Spearheading Environmental Change: The Legacy of Indiana Congressman Floyd J. Fithian describes the life of a four-term United States congressman, focusing on his role in the emerging environmental movement in late twentieth-century America. Spearheading Environmental Change highlights Fithian's legislative efforts regarding three water-related issues that profoundly concerned Hoosier and midwestern voters: creating a national park on the Indiana shoreline of Lake Michigan; canceling dam construction near Purdue University; and mitigating flooding in the Kankakee River Basin. The book also covers Fithian's positions on ecologically sensitive issues such as pesticides, noise pollution, fossil fuels, and nuclear power. Largely remembered for his participation in the Democratic reform wave that took over Congress in 1975 post-Watergate (the so-called Class of '74) and as an advocate for Hoosier farmers, Fithian has been overlooked for his role as a force to be reckoned with on the House floor when it came to the nation's environmental challenges. Fithian was a highly ethical, pragmatic reformer bent on preserving his country's natural resources. Spearheading Environmental Change gives Fithian the credit he deserves as an environmental warrior on the national stage.

Spearheading Environmental Change: The Legacy of Indiana Congressman Floyd J. Fithian describes the life of a four-term United States congressman, focusing on his role in the emerging environmental movement in late twentieth-century America. Spearheading Environmental Change highlights Fithian's legislative efforts regarding three water-related issues that profoundly concerned Hoosier and midwestern voters: creating a national park on the Indiana shoreline of Lake Michigan; canceling dam construction near Purdue University; and mitigating flooding in the Kankakee River Basin. The book also covers Fithian's positions on ecologically sensitive issues such as pesticides, noise pollution, fossil fuels, and nuclear power. Largely remembered for his participation in the Democratic reform wave that took over Congress in 1975 post-Watergate (the so-called Class of '74) and as an advocate for Hoosier farmers, Fithian has been overlooked for his role as a force to be reckoned with on the House floor when it came to the nation's environmental challenges. Fithian was a highly ethical, pragmatic reformer bent on preserving his country's natural resources. Spearheading Environmental Change gives Fithian the credit he deserves as an environmental warrior on the national stage.

This one family's journey across the unsettled West demonstrates how its understandings of family identity and selfhood were fostered. Beginning in the late 1880s, each member's perspective of the past and the future evolved as they moved from the Midwest to the West and finally settled in various regions of the United States. This chronicle of family movement and cultural assimilation contains an ideology of America that often frames stories told about family and history.