Blazing New Trails printing plates

George Wilson Hoke was an American academic and author during the early 20th century. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1901, before becoming chair of Miami University's new Department of Geography in 1906. His paper, "The Study of Social Geography" (1907) was one of the first instances of the phrase "social geography" being used in a Western culture. During World War I, Hoke served on the U.S. Committee on Education and Special Training. While working with the army, he met John Randall, who became president of the Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute (RAMI) in 1922. Following the war, Hoke moved to Rochester for a position as the head of educational films for the Eastman Kodak Company.

In 1937, Hoke published an institutional history of RAMI, now the Rochester Institute of Technology. Blazing New Trails: The Biography of a Pioneer in Education, traced the history of the university, linking its origins to the Rochester Literary Company (1822). The book also includes biographical information for several prominent individuals that helped shape RAMI's values and identity. When the book was published in 1937, it became the primary source for the institutional history of the university for many decades.