Download or read book Prelude to Greatness written by Uel Blank and published by Dog Ear Publishing. This book was released on 2007-05 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uel Blank's primary career focused upon economic and community development. Much of it involved extension and classroom teaching and research in the Land-Grant universities of Missouri, Michigan and Minnesota. He also served as an economic development consultant to businesses and communities in the Midwestern United States and overseas---in the Middle East, the Baltic States of Estonia and Latvia, and in Post-Soviet Russia. In contrast to his present career, his first job after undergraduate college was as an industrial chemist. He also covered 100,000 miles of the Pacific Ocean aboard a destroyer in World War II. In even sharper contrast, he grew up on the family farm where, despite the on-rushing events of the Twentieth Century, life retained many of the semi-subsistence characteristics of the previous century. These wide-ranging experiences equip him well to bring to life the events and people recorded in the diaries that provide the basis for this book's narrative.