City of Lake & Prairie is a collection of 19 essays by urban historians, environmental historians, and geographers interested in analyzing the unique relationships between people and nature in the Chicago area. Will Barnett’s essay uses Naperville’s May Watts and the creation of the Illinois Prairie Path as a case study to understand grassroots environmental activism and efforts to protect green space, especially prairie, in an era of rapid suburban development in DuPage County.
From ancient acorns to future forests, the story of how oaks evolved and the many ways they shape our world. An oak begins its life with the precarious journey of a pollen grain, then an acorn, then a seedling. A mature tree may shed millions of acorns, but only a handful will grow. One oak may then live 100 years, 250 years, or even 13,000 years. But the long life of an individual is only a part of these trees’ story. With naturalist and leading researcher Andrew L. Hipp as our guide, Oak Origins takes us through a sweeping evolutionary history, stretching back to a population of trees that lived more than 50 million years ago. We travel to the ancient tropical Earth to see the ancestors of the oaks evolving side by side with the dinosaurs.
This book will teach you to hand build a knife using the traditional method of blacksmiths of old – Forging. Traditional forging of a knife blade is a process which uses the ancient techniques of moving hot steel with hammer and anvil alone int a knife-form that is ready for filing, heat treating and sharpening with no or very minimal electric grinding.
Abraham Lincoln’s life in Springfield is well-documented, but his ties to the suburbs may surprise you. Kate Gingold uses the Six Degrees of Separation theory to share lesser- known, interesting facts about our sixteenth president in Chicagoland.