Fast Lane on a Dirt Road: Vermont Transformed, 1945-1990

Forty-five years ago Vermont was one of the nation's most rural states, a remote world of mill towns and hill farms. Still rural, it is now within a day's drive for 65 million people. Interstates 89 and 91, new ski areas and second-home development have transformed the state, the economic, political and social changes in which Sherman ( The House at Shelburne Farms ) chronicles decade by decade. In a book of primarily local interest, he looks at his own hometown of Queehee, once a mill town, now a 5500-acre commodity for tourists, and demonstrates that the ``Vermont Way of Life'' has been exchanged for the ``American Way of Life.'' In politics, Sherman notes that Vermont became one of the most centralized states during the '60s, when political power was consolidated in the name of efficiency. Preservation vs. development arguments continue; the only thing that hasn't changed, Sherman quips, is the weather. (Dec.)