One of the most dramatic and revealing reviews of the history of the United States" wetlands, and its transition from a place to fear to a place of sanctuary, is Discovering the Unknown Landscape: A History of America's Wetlands published in 1997 by Ann Vileisis. Vileisis is a prominent advocate and lecturer in the field of environmental awareness, preservation, and restoration. In this, her one and only book, she attempts to enlighten her readers in the same way she realized the importance of wetlands herself. She emphasizes the threatening actions that have occurred throughout the progress of our country and are still occurring today, and how her opinions and prejudices have changed from when she was a young child. The publishers, Island Press, market her book under the guise of "The Official Earth Day Guide to Planet Repairs." .
Ann Vileisis has studied at several Ivy League schools and received an environmental history degree from Yale University. She enjoys traveling to and exploring many of the remaining wetlands in the U.S. as an educational guide for Outward Bound USA. Her book won the "George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History" in 1999 from the American Society for Environmental History.
Vileisis takes the reader through the chronology of our country as it emerges into the world's lone "Superpower" and how this growth has been at the expense and ignorance of our nation's wetlands. She challenges the reader to let go of his Puritan prejudices concerning swamps, marshes, bogs, and bottomlands, and adopt more enlightened attitudes and stances on preservation and restoration. Discovering the Unknown Landscape describes some of the experiences of early French, English, and Spanish explorers as they moved in canoes across the region, listing in their journals what indigenous trees, birds, fish, wildlife, grasses, flora, and even native Indians they encountered.
Most obvious is Marlow's journey to discover Africa, and the effects of imperialism. ... The landscape takes on a hellish nature and the wilderness is personified. ... Based on the racist views of the time, it is not surprising that Conrad describes the vast unknown that Africa was at that time, as paralleling hell. ...
This is done by means of connotations and imagery inherent within the landscape; therefore, utilizing these concepts to create an alien, but common internality. ... By using the words "down there," the poem creates a mysterious and incredible interest because now the reader desires to discover this unknown thing to be told, to understand oneself for the better and one's reality; however, she ends it here. ...
Effectively, in the book untitled The spontaneous poetics of Jack Kerouac, the author Regina Weinreich says that: "Kerouac's writing is an attempt to discover form not to imitate it and to discover experience in the act of writing about it, as if the language of the "mental spontaneous process " could expose some human experience as yet unknown simply because no writer had dared to set it down unimpinged by "craft "and traditional sense"" (4). ... For example, in the novel, Kerouac and the other authors live and breathe the country of America: its colors, landscapes, sou...
Did the Portuguese "discover" Australia in the 1520's? ... The Portuguese discovered the offshore islands of Timor and Solor in 1516, however the official sighting of the mainland was much later. ... The question remains however, as to who exactly were the unknown Portuguese navigators who discovered Australia in the 1520's. ... It has been suggested that the possibility of "coincidental duplication," that is, of two separate visitors, unknown to each other, being involved, is most unlikely. La Trobe conjectured that the keys were one hundred to one hundred and fifty years old,...
Meanwhile, this landscape profoundly affected postcolonial United States. It was a time where one discovered complicated links between material conditions, ideology and power. ... While the shift to landscape painting in Europe at about the same time was seen as a move away from the more eminent topics of historical painting, in America the representation of landscape by the Hudson River School was understood as a form of historical painting in which the landscape was filled with culturally rich iconographic and symbolic meaning. ... His perception of the American landscape was produced by th...
Geographically, it may not seem like a new world, or even an unknown one for that matter, considering the Dominican Republic is well known for its world class, all-inclusive resorts. However, culturally, it might as well have been a newly found planet, and we were its discoverers. Being the discoverer of a new planet, I naturally ventured out and explored my immediate surroundings, encountering things I could only imagine. ... However, this was not the grassy countryside landscape where we set up camp. ... That voyage into the unknown made me re-prioritize my values and reassess my goals for...
These words have been an instrument in the social landscape of the United States since they were penned in the Declaration of Independence. ... We count these moments – these moments where we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, reach for the stars, to make the unknown known - we count these moments as our proudest achievements. ... We have discovered that when we create something that awards us with pride and a sense of achievement, we literally feel happy. ... Weiner visited many countries as part of a quest to discover the true meaning of happiness. ... What he discovered was somewh...
., a group of Italic people known as the Oscans occupied the region; they most likely established Pompeii, although the exact date of its origin is unknown. ... In the 1500's workers digging a tunnel to change the course of the Sarno river discovered parts of a temple and the forum, but no one paid much attention. In 1748, a farmer discovered a wall and the authorities in Italy began a series of excavations. ... (pic. 1). , of unknown artist, this painted wall in Pompeii is about 12" x 8". ...
., a group of Italic people known as the Oscans occupied the region; they most likely established Pompeii, although the exact date of its origin is unknown. ... In the 1500's workers digging a tunnel to change the course of the Sarno river discovered parts of a temple and the forum, but no one paid much attention. In 1748, a farmer discovered a wall and the authorities in Italy began a series of excavations. ... (pic. 1). , of unknown artist, this painted wall in Pompeii is about 12" x 8". ...