Description |
1 online resource (ix, 239 pages) : illustrations |
Summary |
From its beginnings as a trickle of icy water in Virginia's northwest corner to its miles-wide mouth at Hampton Roads, the James River has witnessed more recorded history than any other feature of the American landscape--as home to the continent's first successful English settlement, highway for Native Americans and early colonists, battleground in the Revolution and the Civil War, and birthplace of America's twentieth-century navy. In 1998, restless in his job as a reporter for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, Earl Swift landed an assignment traveling the entire length of the James. Reinforced by Pilot photographer Ian Martin and a lot of freeze-dried food and beer, Swift set out to immerse himself--he hoped not literally--in the river and its history. What Swift survived to bring us is this engrossing chronicle of three weeks in a fourteen- foot plastic canoe and four hundred years in the life of Virginia. Fueled by humor and a dauntless curiosity about the land, buildings, and people on the banks, and anchored by his sidekick Martin--whose photographs accompany the text- Swift endures dunkings, wolf spiders, near-arrest, channel fever, and twenty-knot winds, eventually making it to the Chesapeake Bay |
Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-239) |
Notes |
English |
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Winner of the 9th annual Southern Environmental Law Center Phillip D. Reed Memorial Award (in Literary non-fiction) for outstanding writing on the southern environment |
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Print version record |
Subject |
Swift, Earl, 1958- -- Travel -- Virginia -- James River
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SUBJECT |
Swift, Earl, 1958- -- Travel -- Virginia -- James River
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Swift, Earl, 1958- fast |
Subject |
Canoes and canoeing -- Virginia -- James River
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HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV)
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Canoes and canoeing
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Travel
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SUBJECT |
James River (Va.) -- Description and travel
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James River Valley (Va.) -- Description and travel
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James River Valley (Va.) -- History, Local
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Subject |
Virginia -- James River
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Virginia -- James River Valley
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Genre/Form |
Local history
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Form |
Electronic book
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LC no. |
00047307 |
ISBN |
9780813920214 |
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0813920213 |
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9780813937212 |
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0813937213 |
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