Background
Stevenson, Elizabeth was born on June 13, 1919 in Ancon, Panama. Daughter of John Thurman and Bernice (Upshaw) Stevenson.
(The northern Rocky Mountains and adjacent high plains wer...)
The northern Rocky Mountains and adjacent high plains were the last American West. Here was the final enactment of our national drama - the last explorations, the final battles of the Indian wars, the closing of the frontier. In "Figures in a Western Landscape", award-winning biographer Elizabeth Stevenson humanizes the history of the region with a procession of individual lives moving across the generations. Each of the 16 men and women depicted has left behind his or her own unique written record or oral history. They have bequeathed to us stones that are rich in anecdote and colourful detail. Among them: Meriwether Lewis, America's "most introspective explorer", whose journals provide the first English-language record of the Northwest's rivers, mountains, and plains, and offer a memorable account of how their newness struck his imagination. Osborne Russell, 21-year-old fur trapper from Maine who vividly described the region's beauty ("wild and romantic scenery") and hardships ("65 miles in two days without eating") and who passed on a useful survival tip for geyser country - you could boil meat by suspending it in a hot pool. Pierre Jean De Smet, first Catholic missionary to the Northern Plains Indians, who was said to have found gold nuggets on the site of the future Virginia City but, knowing a gold rush would mean the Indians' ruin, quietly pocketed the nuggets and kept the discovery to himself. James and Granville Stuart, early settlers lured by rumors of gold in the 1850s, who crossed three dangerous rivers on a 150-mile trek through the wilderness because they heard rumors of an even rarer commodity - books. Pretty-Shield, wife of the Crow scout who warned Custer to turn back at Little Big Horn, who "hated no one, not even the white man," and who told her story to an astonished interpreter in the 1930s. In a concluding chapter, Stevenson draws on previously unpublished material to reveal new information about Martha Jane Cannary Burke, better known as Calamity Jane, the woman who could ride, shoot, and drive a mule team as well as any man (but who once failed to "pass" because she didn't cuss her mules like one), and who lies buried in Deadwood, South Dakota, next to the man some said was her husband, Wild Bill Hickok. These and other men and women whose stories Stevenson tells all helped to shape - and were in turn shaped by - the uniquely challenging landscape of America's "last West". Stevenson's other books include: "The Crooked Corridor: A Study of Henry James"; "Henry Adams: A Biography" (winner of the Bancroft Award); "Babbits and Bohemians: The American 1920s"; "Lafcadio Hearn: A Biography"; and "Park Maker: A Life of Frederick Law Olmsted".
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0801846765/?tag=2022091-20
( Babbitts and Bohemians is a fresh and informed account ...)
Babbitts and Bohemians is a fresh and informed account of the 1920s, a decade that seems almost mythical to some. Elizabeth Stevenson finds that the true twenties was a society of contrast. On the one hand, it was an era of sameness and political conformity, but on the other hand, it was also a time of cultural revolt. In places labeled Main Street and Middletown the citizenry followed a conventional pattern. At the same time, while most of America enjoyed the good life of this period, bohemians in Greenwich Village and expatriates in Paris were fervently scornful of it. The author explores the new sense of self and the world during this period, especially evident in the writings of Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Robert Frost, H. L. Mencken, Glenway Wescott, William Faulkner, and others. Stevenson writes about numerous facets of the 1920s: the brilliant entertainers, Harlem's brief period of glory, the worsening conditions in the South, the hero worship of Babe Ruth and Charles Lindbergh, and the stockmarket crash in 1929 that brought an abrupt end to the golden years. In the new introduction, the author reflects on her personal experience and discusses how the 1920s affected her family. She goes on to talk about how living in the tumultuous 1960s prompted her to write Babbitts and Bohemians. While she concedes that there were some not so glorious times during the 1920s, she still considers it a period where the vitality of life exhibited itself in all sorts of interesting and entertaining new ways. Elizabeth Stevenson succeeds admirably in conveying the spirit and the history of the era: the people and the mood that shaped the times; the political, international, and economic apathy; the conformity and rebellion of a decade unlike any other before or since. Babbitts and Bohemians will be enjoyed by all, especially historians, sociologists, and political scientists.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1560009608/?tag=2022091-20
Stevenson, Elizabeth was born on June 13, 1919 in Ancon, Panama. Daughter of John Thurman and Bernice (Upshaw) Stevenson.
Bachelor magna cum laude, PBK Agnes Scott College, 1941.
With war time agencies United States Government, Atlanta, 1942-1947. Order assistant Atlanta Public Library, 1948-1956. Assistant to college dean Emory University, Atlanta, 1960-1974.
From research associate to Candler professor Graduate Institute Liberal Arts, Emory University, 1974-1987.
( Babbitts and Bohemians is a fresh and informed account ...)
(The northern Rocky Mountains and adjacent high plains wer...)
(A literary study of the novelist Henry James.)
(LIFE IN 1920'S IN AMERICA)
Member Authors Guild, Phi Beta Kappa.