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The Cape Cod Canal
by Farson, Robert H
- Used
- Fine
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Fine/VG+
- ISBN 10
- 0819550124
- ISBN 13
- 9780819550125
- Seller
-
Kutztown, Pennsylvania, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Wesleyan University Press, 1978. Book. Fine. Hardcover. 1st Edition. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall. Green cloth, lettered in gold foil. As issued. 1st ed. Color illus. dust jacket shows a few short closed tears along top edges, otherwise nearly as issued, now in mylar. xiv,177 pp., illus. Review copy. Harry L. Rinker collection..
Reviews
On Jul 18 2011, Feeney said:
How important is the Cape Cod Canal in Massachusetts? For starters it is the world's "widest artificial waterway." Secondly, although not completed before 1914, it was proposed in the 1620s by Pilgrim hero Miles Standish: the first "conceived" public works project in the new world. *** Robert H. Farson's (1977, 1993) book has five chapters. Covering the greatest time span is Chapter I: "From the Pilgrims to 1899: False Starts and Pipe Dreams." Throughout the book one question is repeated over and over: why did it take so long to build a relatively short (at its current length, 17.4 miles long) canal? The great era of American canal building (e.g. Erie Canal) came and went and no Cape Cod Canal emerged. The usual answer is that the motivation behind earlier canals was usually trade and commerce. But the motives behind the less than 18 mile Cape Cod Canal were non-commercial: (1) maritime safety (hundreds of avoidable wrecks strewn all around Cape Cod) and (2) national defense (a need demonstrated in both the Wars of the Revolution and of 1812). A question never raised, therefore never answered, is: why with so much earlier experience in canal building (Erie, Suez with Kiel and Panama about to be built), were so many avoidable mistakes made in Massachusetts, particularly in choice of dredgers? Had those mistakes not been made, the canal would have opened in 1912, not 1914 and for far less cost. ***The book's driving heroes are Miles Standish (the Pilgrim realist who paced off the route of a canal and August Perry Belmont, the entrepreneur who built it between 1899 and 1914. A new, third, motivation to build the Cape Cod Canal was as a filial tribute to Belmont's seafaring maternal ancestors, the Perrys (of Lake Erie and Japan fame). ***The book has 80 pages of text followed by 89 pages of black and white photos with comments, a bibliography up to the early 1970s and a brief index. There are 161 photos. Five of them are either aerial photos or maps of Cape Cod Bay and environs and proposed and actual routes of the "17.4 miles of the canal and the approach channels" (Ch. 5). The photos begin with a collection of early shipwrecks, then show personalities and varieties of equipment used to dredge and build the canal. A weakness of the book is that there are no footnotes or endnotes within the basic narrative explicitly linking text to photos. *** That said, the photos are arresting, well explained and definitely illuminate the text. This book (2nd edition of 1993) clearly contains at least one photo later than the 1977 first edition. Its front and back covers are memorable scenes of activity on a canal in continuous use since July 1914. Anyone keen for Cape Cod, for U.S. Congressional appropriating details or how to build (or in some respects not build) a canal will thoroughly enjoy Robert H. Farson's THE CAPE COD CANAL. Display it on your coffee table. Review it from time to time. -OOO-
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Details
- Bookseller
- Saucony Book Shop (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 053884
- Title
- The Cape Cod Canal
- Author
- Farson, Robert H
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Fine
- Jacket Condition
- VG+
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- ISBN 10
- 0819550124
- ISBN 13
- 9780819550125
- Publisher
- Wesleyan University Press
- Place of Publication
- Middletown, Ct
- Date Published
- 1978
- Bookseller catalogs
- New England; Maritime/Nautical;
- Size
- 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall
Terms of Sale
Saucony Book Shop
Terms of Sale: All orders are processed on a first-come, first-served basis. Full refund on any misrepresented item(s) within 30 days of purchase date. Returned books must arrive in the same condition as they were sent. We use standard ABAA grading and terminology, and we will gladly respond to pre-purchase queries. Payment: Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, check, money order, cash. Happy hunting!
About the Seller
Saucony Book Shop
Biblio member since 2005
Kutztown, Pennsylvania
About Saucony Book Shop
The Saucony Book Shop, located in the heart of scenic rural Berks County, epicenter of Pennsylvania German folk culture (our shop specialty), offers a full range of gently used, rare, and antiquarian books, with many volumes of scholarly merit and an unabashed emphasis on the quaint, the curious, and the utterly obscure. We make no attempt to be a general-service book shop. Our inventory is highly selective, individually chosen from among the hundreds of thousands of books to which we have access annually at auctions, library and estate sales, and through individual scouts and vendors. We do not handle material that does not meet our expectations in terms of condition or interest to our specialized, idiosyncratic customers. Despite maintaining a browsing inventory of more than 15,000 volumes, we have minimized our carbon footprint by maintaining our entire operation in a cozy ca. 1890 barn and lean-to adjacent to an historic creamery in rural Maxatawny Township. Our shop is available for browsing by appointment and occasionally, in temperate weather, by chance, so email or call ahead to peruse the eclectic selection gracing our shelves, or ask our ferociously over-read staff for recommendations. Selling antiquarian books of merit since 1981. Full search and appraisal services; always keenly interested in purchasing quality used books, whether by the piece or by the bushel. Thanks for reading about us! Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
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- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Cloth
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- Jacket
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- Fine
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