Science current events, science news articles, research and discoveries.
Top science news articles and science current events stories from the past week.
Science Current Events Resources
Science Current Events and Science News RSS Feeds
Earth, Life and Space Science News and Current Events RSS Feeds.
|
 |
 |
 |
| View Larger Image | Immortal River: The Upper Mississippi in Ancient and Modern Times
by Calvin R. Fremling
| | List Price: | $29.95 | | Price: | $22.76 | | You Save: | $7.19 (24%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 771293 | | Studio: | University of Wisconsin Press | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 472 | | Publication Date: | January 03, 2005 | | Publisher: | University of Wisconsin Press |
| |
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
This engaging and well-illustrated primer to the Upper Mississippi River presents the basic natural and human history of this magnificent waterway. Immortal River is written for the educated lay-person who would like to know more about the river's history and the forces that shape as well as threaten it today. It melds complex information from the fields of geology, ecology, geography, anthropology, and history into a readable, chronological story that spans some 500 million years of the earth's history.
Like the Mississippi itself, Immortal River often leaves the main channel to explore the river's backwaters, floodplain, and drainage basin. The book's focus is the Upper Mississippi, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Cairo, Illinois. But it also includes information about the river's headwaters in northern Minnesota and about the Lower Mississippi from Cairo south to the river's mouth ninety miles below New Orleans. It offers an understanding of the basic geology underlying the river's landscapes, ecology, environmental problems, and grandeur. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 3 reviews)
|
Immortal River 
This book is fascinating. It covers the Mississippi River past and present. It is more than just a history book, for it covers geologic time as well as modern history. But it is more than a geology book as it covers the river's ecology. But then it is more than an ecological book as it focuses on the necessity of the river's economy. To sum it up, this book covers the Mississippi River in a way that few books do their subject's justice. Reading it makes me proud that the river is part of my world here in the Twin Cities. I've driven over it, walked over it, walked up to it, pondered its power and might, but never knew the river until I read this book.
The river is three million years old. Man has been active around it for a few thousand years. Modern economies have influenced it for a mere 170 years or so. It is not a simple thing. It is a force to be reconciled with. What humans do to this river is profound, but only so far as our vanity allows us to understand our relationship with the river. It has had several sources over the years. It took modern white men years of guessing just trying to find the current source.
This river supplies our needs. It allows for barge traffic that come and go with products Minnesotans (or any of the other states whose boundaries it forms) need and make (or grow). We recreate upon it. We dam it, bridge over it, pollute it, draw water from it, try to make it conform to our wills, then wonder what went wrong when it floods (as in 1993).
This river truly is immortal. Calvin Fremling does the river justice by his book documenting its story. His writing style is pragmatic and relatively unbiased, though extremists (both right and left wingers) my suffer his ridicule. The Corps of Engineers, the environmentalists, the riverats, sportsmen, politicians all receive adequate and relatively accurate assessment and criticism by the author. If there is one person who truly knows the river, it seems to be Fremling. He leaves the reader with the impression that the river's age will allow it to survive inspite of what modern man is doing to it. Who knows, it may be around for another three million years. As Fremling concludes, somehow, I find comfort in that.
July 01, 2007 | |
Immortal River: The Upper Mississippi in Ancient and Modern Times
As a person who grew up on the Upper Mississippi I assumed that I knew that great river. Not so. Calvin Fremling's book opened my eyes to the river's past and alerted me to the significant environmental problems that confront the river today. This is must reading for anyone who uses the river or has an interest in it.
September 17, 2005 | |
Mentor, storyteller
Dr. Fremling, I will address this to you. You were graduate advisor to my dad, Glenn Jergens, when he earned his Master's degree. You were my most revered college professor many years later. Now I have my Master's and will teach biology when our son doesn't need me at home quite so much. Your influence on my dad, and on me, was profound. If I am half the teacher you were, much of the credit will be yours. I remember the slide-peppered lectures and the frequent field trips that made scientists of your students. I appreciate more than ever your gift for making learning so effortless because the teaching was so relevant and so rigorously planned. I have rated your book as worthy of five stars even before I've read it, as I suspect it will reflect this gift as well. I'm purchasing two copies, one for my brother and his wife, which will be passed around, I know, and one for my family. Thank you, Dr. Fremling, and congratulations. With all best wishes, Merri Beth Nord
January 13, 2005 | |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| |
|
|
|
|
