Excelsior Editions

Walk in the footsteps of Dorothy Parker and explore her world.

Taking the reader through the New York that inspired, and was in turn inspired by, the formidable Dorothy Parker, the third revised edition of Dorothy Parker's New York includes a thoroughly revised text and never-before-seen archival photographs to illustrate her development as a writer, a wit, and a public persona. The book uncovers her favorite bars and salons as well as her homes and offices, most of which are still intact. With the charting of her colorful career, including the decade she spent as a member of the Algonquin Round Table, as well as her intense private life, readers will find themselves drawn into the lavish New York City of the 1920s and 1930s. Includes a new chapter about the 2020 journey of Dorothy Parker's ashes from Baltimore to New York City.

A long-time liberal activist gets an up-close political education about conservative America when he moves to a small town in upstate New York.

During a time of great national division and a growing working-class rebellion that has turned American politics on its head, a long-time liberal activist moves to a small town in the conservative northwest corner of New York State. He becomes a weekly opinion columnist for the city's two-hundred-year-old daily newspaper. His columns force light into the dark corners of local politics and provoke local debate over national issues, from guns to climate change. Dozens of people begin to speak to him about his columns, in stores, on the street, in playgrounds, and beyond. His columns also spark fierce debate in a community Facebook group that includes almost everyone in town. The result is an up-close education about what makes small-town America tick, just as small towns like this one are driving a national political upheaval. Told through stories that will entertain readers as well as make them think, Lessons from Lockport offers a unique look at one of the most misunderstood corners of American culture.

A history of New York's Yiddish popular culture from 1880 to the present.

The Tourist's Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City offers a new look at over a century of New York's history of Yiddish popular culture. Henry H. Sapoznik-a Peabody Award-winning coproducer of NPR's Yiddish Radio Project-tells the story in over a baker's dozen chapters on theater, music, architecture, crime, Blacks and Jews, restaurants, real estate, and journalism. Culled from over five thousand Yiddish and English newspaper articles of the period, and thanks to new research from previously inaccessible materials, the book reveals fresh insights into the impossible-to-overstate influence of Yiddish culture on New York City. Containing fifty images, many of which have never before been published, the book is complemented by an online interactive Google Map linked to over one hundred of the historic locations discussed in the book, with additional graphics and resource materials. The Tourist's Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City is a vivid, entertaining, and accessible compendium of both New York's lush Ashkenazic past and present, showcasing the culture's persistent resiliency.

A multilayered portrait of this brash, gifted artist, whose restless voice and spirit seem as alive today as ever.

A performer who rivaled Sinatra, Bobby Darin rose from dire poverty to become one of the biggest stars of his generation. Dogged by chronic illness, he knew that time was not on his side, and so, in a career full of dizzying twists and turns, he did it all, moving from teen idol to Vegas song-and-dance man, from hipster to folkie and back. In this biography, David Evanier offers a multilayered portrait of this brash, gifted artist, including the dark side of his celebrated marriage to America's sweetheart, Sandra Dee, and the incredible family secret that tore him apart at the end.

Charts the historical development of Queens from the 1920s to today, focusing on its profound diversity.

Queens charts the history of residential development of the New York City borough from the 1920s to today. The work focuses on the borough's most remarkable aspect: its profound diversity as a multiethnic, multiracial, and multireligious place. The narrative traces the evolution of Queens from a quasi-suburb of Manhattan for the white middle class into the most diverse county in the United States and, many contend, the most diverse place on the planet. Following this trajectory adds much to our understanding of the borough, the city, the country, and even the world.

Provocative new readings of biblical texts by major contemporary Jewish writers.

Lot's daughters rebel against their predatory father, Jacob wrestles an angel in a queer underground nightclub, Job arrives in the form of an avaricious former sorority girl-Smashing the Tablets presents a collection of provocative new readings of biblical texts by major contemporary Jewish writers. Behind this groundbreaking collection is the idea that foundational texts must be read anew or they become tools of conservatism and reaction. To achieve fresh readings, it is often necessary to step outside traditional modes of analysis, whether academic or theological, and to violate the conventions of storytelling and interpretation. By challenging dominant readings and identifying underrepresented characters and moments that have been "written out" of the biblical conversation, the essays, stories, and poems in this collection rupture assumptions, unsettle the reader, and give voice to the voiceless. The Bible in this collection is bent, recontextualized, queered, inverted, and smashed to pieces. Smashing the Tablets is one of the most significant Jewish literary collections in decades, a groundbreaking must-read for Jews and others interested not only in the Bible but also in identity, faith, and power.

