Amy Waters Yarsinske Ordine dei libri (cronologico)

Beloved Asheville author and historian Lou Harshaw once observed that Asheville has always been a place apart. "It is not really a southern city, but always of the South. Its differences make for a fascinating whole. In this time, more than two hundred years after the first Europeans came over the eastern escarpment of the Blue Ridge to take up land and make new homes, the concern for the future has never been greater. Asheville," she opined, "is absorbing new human values, new technology. There are new ways in which to live, and to relate to one another. In later years," she continued, "the decades over the turn of this century will be very important in Asheville history - a time of seeking control of destiny." As she so aptly noted, looking back at Asheville's rich history can enrich what lies ahead--and it should.

Today, each visitor to Williamsburg, Virginia, takes a step back in time to the small town that for nearly a century was capital of Virginia, one of the most influential of all of England's thirteen American colonies, and the focus of a significant plantation society. Eighteenth-century buildings, furnishings and gardens again take their original form in this historic community. Colonial-period carriages once more clatter along Duke of Gloucester, a broad public thoroughfare once described by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "the most historic avenue in all America." Since 1927, when the first preliminary drawings illustrating the restoration of the entire town were completed, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. moved to acquire the first key properties toward restoration of Williamsburg, the American past has been brought to life in an area nearly a mile in length. In this sacred hollow of America's past were enacted some of the most dramatic scenes of our history - and with it some of the nation's most famous patriots and future Founding Fathers. Restoration and discovery continue to be carried out by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the premise that the future should learn from the past.