Ithaca, New York has often been called the Hollywood of the East, growing from farms to factories to Cornell University--Ithaca's history is an interesting and broad one. Nestled in the heart of the Finger Lakes, Ithaca was planned by surveyor Simeon DeWitt and incorporated in 1821 when steamboats signaled Cayuga Lake's heyday of commerce and recreation. Spectacular creeks and waterfalls powered grist, plaster, carding, and other mills. From farms, merchants, and mills, Ithaca's industries grew to include the famous Thomas-Morse Aviation Company and Morse Chain Works. By 1914, Wharton Studios was producing silent films in this Hollywood of the East. Such notable residents as actress Irene Castle, the Tremans, and community leader James L. Gibbs called Ithaca home. Ithacans became known for community involvement early on. St. James AME Zion Church served as a stop on the Underground Railroad, and Elizabeth Beebe built a mission for needy Rhiners. Ezra Cornell and Andrew D. White realized their ideal of education when Cornell University opened in 1868, followed in 1892 by the Ithaca Conservatory of Music, which became Ithaca College in 1931. Students protested segregation in front of Woolworth's 30 years later, and echoes of this idealism can still be found here today.

Defender is the first and only scholarly biography of Daniel H. Wells, one of the important yet historically neglected leaders among the nineteenth-century Mormons—leaders like Heber C. Kimball, George Q. Cannon, and Jedediah M. Grant. An adult convert to the Mormon faith during the Mormons’ Nauvoo period, Wells developed relationships with men at the highest levels of the church hierarchy, emigrated to Utah with the Mormon pioneers, and served in a series of influential posts in both church and state. Wells was known especially as a military leader in both Nauvoo and Utah—he led the territorial militia in four Indian conflicts and a confrontation with the US Army (the Utah War). But he was also the territorial attorney general and obtained title to all the land in Salt Lake City from the federal government during his tenure as the mayor of Salt Lake City. He was Second Counselor to Brigham Young in the LDS Church's First Presidency and twice served as president of the Mormon European mission. Among these and other accomplishments, he ran businesses in lumbering, coal mining, manufacturing, and gas production; developed roads, ferries, railroads, and public buildings; and presided over a family of seven wives and thirty-seven children. Wells witnessed and influenced a wide range of consequential events that shaped the culture, politics, and society of Utah in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Using research from relevant collections, sources in public records, references to Wells in the Joseph Smith papers, other contemporaneous journals and letters, and the writings of Brigham Young, Quentin Thomas Wells has created a serious and significant contribution to Mormon history scholarship.

Calmly nestled among the glacial streams and hills of central New York, residents of Ithaca may find it hard to believe that their city began with a rocky start. Transient teamsters and salt barge workers gave the town a rowdy reputation in its pioneer days, and the fledgling village seemed doomed as the most isolated place on the Eastern Seaboard. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Ithacas character swung like a pendulum from debauchery to temperance, from boisterous vagrancy to religious fervor and reform. Though the town was hit hard by the Depression of 1837 and periodically ravaged by fire and flood, Ithaca survived to become a lively and bustling community and an important center of education, technological innovation and cultural vibrancy. In this comprehensive history, Carol Kammen shows exactly why Ithaca is known as the Crown of Cayuga.

This succinct and engaging history of the founding of Cornell University traces the institution's origins within the educational climate of mid-nineteenth-century America. Originally delivered as six lectures celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the opening the university, this book was first published by Cornell University Press in 1943.Beginning with a survey of collegiate education prior to the Civil War, Carl L. Becker details the history of the Morrill Land Grant College Act that made possible the establishment of Cornell (among other universities); deftly portrays the lives of the Ezra Cornell, who supplied the essential idea and funding for the university, and Andrew D. White, who, as legislator, lobbyist, and first university president, made Cornell's dream a reality; and desrcibes the events surrounding the incorporation and opening of the university in 1868.Also included in this book are fifteen documents pertaining to its founding, as well as Becker's 1940 lecture, "The Cornell Tradition: Freedom and Responsibility."

A small city's big vision that can help transform your own community. We all want a sustainable future, but what does it look like, and how do we get there? In Ithaca, NY a new culture is blossoming-one that values cooperation, local production, environmental stewardship, social justice andcreativity. Ithaca is showing the way to meet the challenges of the day with a wide variety of practical, real-world solutions. Filled with inspiring examples, Choosing a Sustainable Future provides readers with a remarkable sense of possibility. Explore Ithaca's: bustling, vibrant farmers markets, overflowing with fresh, local produce award-winning community credit union that triples the savings of low-income people flagship college sustainability programs pioneering alternative transportation programs, such as Ithaca Carshare innovative efforts by coalitions of local business, university, government and activists to create transformation in areas as diverse as green building, city planning, health and wellness, and honoring cultural diversity. Taken together, these examples of citizen engagement are a taste of what life could be like in a sustainable city of the future. In a time of overwhelming economic, social and environmental crises, Choosing aSustainable Future provides a quiet, authoritative voice of hope.