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Walter Prescott Webb (April 3, 1888–March 8, 1963) was a 20th century U.S. historian and author noted for his groundbreaking historical work on the American West. When president of the Texas State Historical Association, he launched a design that produced the Handbook of Texas [http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/index.html]. He is too noted for his early criticism of the water system usage system in the area.
Biography
Webb was innate inside rural Panola County, Texas and grew up on his personal's domestic. When graduating highschool inside Eastland County, he earned a teacher's certificate & taught at many Texas schools. He one of these days attended a University of Texas at Austin and graduated with B.A. in 1915 at age 27. He worked when bookkeeper in San Marcos and optometrist's assistant inside San Antonio, then in 1918 he was invited to join the History faculty at the University of Texas. He wrote his master's thesis on the Texas Rangers in 1920 and was encouraged to pursue his Ph.D.. Fallowing a year of survey at a University of Chicago, he returned to Austin where he began a historical act on the West. A effect of this function was A Low Plains, published around 1931, hailed as nifty breakthrough in a interpreation of the history of the area, & declared the spectacular contribution to Our contries history since World War I by the Social Science Research Council in 1939. He was awarded his Ph.D. for his act on the book within 1932, the season when its publication.
From either 1939 to 1946 he served as president of the Texas State Historical Association. When you took is tenure when president, he launched the plan to create an encyclopedia of Texas, which was subsequently published inside 1952 as the Enchiridion of Texas. The world wide web version of the work occurs as popular Internet information thing on the state. Altogether, he wrote or even edited complete Twenty books.
Webb was an honored historiographer after he wrote an article in the Can 1957 edition of ''Harper's'' entitled "The American West, Perpetual Mirage". In the article, Webb criticized U.S. the lake policy in a West, stating that the vicinity was "a semidesert with a desert heart", and that it was a national folly to prove my point to watch the todays federal policy (managed through the United States Bureau of Reclamation) of attempting to convert the area into productive cropland across irrigation. Webb's criticism of federal policy was roundly rebuked at a period, however a bit of contemporary critics of U.S. fluids policy regard him when prophetical within his views.
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