Noted historian pens biography of Ferry Farm―George Washington's boyhood home―and its three centuries of American history
In 2002, Philip Levy arrived on the banks of Rappahannock River in Virginia to begin an archeological excavation of Ferry Farm, the eight hundred acre plot of land that George Washington called home from age six until early adulthood. Six years later, Levy and his team announced their remarkable findings to the world: They had found more than Washington family objects like wig curlers, wine bottles and a tea set. They found objects that told deeper stories about family life: a pipe with Masonic markings, a carefully placed set of oyster shells suggesting that someone in the household was practicing folk magic. More importantly, they had identified Washington's home itself―a modest structure in line with lower gentry taste that was neither as grand as some had believed nor as rustic as nineteenth century art depicted it.
Levy now tells the farm's story in Where the Cherry Tree Grew. The land, a farmstead before Washington lived there, gave him an education in the fragility of life as death came to Ferry Farm repeatedly. Levy then chronicles the farm's role as a Civil War battleground, the heated later battles over its preservation and, finally, an unsuccessful attempt by Wal-Mart to transform the last vestiges Ferry Farm into a vast shopping plaza.

Where the Cherry Tree Grew: The Story of Ferry Farm, George Washington’s Boyhood Home

Biographies & Memoirs

Levy, Philip

Historical

St.Martin's Press

When Europeans first arrived on North American shores, they came to a continent crisscrossed by a well-trodden network of native trails. The traders, missionaries, diplomatists, and naturalists who traveled these trails depended in no small measure on the skills, knowledge, and goodwill of the native people who were squarely in colonization's crosshairs. This study of 16th- to 19-century native and European travel companions, or "fellow travelers," as Levy calls them, draws on anthropological studies and applies ethnohistorical methodology to convey how Indians and Europeans traveling together and seeing the same things might interpret them in very different ways. Examining the writings of European travelers who took to trails and rivers from the Rio Grande to the Arctic, Levy argues that travel relationships evolved from patterns of coercion and miscommunication to partnerships based on careful and constant negotiation. The shared trail was an arena of contested meanings. Levy explores the many forms such contests took and how they contributed to the larger shape and course of colonial travel. Choosing one path over another, accepting or rejecting advice, and deciding whose travel habits to respect on the trail all influenced the small footsteps that made up every colonial trek. Dispelling the simplistic image of European travelers and explorers as heroes, Levy stresses the contingent and dependent nature of these endeavors, noting that natives were vital to the Europeans and vice versa; many natives came to rely on their fellow travelers as well. The realities of the trail potentially blurred distinctions among people eating the same food, treading the same path, and often wearing similar clothes, yet travelers worked hard to maintain distinctions between them. In sharing the rigors and burdens of the trail and relying on one another in a variety of ways, Indian and European travelers entwined their fates.

Fellow Travelers: Indians and Europeans Contesting the Early American Trail

History

Americas

University Press of Florida

No figure in American history has generated more public interest or sustained more scholarly research around his various homes and habitations than has George Washington. The Permanent Resident is the first book to bring the principal archaeological sites of Washington's life together under one cover, revealing what they say individually and collectively about Washington's life and career and how Americans have continued to invest these places with meaning. Philip Levy begins with Washington's birthplace in Westmoreland County, Virginia, then moves to Ferry Farm--site of the mythical cherry tree--before following Washington to Barbados to examine how his only trip outside the continental United States both shaped him and lingered in local memory. The book then profiles the site of Washington's first military engagement and his nation-making stay in Philadelphia. From archaeological study of Mount Vernon, Levy also derives fascinating insights about how slavery changed and was debated at Washington's famous home. Levy considers the fates of Washington statues and commemorations to understand how they have functioned as objects of veneration--and sometimes vandalism--for more than a century and a half. Two hundred years after his death, at the sites of his many abodes, Washington remains an inescapable presence. The Permanent Resident guides us through the places where Washington lived and in which Americans have memorialized him, speaking to issues that have defined and challenged America from his time to our own.

The Permanent Resident: Excavations and Explorations of George Washington’s Life (Early American Histories)

University of Virginia Press

"This book traces the surprisingly long history of chickens as part of the American cityscape and illuminates the resurgent cultural phenomenon of the backyard chicken, taking readers to nineteenth-century urban poultry shows, along a "Tour de Coops," inside zoning battles, and into religious rituals"--

Yard Birds: The Lives and Times of America’s Urban Chickens

Science & Math

Nature & Ecology

Cognition In Action

This revised textbook is designed for undergraduate courses in cognitive psychology. It approaches cognitive psychology by asking what it says about how people carry out everyday activities: how people organize and use their knowledge in order to behave appropriately in the world in which they live.; Each chapter of the book starts with an example and then uses this to introduce some aspect of the overall cognitive system. Through such examples of cognition in action, important components of the cognitive system are identified, and their interrelationships highlighted. Thus the text demonstrates that each part of the cognitive system can only be understood properly in its place in the functioning of the whole.; This edition features increased coverage of neuropsychological and connectionist approaches to cognition.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Morris, Peter E.

Collins, Alan F.

Smyth, Mary M.

Mental Health

Psychology Press

George Washington Written Upon the Land: Nature, Memory, Myth, and Landscape

George Washington’s childhood is famously the most elusive part of his life story. For centuries biographers have struggled with a lack of period documentation and an absence of late-in-life reflection in trying to imagine Washington’s formative years. In George Washington Written upon the Land, Philip Levy explores this most famous of American childhoods through its relationship to the Virginia farm where much of it took place. Using approaches from biography, archaeology, folklore, and studies of landscape and material culture, Levy focuses on how different ideas about Washington’s childhood functioned—what sorts of lessons they sought to teach and how different epochs and writers understood the man and the past itself. In a suggestive and far-reaching final chapter, Levy argues that Washington was present at the onset of the Anthropocene—the geologic era when human activity began to have a significant impact on world ecosystems. Interpreting Washington’s childhood farm through the lens of “big” history, he encourages scholars to break down boundaries between science and social science and between human and nonhuman.

West Virginia University Press

George Washington’s childhood is famously the most elusive part of his life story. For centuries biographers have struggled with a lack of period documentation and an absence of late-in-life reflection in trying to imagine Washington’s formative years. 
In George Washington Written upon the Land, Philip Levy explores this most famous of American childhoods through its relationship to the Virginia farm where much of it took place. Using approaches from biography, archaeology, folklore, and studies of landscape and material culture, Levy focuses on how different ideas about Washington’s childhood functioned—what sorts of lessons they sought to teach and how different epochs and writers understood the man and the past itself. 
In a suggestive and far-reaching final chapter, Levy argues that Washington was present at the onset of the Anthropocene—the geologic era when human activity began to have a significant impact on world ecosystems. Interpreting Washington’s childhood farm through the lens of “big” history, he encourages scholars to break down boundaries between science and social science and between human and nonhuman.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Levy, Philip. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Levy, Philip

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Levy, Philip. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Where the Cherry Tree Grew: The Story of Ferry Farm, George Washington’s Boyhood Home

Fellow Travelers: Indians and Europeans Contesting the Early American Trail

The Permanent Resident: Excavations and Explorations of George Washington’s Life (Early American Histories)

Yard Birds: The Lives and Times of America’s Urban Chickens

Cognition In Action

Cognition In Action

Where the Cherry Tree Grew: The Story of Ferry Farm, George Washington’s Boyhood Home

George Washington Written Upon the Land: Nature, Memory, Myth, and Landscape

George Washington Written Upon the Land: Nature, Memory, Myth, and Landscape