- Hardcover: 313 pages
- Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press; illustrated edition edition (Mar 1 1972)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0801811899
- ISBN-13: 978-0801811890
- Product Dimensions: 25 x 20 x 1.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 667 g
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||
Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"This book deserves careful attention... Lemon is a professional geographer, but historians will read his book as an imaginative approach to social history. The Best Poor Man's Country is a distinguished and important book." -- American Historical Review
Book Description
In many respects early Pennsylvania was the prototype of North American development. Its conservative defense of liberal individualism, its population of mixed national and religious origins, its dispersed farms, county seats, and farm-service villages, and its mixed crop and livestock agriculture served as models for much of the rural Middle West. To many western Europeans in the eighteenth century, life in early Pennsylvania offered a veritable paradise and refuge from oppression. Some called it "the best poor man's country in the world."
The role of cultural backgrounds is important in this study of the development of early southeastern Pennsylvania, and as important is the interplay of people with the land. Lemon discusses the settlement of the land by western Europeans; the geographical and social mobility of the people; territorial organizations of farmlands, towns, and counties; and regional variations in land use, especially farming practices. Providing deeper access into the processes of social change, The Best Poor Man's Country remains a significant addition to the literature on colonial American historiography.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
Since The Best Poor Man's Country was published three decades ago, many studies have appeared on early Pennsylvania. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Since The Best Poor Man's Country was published three decades ago, many studies have appeared on early Pennsylvania. Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet on Amazon.ca
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
thorough, academic, still worthwhile, Jan 11 2008
By Paul A. Kelley "PakMan" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Best Poor Man's Country: Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (Paperback)
For those willing to put in some effort, Lemon's book is a very good study that is not at all poorly written and reaches out beyond an audience of academic scholars even while staying within a somewhat restrictive structure. His thesis is exactly what the title indicates: that the settlement and economic development which occurred in colonial southeastern Pennsylvania was the result of the richness of the land, the abundance of social opportunity, and resulting momentum generated by this fortunate "geography," a term that encompasses, as the subject of geography does, a whole host of physical, cultural, and social characteristics that interact with other over time to create a unique landscape in a particular place - in this case, colonial southeastern Pennsylvania.This book is a geographic study, and the language of academic geography is not readily accessible to most Americans, who have no background in true geographic thought, even those with an adequate understanding of and interest in popular geography. For example, Lemon's lengthy academic exercise, wherein he assesses how well settlement patterns and land uses approximate von Thunen's agricultural land use model is a bit of a slog - good academic prose, but a bit arcane of a subject even for today's academic geographers or college students.
Certainly, reading The Best Poor Man's Country is not like reading a book by John McPhee, nor was it meant to be. Lemon does not set out to weave a good yarn, where curiosity-driven diversions are neatly tied together as a piece of creative non-fiction. Instead, he follows a very careful and thorough, albeit somewhat dry, scientific tradition; he wrestles with a lot of data for the purpose of making a convincing and interesting argument, and then makes it again from other angles in subsequent chapters, and perhaps develops it a little deeper, too. He demonstrates that geographic ideas and theories and a lot of historical documents can be used to reconstruct and explain how and why early southeastern Pennsylvania developed in the way that it did. This secondary purpose, common in academic studies, can obfuscate the plainer story summed up in the words of the title.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Great Idea, not convincingly written..., Feb 20 1998
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Best Poor Man's Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (Paperback)
The author took a wonderful idea (Geography as a factor in growth) and extensive research, and combined them into a book that would have done better as individual articles. The data was extensive, but the structure of the book did not make for a comprehensive read, and left me (as a reader) without a clean understanding of the authors point. A wonderful idea, but a bit hard to trudge through.
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Arts & Photography > Architecture > Landscape
- Books > History > Americas > United States
- Books > History > United States
- Books > Home & Garden > Gardening & Horticulture > Landscape
- Books > Science > Agricultural Sciences
- Books > Science > Earth Sciences > Geography > Historic
- Books > Sports
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
