This autobiography of the first Dean of the College of Agriculture at Cornell University offers an unconventional account of farm life in New York and the Middle West during the nineteenth century, and of the difficulties attendant upon building up a vital and progressive agricultural college. Born in Seneca County, New York, in 1833, Isaac Phillips Roberts emigrated west--first to Indiana, where he worked as a carpenter until he was able to buy a farm, and taught school during the winters; then, in 1862, to Mount Pleasant, Iowa, in a pioneer wagon with his wife, Margaret, and daughter. In 1869, he became the Superindent of the Farm and Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Iowa Agricultural College at Ames, where he soon became Professor of Agriculture. In 1873, he returned to New York to take a similar position at Cornell University; shortly thereafer, he was made Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Director of the Experiment Station. During his thirty years of service in Ithaca, he wrote voluminously on agricultural subjects, and after his retirement, penned Autobiography of a Farm Boy, initially published in 1916, reissued by Cornell University Press in 1946, and now made available in paperback. He died in Palo Alto, California, in 1928.

Excerpt from Autobiography of a Farm Boy For thirty years Professor Roberts led the work in agriculture at Cornell University. These were the eventful and triumphant years of 1873 to 1903. They began in doubt and with small things, but they were large with faith. He developed one of the best Institutions of Its kind. Only ten or eleven years had elapsed since the passage of the Land Grant Act, at which time instruction in agriculture was given a national sanction. A few colleges had made the effort to organize the subject into teaching form and to collect the equipment and develop the farms that were necessary to the new enterprise. Even Michigan, the oldest of the existing North American colleges of agriculture, had been under way only sixteen years. Cornell had given instruction five years. From the first, agriculture had had its appointed place in the institution; but the work was not really established until Professor Roberts came. He came from a farm and with the traditions of farming. He had had experience in the new Institution in Iowa. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Autobiography of a Farm Boy It is this courage, this steadfastness in the de termination to hold the field for agriculture, that grows larger in my estimation as the years go by. I speak of his work in the past tense, for I too look backward; but I am glad that he is still keen to follow the result Of his labors. It was not then a day for erudition, or for high technical scholarship, but a time for clear faith, homely and direct relations with the people, wisdom in giving advice. From the first years that I knew him he was a philosopher and a forecaster, always prae tical, always driving home the point, always with his feet squarely on the ground. He loved the farm; from the rail fence to the back lot, the trees in the pasture, the woodside, the orchard, every animal in stall or field, the high land and the low land, all were his to walk over, to question, to inspect with care, and to improve. It was one of the delights of his teaching to take his boys to the farm. He was a master in the practice Of observing farm conditions, why the grass was thin here and heavy there, why the weeds came in, why the animals chose the spot on which to lie, how to run the drains, to build a fence, to put up a shed or barn, to paint a building, how to break a horse, how to breed a herd from. A common foundation, how to sell a crop, what the weather meant, how to bring an old field back into good condition. He did not teach some small department of farm knowledge as we do in these days, but the Whole farm and the farmer and the wife and the children and the hired man; and he taught it with a quiet and genial philosophy, Often quaint and always full of good humor. He was the real teacher of the small group, preferring the out-of-doors and the barns and the herds to the formal laboratories. I have never known anyone to make such good educational use of an entire farm and its equipment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

From his childhood growing up in Depression-era rural Manitoba to his rise through the ranks to become a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), Col Gordon Brennand’s memoir, Farm Boy to Flyboy, is as much a history of the RCAF in the twentieth century as it is an account of his own life. Born a bit too late to participate in WWII, Gordon was inspired by Canada’s involvement in the Korean War to pursue a life in the military. After a failed start in the Navy, he enlisted with the Air Force with faint hopes of perhaps becoming a fighter pilot. Not only did he succeed, he logged four thousand hours on various jet aircraft types including over 1100 hours on the F-86 Sabre, which was the state-of-the-art fighter jet throughout most his thirty-four-year career, not to mention hundreds of hours on various other types of aircraft. He experienced several close calls during that time, including one incident when he had to eject and another when he had to force land due to engine failure. He went on to command two bases and has spent time living in most Canadian provinces as well as Germany, where he served for three years during the Cold War. Fascinating and insightful, this book will appeal to those who are fascinated by the military and flying as well as those who are simply seeking a first-person account of what life was really like for the men and women who served in the RCAF throughout one of the most pivotal periods of twentieth-century history.

Limping through Life A Farm Boy’s Polio Memoir Jerry Apps “Families throughout the United States lived in fear of polio throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, and now the disease had come to our farm. I can still remember that short winter day and the chilly night when I first showed symptoms. My life would never be the same.” —from the Introduction Polio was epidemic in the United States starting in 1916. By the 1930s, quarantines and school closings were becoming common, as isolation was one of the only ways to fight the disease. The Sauk vaccine was not available until 1955; in that year, Wisconsin’s Fox River valley had more polio cases per capita than anywhere in the United States. In his most personal book, Jerry Apps, who contracted polio at age twelve, reveals how the disease affected him physically and emotionally, profoundly influencing his education, military service, and family life and setting him on the path to becoming a professional writer. A hardworking farm kid who loved playing softball, young Jerry Apps would have to make many adjustments and meet many challenges after that winter night he was stricken with a debilitating, sometimes fatal illness. In Limping through Life he explores the ways his world changed after polio and pays tribute to those family members, teachers, and friends who helped him along the way.