Fundamentally concerned with place, and our ability to understand human relationships with environment over time, Historical Geographic Information Systems (HGIS) as a tool and a subject has direct bearing for the study of contemporary environmental issues and realities. To date, HGIS projects in Canada are few and publications that discuss these projects directly even fewer. This book brings together case studies of HGIS projects in historical geography, social and cultural history, and e...

Grab your life preservers, sailors! Ensign Davenport is on the bridge.Ensign Stephen Davenport was the most severely underqualified of the Ninety-Day Wonders, the derisive term for commissioned officers in the Naval Reserve with only ninety days of training, all of which were on dry land.For his final navigation exam, he actually plotted a course that landed a fictional destroyer somewhere in the Sierra Mountains.Nevertheless, in August of 1953 he r...

In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts organized a series of writing workshops led by prominent authors to encourage US troops and their families to record their experiences and reflections on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The result is this extraordinary volume of first-hand letters, poems, journals, memoirs, and e-mails from the men and women directly involved in battle and their families back home.This uniquely personal addition to the long tradition o...

"What was I supposed to do with my B.A. in literature: gather the sailors around me just before taps and read Faulkner to them as they fell asleep?"Ensign Stephen Davenport was the most severely under qualified of the Ninety-Day Wonders, the derisive term for commissioned officers in the Naval Reserve with only ninety days of training, all of which were on dry land. For his final navigation exam, he actually plotted a course that landed a fictional destroyer somewhere in t...