In the 1800s, the moist soil of the Midwest would stick to plow blades, stopping the farmers as they plowed. Young blacksmith John Deere knew about the problem, so he designed and built a self-scouring plow. With this small start, he founded the famous farm implement company Deere & Company and started down the road to success.

Back in the 1830s, who was a young blacksmith from Vermont, about to make his mark on American history? John Deere, that’s who! Who moved to Illinois, where farmers were struggling to plow through the thick, rich soil they called gumbo? Who tinkered and tweaked and tested until he invented a steel plow that sliced into the prairie easy as you please? Long before the first tractor, who changed farming forever? John Deere, that’s who! Beautiful illustrations—including spectacular landscapes—reflect the time period and bring John Deere's remarkable story to life.

Identifying thousands of historical fiction novels, biographies, history trade books, CD-ROMs, and videotapes, this book helps you locate resources on American history for students. Each book presents information in two sections. In the first part, titles are listed according to grade levels within eras and further organized according to product type. The books cover American history from North America Before 1600 and The American Colonies, 1600-1774 to The Mid-Twentieth Century, 1946-1975 and Since 1975. The second section has annotated bibliographies that describe each title and includes publication information and awards won. The focus is on books published since 1990, and all have received at least one favorable review. Some books with more illustration than text will be valuable for enticing slow or reticent readers. An index helps users find resources by author, title, or biographical subject.

This book presents an age of nationalism, imperialism, modernization, industrialism, and great cultural achievement, stretching from 1800, when Europe was awash in the wake of the French Revolution, the reign of terror, and the coming rise of Napoleon, to Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination in 1914. Concise biographical entries provide basic information on the great talents of the era—Beethoven, the Romantic poets, Hegel—as well as leaders in the modernization and industrialization of Western culture. Included are figures who played major roles on the imperialist and nationalist stage, those—such as Darwin and Planck—who made significant contributions to science, and those who struggled for women's rights and Abolition in the United States.

Encyclopedic entries cover the prominent people and events of the period of dramatic industrial growth in the United States.

Combines creative activities with a comprehensive list of biographies written for children. Organized by age group: pre-school (ages 3-5), primary (6-8), intermediate (9-11), and young people (12-14).

Measuring over 10,000 miles, the Great Lakes coastline, known as the “third coast,” is longer than the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines of the United States combined. It is difficult to overstate the history and future of the region as both a contested and opportunistic site for urbanism. Envisaged as a comprehensive “atlas,” this publication comprises in-depth analysis of the landscapes, hydrology, infrastructure, urban form, and ecologies of the region, delivered through a series of analytical cartographies supported by scholarly and design research from internationally renowned scholars, photographers, and practitioners from the disciplines of architecture, landscape, geography, planning, and ecology. This publication was awarded with a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

In Farm, Joyce Kinkead, Evelyn Funda, and Lynne S. McNeill explore the culture of agriculture through a diverse and multicultural collection of fiction, poetry, essays, art, recipes, and folklore. This reader views farming through a variety of lenses, asking students to consider what farms, farming, and farmers mean, and have meant, to culture in the United States. In the text, readers are guided through the Jeffersonian idealism of the yeoman farmer (“cultivators of the earth are the chosen people of God”) to literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Thoreau’s “The Bean-Field,” Cather’s prairie trilogy, Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and Carpenter’s Farm City). Contributors provide historical context for the literary texts, such as discussion of sharecropping vs. plantation systems, the rise of agribusiness and chemical farming, and Teddy Roosevelt’s Country Life Commission. Written, visual, and oral texts ask readers to consider the farm in art (Grant Wood), ecology (Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring), children’s and young adult literature (classic children’s books, YA novels, nonfiction, and poetry), advertising (from early boosterism to Chipotle videos), print culture (farmers’ market and victory garden posters from both world wars), folklore (food culture, vintners, and veterinarian practices), popular culture (Farm Aid concerts), and much more. Each reading is supported by activities, exercises, projects, and visual rhetorical elements that further connect students to agriculture and the essential work of farmers.

Turning dreams into inventions can be a challenge, but lots of kids do it every day. The Kids' Invention Book takes kids step-by-step through the creative process, from finding the inspiration to building a model. The book also includes information on applying for a patent, entering invention contests, and starting an inventors' club.

Follows the life and works of the popular nineteenth-century English author.