America's geographic and ideological frontier as lived by Buffalo's first physician, renegade militia officer, and founding citizen.

Cyrenius Chapin tells the story of life in the young American republic through the experiences of a local physician, land speculator, and patriotic citizen. Chapin arrived in Buffalo in 1803 blessed with a forceful personality, infuriating gall, and a caring nature. He became a leader in the growing community, tending to its sick, training its future doctors, and engaging in local politics. A determined Federalist, he challenged Joseph Ellicott of the Holland Land Company, raised a family, and was a personal friend of Native American leaders. During the War of 1812, Dr. Chapin single-handedly resisted the British advance on the city but ultimately failed to prevent Buffalo's burning by the royalist forces. Pneumonia struck him down in 1838 following his third attempt to drive the British out of upper Canada. Extensively researched, this is the story about the age of revolution and a time when American independence and self-determination were inseparable.

From the sanctuary of her one-hundred-and-twenty-acre horse farm in the upper Susquehanna River Valley, essayist and poet Christine Gelineau takes stock of what it means to care for a farm, a nation, a planet—a home—and of how the stories we tell impact our lives.

Decades into life on a Morgan horse farm in upstate New York, Almanac author Christine Gelineau focused on the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and one another, about the planet we all share, and on how these narratives shape our own identities, our communities, and our attitudes and actions toward the environment. Framed by the seasons, Gelineau speaks to these vital conversations about what it can mean to be human in ways that are lyrical, practical, spiritual, and life-affirming. Almanac combines observations of iced-in alligators and newborn foals with prose poems evoking the natural world, gardening techniques learned from the Haudenosaunee, personal resilience in the face of long COVID and brain surgery, and urban versus rural perspectives on water rights and wind-turbine siting. It charts one person's journey into the inner and external worlds that will resonate with all readers dealing with these life-changing times.

Fourteen interviews with distinguished jazz writers that explore the exciting challenges of writing about jazz.

Writing Jazz presents interviews with fourteen distinguished jazz scholars: Whitney Balliett, Bob Blumenthal, Stanley Crouch, Linda Dahl, Maxine Gordon, Farah Jasmine Griffin, John Edward Hasse, Willard Jenkins, Hettie Jones, Robin D. G. Kelley, Laurie Pepper, Tom Piazza, Ricky Riccardi, and A. B. Spellman. This literary jam session explores the many challenges and thrills of writing about jazz in various prose forms, including liner notes, memoirs, biographies, and critical guides. The distinguished writers interviewed in this collection obviously share a passion for jazz, and each has produced a hefty amount of literature that illuminates both the music and its practitioners. A well-known writer on jazz, Sascha Feinstein has explored the relationship of jazz and literature throughout his career, making Writing Jazz an essential contribution to the field of jazz-related literature.

An in-depth exploration of the photograph and film works of Mohawk artist Shelley Niro as they connect to New York State.

Mohawk Rebel is an in-depth exploration of one of North America's most important Indigenous artists. Claire Raymond's compelling and well-researched book connects Niro's lineage as a Turtle Clan woman to the artist's oeuvre that evokes and represents the Mohawk people's memory of and continuing relationship to the land now called New York State. With profound allegorical and metaphorical power, Niro's virtuosic photographic and filmic works create layered temporal tapestries that weave the past and present in a new vision. The book offers fresh interpretations of many of Niro's best-known works and brings into view some of her earlier lesser-known works. Raymond's sensitive and nuanced interpretations of Niro's art ultimately contend that Niro's work agitates subtly but unmistakably for the ethical rightness of the land-back movement. Raymond eloquently argues that this Mohawk artist's relationship to New York State is one of rightful claim.

A portrait of an intense and unusual marriage, and an affirmation of life after suicide.

