News Room

Professor Tom Paradise

BENTONVILLE, Ark., May 7, 2010 - The diamonds, natural disasters and rough-and-tumble politics that have shaped and defined the Natural State will be among the subjects covered in a lively presentation by Professor Tom Paradise. Sponsored by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the lecture will feature never-before-seen maps and photographs from Dr. Paradise’s Illustrated Atlas of Arkansas, to be published by the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock later this year. The lecture, titled “Mapping Arkansas,” will take place from 5:30-7 p.m. Tues., May 11 in the Walmart Room at the Bentonville Library, located at 405 S. Main Street in Bentonville, Ark.

Two years in the making, Tom Paradise’s Illustrated Atlas of Arkansas uses more than 100 diagrams and maps, historic photographs, advertisements and lists. This major new publication visually documents nearly every aspect of the state, from the geothermal activity that made Hot Springs an early vacation destination to historical events such as the Brooks-Baxter war, an 1875 stand-off between rival claimants to the governorship that left 38 people dead and 45 injured. Assisted by graduate students in cartography and geography and faculty at the University of Arkansas, Paradise developed a series of landscape themes, both physical and cultural, and then mined each topic for visual references.

“We wanted to show what makes Arkansas unique, from the diamonds found near Murfreesboro to the world’s largest stand of hardwoods, which is right here in the Ozarks,” Tom Paradise said.

Dr. Paradise also will address Arkansas’ unusual industrial profile, past disasters such as the New Madrid Earthquake of 1811 and the state’s long list of biggest and bests in his presentation.

“Arkansas has the world’s largest barbeque grill, the world’s shortest street and America’s first national park – we needed a page just for the superlatives and official state ‘things’,” Paradise said.

The program is free and best for adults and teens.
Tom Paradise has taught in the geography program at the University of Arkansas since 2000, and served as Director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences from 2006 – 2009. His primary research interests are in geomorphology and resource management, specifically the deterioration of classical architecture, stone weathering and human impacts on cultural resources at sites across the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Levant. In 2009 he was awarded Teacher of the Year by both the Associated Student Organization and the University of Arkansas Alumni Association. Dr. Paradise is also a noted cartographer and has written a number of award-winning atlases, including the best-selling Atlas Of Hawaii.