Vermont is a tiny state with a big heart. It’s a place that inspires dreams and stirs imagination. It’s a state of mind, with a deeply rooted sense of place. One that values the land and moves to the beat of the seasons. For more than forty years, author Anne Averyt has called Vermont home. She has shared the land and the life of Vermont; she knows what makes this small state special. In Vermont Perspectives: Sense of Place, State of Mind, Averyt easily moves between a spirited fiddle hoedown and the calm of a backcounty road. She explores, with insight and humor, the keen sense of place and solid footing in local values that shape Vermonters’ views of home and the world beyond. A nine-year veteran commentator on Vermont Public Radio, Averyt shares her experience in this expanded collection of eighty of her Commentary essays.

Surveys the history, land, economy, politics and government, culture, and notable people and events of Vermont.

Harry Potter and the Millennials tells the fascinating story of how the team designed the study and gathered results, explains what conclusions can and cannot be drawn, and reveals the challenges social scientists face in studying political science, sociology, and mass communication. Specifically, the evidence indicates that Harry Potter fans are more open to diversity and are more politically tolerant than nonfans; fans are also less authoritarian, less likely to support the use of deadly force or torture, more politically active, and more likely to have had a negative view of the Bush administration. Furthermore, these differences do not disappear when controlling for other important predictors of these perspectives, lending support to the argument that the series indeed had an independent effect on its audience. In this clear and cogent account, Gierzynski demonstrates how social scientists develop and design research questions and studies.

"Vermont's story is filled with rebellious individuals and collective outbursts, people and moments that forged its path as a small, independent state with a strong sense of how to preserve its traditions while changing with the times. Restless Spirits & Popular Movements revisits this unique history through memorable events and people who helped create the delicate balance of sovereignty and solidarity, political independence and mutual aid known as the Vermont Way. The book explores Vermont's past and values through the exploits of Vermonters like revolutionary leaders Matthew Lyon and Ethan Allen; Anti-Mason Governor William Palmer and feminist pioneer Clarina Nichols; railroad and marble tycoons, anti-slavery activists, socialist activists and labor protesters; Vermont-born Presidents Chester Arthur and Calvin Coolidge; progressive innovators like James Burke and Ernest Gibson; modern political leaders like Phil Hoff, Richard Snelling, Madeleine Kunin, James Jeffords, Howard Dean, and Bernie Sanders; and even a Vermonter who rescued America from Joseph McCarthy. It is an attempt to look back at Vermont's past with fresh eyes, recast the drama, correct the record, and reclaim stories lost, distorted or buried along the way"--

With its small native population, proximity to major metropolitan areas, and bucolic rural beauty, Vermont was fated to be a tourist mecca, forever associated in the popular imagination with maple syrup, fall colors, and ski bunnies. Tourism, for good and ill, has always been the decisive factor in the conception of rural Vermont. What is surprising, however, is the degree to which we have accepted this notion of rural Vermont as a somehow timeless entity. Blake Harrison's rich and rewarding study instead presents the construction of Vermont's landscape as a complex and ever-changing dynamic informed by progressive, modernist, and reformist thought, competing views of economic expansion, rural and urban prejudice and social exclusion, and (more recently) by land use planning and environmentalism. This broad-based study includes the early history of Vermont tourism, the concomitant abandonment of farms with the rise of the summer home, the creation of an "unspoiled" Vermont (from billboards, at least), the impact of Vermont's ski industry on tradition-bound tourism, and later efforts to legislate growth and protect an increasingly static ideal of a rural Vermont.While grounded within a specific Vermont view, Harrison has much to contribute to broader studies of rural places, tourism, and landscapes in American culture. His analysis of how physical landscapes affect and are affected by our imagined landscape, and the insight afforded by his juxtaposition of leisure and labor, will deeply inform our understanding of rural tourist landscapes for years to come. This is a truly interdisciplinary work that will satisfy and challenge historians and geographers alike.

Edward and Jo Hopper first discovered Vermont in 1927, making day trips from the Whitney Studio Club's summer retreat for New York artists in Charlestown, New Hampshire. In 1935 and 1936 the Hoppers again traveled to Vermont, this time from their summer home in Cape Cod, in Edward's continuing search for new places to paint. During these quests they identified the White River and what Edward considered to be Vermont's "finest" river valley, and they returned there for longer visits in 1937 and 1938, boarding at Robert and Irene Slater's Wagon Wheels farm in South Royalton. These "vacations" were a change from the usual tempo of their lives, a break from the studio-bound easels, canvas, and oils, and an opportunity to paint something different, to be in a new place and paint en plein air. Over the course of his Vermont sojourns, Edward Hopper produced some two dozen paintings, watercolors that are among the most distinctive of his regional works, strongly characterized by place. In this accessible volume, Bonnie Tocher Clause tells the story of the Hoppers' visits to Vermont, their stays on the Slater farm, and their introduction to farm life. She locates the sites shown in Hopper's Vermont paintings, identifies two watercolors not previously recognized as Vermont scenes, and traces the development of Hopper's singular interpretations of the Vermont landscape. In Edward Hopper in Vermont, Clause details the provenance of the Vermont paintings through the years, tracking the history of sales leading to the works' ultimate homes with private collectors and museums. Showcasing all the Vermont paintings in color, this volume will delight both fans of Hopper's work and those who are fascinated by the story of the creation, collection, and business of producing great art.