James L Witherell

Born in a paper mill town in Maine's western foothills, Muskie was one of six children of a Polish immigrant and a Polish-American mother whose English was worse than her husband's. His arc through his formative years was singular and unpredictable, an American story that looks plausible only in ...

The story begins with the Bean family, young Leon Leonwood Bean's love of the outdoors, his first forays into sales (soap, men's clothing), and then his development of the boot and the beginnings of an outdoors outfitting company that ran on a card file system and resisted change. The story of L....