"Repeopling Vermont: The Paradox of Development in the Twentieth Century, by historian Paul Searls, traces two distinct but interrelated stories to illuminate the fundamental contradictions and ironies that defined Vermont in the twentieth century. One is the story of a group of Swedish immigrants who settled in and around Landgrove in the 1890s and their descendants. The other is the story of Samuel R. Ogden, who beginning in 1929 purchased most of the buildings in the main village of Landgrove and set out to revitalize the town. Ogden succeeded in that project and subsequently became an important public servant to Vermont; he was instrumental in the growth of the ski industry, and was a founder of both Vermont Life magazine and the Vermont Natural Resources Council. These intertwined stories reveal the central paradox of Vermont in the twentieth century. The state's leaders simultaneously saw Vermont's overwhelmingly rural character as both a distressing problem in need of a solution, and the state's greatest asset. But their efforts to preserve Vermont's precious rural heritage, it's human and physical landscapes, while at the same time improving the state, also put that same way of life in peril. Those developments continue to reverberate throughout Vermont in the twenty-first century, shaping the experience of everyone who lives in or visits the Green Mountain State today"--

The search for an African American community in rural Vermont

A well-researched historical novel about Achsa Sprague (1827-1862), a Vermont woman and itinerant medium who gave popular lectures on Spiritualism, the abolition of slavery, women's rights, and prison reform.

Eugenics is a pseudo- scientific field of selective human breeding that rose to prominence in the early 1900s and was the foundation of Nazi Germany. Vermont was one of many American states to adopt eugenics as the basis for public policies such as family separation, institutionalization, and sterilization that targeted the most vulnerable Vermonters and led to widespread intergenerational damage. In 2021, the state formally apologized for the practice, and the legislature is exploring ongoing responses. "Vermont for the Vermonters" is the result of years of research and new scholarship into the story of the eugenics movement in the state. Examining developments from poor farms to mental institutions and public campaigns under Governor Mead and University of Vermont professor Henry Perkins, Mercedes de Guardiola demonstrates the underlying social and political landscape that helped pave the way for strong support of Vermont’s eugenics policies, determined how they were implemented and carried out, and resulted in a devastating cost for Vermonters. She regrounds Vermont’s actions and policies in the larger context of the state and the nation’s public policies, allowing us to better understand the motivations and long-range consequences of the movement.