Catalog Search Results
Author
Pub. Date
2009
Description
How could an ordinary fence shape the development of a nation? Before the 1870s, much of the American West was an uninterrupted expanse of prairie and cowboys ran cattle on an open range without a fence in sight. Then the Homestead Act of 1862 passed and settlers poured into the west looking for land to tame and farm. This set up a conflict between the farmers who wanted to keep cattle off their crops and cattlemen that needed the land for their livestock....
Author
Pub. Date
2002
Description
"No less than the internal combustion engine, the transistor, or the silicon chip, barbed wire is the quintessentially modern invention. Cheap and mass produced, it accomplished what no other product did before, or has since done so effectively: the control of space. Few technologies did more to usher in the hallmarks of the modern era: the harnessing of nature, brutal mass warfare, political conquest and repression, and genocide.".
"With this work...