In 1909, the Champlain and Hudson Valleys-and America and the world along with them-celebrated the 300th anniversary of European "discovery" of these regions. Marking America's entry onto the world stage, the 1909 commemorations' parades, pageants, speeches and other spectacles prophetically mapped the nation's 20th century course toward empire. In the same year, the Austrian esoteric teacher Rudolf Steiner prophetically envisioned a very different American and world destiny, one whose culmination comes in 2009, the 400th anniversary of Samuel de Champlain and Henry Hudson's fateful landings. Focusing its historical gaze on Burlington, Vermont and Manhattan, A Short Story of American Destiny, 1909-2009 is an unsettling, surprising look at a small set of past events with profound implications for our present moment. Author of Across the Great Border Fault: The Naturalist Myth in America and Bright Colors Falsely Seen: Synaesthesia and the Search for Transcendental Knowledge, Dr. Kevin Dann teaches in the History Department at State University of New York, Plattsburgh. San Rafael, California
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