In 1971, Laura and Guy Waterman left New York City for thirty-seven acres in Vermont, where they would live in a hand-built cabin without running water or electricity for the next thirty years. It was a life based largely in the nineteenth century, a life of hauling their own water and growing their own food, of lighting candles in the evening and heating their cabin with wood from the surrounding forest. Combined with the trail tending they did in the alpine zone of the White Mountains and the books they wrote about environmental stewardship, it made for a rewarding, healthy, and fruitful existence. But that was only part of their story. Guy's depression was another part, and his ultimate decision to take his own life on the wintry summit of Mount Lafayette-a decision he made with Laura's support-was the crux, a term climbers use to describe the hardest move on the climb. Being a climber herself, Laura had to confront the crux. This meant taking a close look at Guy's suicide and asking herself a hard question: How, or why, had she come to support the decision of the man she loved? In Losing the Garden, Laura Waterman comes to terms with her husband's long depression and the complex nature of a gifted, humorous man who was driven by obsession, self-absorption, and a strange lack of confidence. Her account of her own marriage, idyllic from the outside but riddled from within, is nonetheless a love story, a portrait of an intense and unusual marriage, and an affirmation of life after loss.

The story of how an Italian American housewife and community organizer battled a Brooklyn Mafia boss and political activist for the hearts and minds of a white working class in revolt.

This is the true story of a rivalry between a pair of improbable social justice crusaders––Mary Sansone, an Italian homemaker, and Joe Colombo, a Mafia boss––set against the backdrop of Brooklyn's racial and ethnic feuds of the 1960s and 1970s. From her basement kitchen, Mary Sansone launched the Congress of Italian American Organizations, a social-action coalition operating multimillion-dollar programs on behalf of the Italian poor. From his office suite high above Madison Avenue, Joe Colombo defied omertà to commandeer the Italian American Civil Rights League, an audacious anti-defamation organization that convinced thousands to join sidewalk pickets and mass demonstrations. When, around 1970, Mary and Joe's paths finally cross, they battle each other for the hearts and minds of a white working class in revolt. This book challenges stereotypes of the docile Italian wife and the parochial Mafioso by recasting these actors as a rebel girl and a renegade wiseguy. It offers an alternative history of the 1960s and 1970s, when it was presumed that white ethnics living in urban America were predisposed to responding to the civil rights movement with backlash and the women's movement with scorn.

The greatest songwriters of the rock era tell how they created their biggest hits.

They're Playing My Song collects for the first time over fifty in-depth, personal interviews with the greatest songwriters of the rock era. Author Bruce Pollock has been writing about rock and pop music for over six decades and has enjoyed unique access to leading songwriters, some well-known, others only known through their work. His interviews span all genres, from doo-wop to hip-hop, and all of pop music's greatest eras from the fifties to today. Unlike other books that focus on personalities, Pollock focuses on the songwriter's craft, encouraging his subjects to reflect on how they’ve created the hit songs that defined their eras. A sensitive interviewer with a deep knowledge of the songwriter's work, Pollock is able to draw unique insights from a range of songsmiths, from John Lee Hooker reflecting on how he created some of his iconic blues songs, to Paul Simon's deeply analytical approach to crafting his hits, to contemporary songwriters like Julie Gold who speak to the ever-changing world of the pop music industry. Many of the interviews have been expanded and updated from their original publication. Anyone interested in how songwriters approach their craft will be enthralled by this book told in the unique voices of the creators themselves.

Chronicles the civic endeavors of progressive political activists in New York's Hudson Valley.

Drawing on riveting firsthand accounts, Progressives on the Hudson highlights the influence of progressives in campaigns and elections, political parties, nongovernmental organizations, and the policy arena. Michael A. Armato explores these activities in the context of structural factors unique to the state of New York. Beyond simply serving as a study of one of New York's most historic regions, Armato shows that progressive civic engagement is not confined to America's largest cities. And, even more broadly, he provides readers with an in-depth discussion of progressive political ideology and illustrates that while progressives share some common ideas, they are by no means a monolith. Offering readers a rich description of civic life in the Hudson Valley, as told by progressive activists, and supplemented by local news sources and primary documents, Progressives on the Hudson skillfully contributes to our understanding of civic engagement and political ideology.

Uncovers the significant social, literary, and political contributions of thirty-one notable women of Oswego County, New York.

When called upon to name a noteworthy woman who lived in Oswego County, New York, most people would respond with Dr. Mary Walker, Elmina Spencer, or Malvina Guimaraes. And they would be correct: these three women played a prominent role in the county's nineteenth century history. Yet, they were not the only ones. Many others whose names are less well known accomplished much within the legal and cultural constraints of contemporary society, including writer Julia McNair Wright, artist Mary Austen Oliver, and playwright Lottie Blair Parker. Whether fighting to end slavery or for the right to vote, running for political office, or seeking reforms in women's place in society, the thirty-one women detailed in this book made a lasting impact in Oswego County and their country. Today's professional women, lawyers, doctors, judges, professors, and bankers stand on the shoulders of these pioneering foremothers who refused to let prevailing societal norms stifle their creativity and ambition.

