Burlington

In Burlington Volume II, authors Mary Ann DiSpirito and David Robinson continue the detailed look at this intriguing Vermont city. Discovered by Samuel de Champlain in 1609, the next few centuries saw Burlington evolve from a wilderness to a small settlement, and eventually, flourish into Vermont's largest city. Situated on the shores of Lake Champlain, Burlington's waterfront area became the early center of commerce in the late eighteenth century with the rise of the lumber industry and the use of ships for transport. By 1865, when Burlington was incorporated as a city, the industries that profoundly shaped Burlington's personality were already well established--these included lumber, textiles, shipping, and the railroad, as well as higher education.

Despite Burlington's fame, surprisingly little has been written about him. Lord Burlington: Architecture, Art and Life presents a modern reassessment of his career, while setting him in a broader context than has usually been the case, to reflect both his interests outside architecture and to present his character in the round. Architecture is given pride of place, but his other interests, in land-owning, politics and literature, are also examined, throwing much new light on an exceptionally significant and attractive figure.

Burlington began as a railroad town, but it became known across the world as a textile center. In the 1850s, the newly formed North Carolina Railroad Company needed a maintenance facility halfway between Goldsboro and Charlotte. The location was given a generic name, Company Shops, which was simply an expression of the railroad's operation. In 1886, the shops were moved to a new location, so in 1887, people here chose a new name--Burlington--and the little town moved on. Burlington became known as the "Hosiery Center of the South," and in 1923, Burlington Mills was formed. It became the largest maker of textile products in the world and carried the name of this community around the globe. In addition to textiles, industries over the years have included aircraft, telephone components, and military radar equipment, and by the beginning of the 21st century, Burlington was home to Labcorp, the nation's second largest medical testing laboratory.

Located on the Farmington River, Burlington is a place of natural beauty, with five mountains and valleys filled with brooks, forests, and stone walls. Most of the area's earliest settlers came from England to Hartford and then followed the river, with its fertile banks and meadowlands, into the West Woods or Great Forest, as Burlington was known at the time. The town was incorporated in 1745 and was named Burlington in 1806. Burlington shows the faces of earlier generations of the same families who live in these hills and valleys today. It depicts the homes, barns, orchards, fields, schoolhouses, and mills when they were thriving with life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book captures the tenor of everyday situations as well as the drama of the Blizzard of 1888 and the flood of 1955.

The #1 national bestseller “Marvelous . . . viciously funny and acutely intelligent” (Maclean’s), When We Lost Our Heads is the spellbinding story of two young women whose friendship is so intense it not only threatens to destroy them, it changes the course of history Marie Antoine is the charismatic, spoiled daughter of a sugar baron. At age twelve, with her pile of blond curls and unparalleled sense of whimsy, she’s the leader of all the children in the Golden Mile, the affluent strip of nineteenth-century Montreal where powerful families live. Until one day in 1873, when Sadie Arnett, dark-haired, sly and brilliant, moves to the neighbourhood. Marie and Sadie are immediately inseparable. United by their passion and intensity, they attract and repel each other in ways that set them both on fire. Marie, with her bubbly charm, sees all the pleasure of the world, whereas Sadie’s obsession with darkness is all-consuming. Soon, their childlike games take on the thrill of danger and then become deadly. Forced to separate, the girls spend their teenage years engaging in acts of alternating innocence and depravity, until a singular event unites them once more, with devastating effects. After Marie inherits her father’s sugar empire and Sadie disappears into the city’s gritty underworld, the working class begins to foment a revolution. Each woman will play an unexpected role in the events that upend their city—the only question is whether they will find each other once more. From the beloved Giller Prize-shortlisted author who writes “like a sort of demented angel with an uncanny knack for metaphor” (Toronto Star), When We Lost Our Heads is a page-turning novel that explores gender and power, sex and desire, class and status, and the terrifying strength of the human heart when it can’t let someone go.