Averell Harriman. A staff writer in The Times’ Washington bureau from 1966 to 1993, Abramson became one of the first national reporters assigned to the space program. He covered the development of the Apollo 11 mission and the historic moon landing in 1969. He wrote two books, “Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman, 1891-1986” (1992) and “Hallowed Ground: Preserving America’s Heritage” (1996), about the Piedmont region of northern Virginia, where some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War took place. While working on “Hallowed Ground,” Abramson helped organize opposition to a plan by the Walt Disney Co. to build a history theme park near a key Civil War site, the Manassas Battlefield at the eastern end of the Piedmont. He helped recruit prominent writers and historians, including William Styron, Shelby Foote and C. Vann Woodward, to defeat the proposal. The Virginia Piedmont, the gently rolling country east of the Blue Ridge, is one of the nation's most treasured rural landscapes - and one of its most endangered. In 1993, the Walt Disney Company's announcement of its plan to build an American history theme park in Haymarket, Virginia, within miles of some of the area's most significant historic sites, sparked intense debate about the impact of the proposed development on the Piedmont and its residents. The struggle that ensued, and Disney's eventual withdrawal of the plan, focused international attention on this beautiful and historic part of the world. With evocative photographs and delightfully informative text, Hallowed Ground takes readers on an insider's excursion down the scenic byways and into the storied past of this special region.
Home to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and a host of other great Americans, the Piedmont's graceful foothills and fertile soil helped nurture the ideas that inspired the American Revolution. During the Civil War, Piedmont fields and forests became bloody testing grounds for the nation's survival at places like Manassas, Chancellorsville, and the Wilderness. Today, the region's quaint villages and quiet valleys face a different kind of threat from a "blacktop and concrete revolution," as historian James M. McPherson notes in his introduction.
Whether in an image of the sunset reflecting off a puddle in a country lane in Delaplane, or in the story of Jack Jouett's midnight ride from Cuckoo Tavern to Charlottesville to warn Governor Jefferson that the British were coming, armchair travelers and born-and-bred Virginians alike will find in Hallowed Ground ample reason to preserve and protect the Piedmont. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Virginia, Piedmont, Battlefields, Historic Sites, Historic Preservation, Natural Resources, Democracy, Landscape, Civil War, Fredericksburg
ISBN: 0965030865
[Book #85988]
Price: $65.00