Robin W. Winks
Personal Information
Description
From New York Times obituary: Robin W. Winks, a Yale scholar who combined a love of British imperial history with enthusiasm for open spaces and a consuming interest in international espionage and detective fiction, died on Monday, April 7, 2003, in New Haven, Connecticut. He was 72. In more than 40 years of teaching at Yale, Dr. Wicks, who held the Randolph W. Townsend Jr. chair of history, wrote extensively about the history of the British Empire, with particular emphasis on Canada and Canadian relations with the United States, as well as on Australian and New Zealand history. He also developed a boundless enthusiasm for America's national parks and monuments, and in 1998 became one of the few people to have visited all 376 of these sites. His tireless advocacy for preserving open spaces led the National Parks Association in 1999 to award him its first Robin W. Winks gold medal for ''enhancing public understanding of the national parks.'' Another great interest of Dr. Winks's life was espionage and detective fiction, on which he wrote several books. In 1999 he won the Edgar Award for his book ''Mystery and Suspense Writers.'' Robin William Winks was born in Indiana on Dec. 5, 1930, and graduated from the University of Colorado in 1952. As a Fulbright Scholar in New Zealand, he received a master's degree in Maori studies from Victoria University before studying ethnography back at Colorado and earning his doctorate at Johns Hopkins in 1957. He joined the history faculty at Yale in 1959 and remained there for the rest of his career, with the exception of some visiting posts overseas. From 1969 to 1971 he was cultural attaché at the United States Embassy in London. From 1999 to 2000 he was the Vyvyan Harmsworth visiting professor of American history at Oxford University, to which he returned in 1992 and 1993 as George Eastman professor, lecturing on the history of the British Empire.
Books
The Colorado
Describes the course of the Colorado River, its impact on the land through which it flows and on the people living nearby, dams and canals used to harness the river's water, and controversies surrounding its use.
The Civil War Years
While the Yankees and the Confederates fought a ruthless civil war in the United States, Britain and the northern states waged a "war in anticipation" as British North America waited and wondered whether the federal army of the United States would invade. Robin Winks's classic study is a dramatic examination of the impact of the American Civil War on Canada, especially on the movement toward Confederation. From the Chesapeake incident off the coast of Nova Scotia, through the St. Albans Raid from Quebec into Vermont, to the reinforcing of garrisons across British North America in response to the Trent Affair, the Civil War Years ranges across the early Canadian landscape. It offers an in-depth survey of Canadian public opinion on the war, the role of Confederate sympathizers in Canada, and the number of Canadians enlisted in the armies of the North and South.
Laurance S. Rockefeller
Noted historian Robin W. Winks offers an in-depth look at the life and accomplishments of Laurance Rockefeller. This deftly argued and gracefully written volume explains and explores Rockefeller's role in shaping the transition from traditional land conservation to a more inclusive environmentalism. Laurance S. Rockefeller: Catalyst for Conservation provides a broad interpretation of the history of environmental protection through the work of one of this country's most visionary conservationists.
Frederick Billings
The nineteenth century was the golden age of enterprise in the United States. A small group of rich and powerful men changed the way we do business, and forever altered the American landscape by criss-crossing the country with railway lines. Although less well known than the great "robber barons", Frederick Billings was one of the extraordinary men of his era, combining a shrewd business sense with a love of nature. Born in Vermont in 1823, Billings was one of the early "forty-niners," making his fortune during the gold rush, becoming the first person to practice law in California, and the state's first Attorney General. He was also a leading conservationist- he helped establish Yosemite National Park, and initiated the reforestation of Vermont. As a wealthy railroad entrepreneur, he invested in the first northern transcontinental line, the Northern Pacific, of which he was later president. In this definitive biography of Frederick Billings, Robin Winks provides the first full-length study of this nineteenth-century giant. -- from Book Jacket.
Cloak & gown
The CIA and its World War II predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), were for many years largely populated by members of Ivy League colleges, particularly Yale. In this highly acclaimed book, Robin Winks explores the underlying bonds between the university and the intelligence communities, introducing a fascinating cast of characters that include safe-crackers and experts in Azerbaijani as well as such social luminaries as Paul Mellon, David Bruce, John P. Marquand, Jr., and William Vanderbilt. This edition of the book includes a new preface by Winks.