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The first comprehensive history of Norfolk to appear since
1930, Norfolk: The First Four Centuries tells the
story of America's largest maritime port from the first
contact between a Spanish sailor and an American Indian
Chiskiack man in 1561 to the city's late twentieth-century
concerns, including pollution of the Chesapeake Bay, urban
development, traffic in illegal guns, and racial
tensions.
Norfolk's splendid harbor made it an early refuge for
mariners against the threat of Atlantic pirates and storms,
and later gave it natural advantages as a seaport.
Incorporated as a town in 1680, Norfolk has survived
epidemics, hurricanes, total destruction in the
Revolutionary War, and occupation in the Civil War to become
Virginia's largest city, a bulk exporter and coaling station
and the world's foremost naval base. Thomas C. Parramore and
his research assistants include the lives and contributions
of hundreds of the city's little-known citizens, including
women, African Americans and other minorities, as well as
its celebrated sons and daughters.
Norfolk: The First Four Centuries details the
events, some tragic, some amusing, that have given the city
its rich, diverse, enduring character.
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"Not only detailed in its treatment of Norfolk's past but
. . . highly readable as well. . . . Urban history at its
best--a rich blend of political, military, economic, social,
and cultural themes--Norfolk should have wide
appeal."
--Newport News Daily Press
"Readers will find themselves hooked without realizing it
and then will marvel at the fascinating information that the
authors have organized here."
--Virginia Librarian
"A full-bodied narrative history . . . often entertaining
and certainly spirited. I felt as I read it as though I were
being given a tour, through four-plus centuries of Norfolk's
history by a guide who knew the place and its people very
well indeed."
--Peter S. Wallenstein, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University
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