The story of Woodstock, N.Y., over the last 100 years and how a small, rural town coped with the many challenges of changing times.

Few towns in America are as famous as Woodstock, New York-although Woodstock may be most famous for an event that happened many miles away! Long before the 1969 Woodstock festival put the town on the map, it had been a center for artists and free thinkers who found refuge in its rural setting. Longtime citizens were often shocked by the arrival of these newcomers who brought new values and attitudes to their once-isolated village. From the transformative arrival of artists in the early twentieth century to the influx of musicians and young people in the 1960s, Woodstockers worked and struggled to balance everyday life in a small, rural community with the attention and notoriety the outside world brought to it. Presented chronologically, this text examines the nature of change within Woodstock's uncommon story as it emerges from the Great Depression, confronts the realty of World War II, moves through the 1950s and into an unimagined and unintended future with the arrival of the Sixties through today. At its core, this is a story of how Woodstock's cultural and political institutions, its citizens, and its physical landscape met the ever-changing challenges of changing times. It is a story of community, resilience, conflict, and transition into a world its early settlers could not have imagined.

Recounts how preservationists and environmentalists ultimately succeeded in persuading a powerful state agency to abandon its plans for privately developing Buffalo's waterfront and instead revitalize the city by enhancing opportunities for members of the public to use and enjoy that same space.

This book tells the remarkable story of howBuffalo's post-industrial waterfront was reclaimed for public use and enjoyment and pays tribute to the many local citizens and nongovernmental organizations that made the city's waterfront renaissance possible. After years of litigation, public controversy and debate, preservationists and environmentalists ultimately succeeded in persuading the state to abandon its contentious plans for privately developing Buffalo's waterfront. Gene Bunnell, an experienced urban planner, lays out the Buffalo waterfront's long and troubled history, from the torrent of shipping and commercial activity that was unleashed by the opening of the Erie Canal, to the contamination of the Buffalo River due to waterside industries, to how the Outer Harbor-the last portion of the waterfront to be industrially developed-was reshaped and contaminated by filling in low-lying areas with a toxic mix of waste materials. Drawing on interviews and articles, editorials, and op-eds from The Buffalo News, Bunnell provides the reader with a "real-time" sense of how the struggle over the future of Buffalo's waterfront unfolded and the ultimate victory by local activists to secure environmental cleanup, restored natural habitats, and expanded public waterfront access.

The facts and legends of New York's famed artistic hub told by one of its key participants.

Located in New York's theatre district, the Algonquin Hotel became an artistic hub for the city and a landmark in America's cultural life. It was a meeting place and home away from home for such luminaries as famed wits/authors Alexander Woollcott and Dorothy Parker; Broadway and Hollywood stars, including Tallulah Bankhead and Charles Laughton; popular raconteurs like Robert Benchley; and New York City mayors Jimmy Walker and Fiorello LaGuardia. Observing it all was celebrated author and journalist Konrad Bercovici. Born in Romania, Bercovici settled in New York, where he became known for reporting on its rich cultural life. While digging through an inherited trunk of family papers, his granddaughter, Mirana Comstock, discovered this previously unpublished manuscript on Bercovici's years at the Algonquin Round Table. Lovers of New York lore and fans of American culture will enjoy his vivid, intimate accounts of what it was like to be a member of this distinguished circle.

A stunning visual memorial to Buffalo's architectural and industrial history.

Archer Daniels Midland got lucky the night of December 11, 2021: a fierce winter wind took out a third of the brick wall of Buffalo's Great Northern Grain Elevator. ADM had wanted to demolish the building since 1993, but each of its demolition requests to the city had been blocked. Six days after the storm, with no public hearings, the building was condemned. A unique piece of Buffalo's economic and global architectural history was gone.

Grain elevators are part of Buffalo's-and the nation's-architectural heritage. Unlike earlier wooden structures, the Great Northern was made of steel; it was fireproof. The steel bins kept the grain dry and the rats out. The entire steel structure was riveted and bolted into a single entity. The Great Northern couldn't burn down or blow up; it couldn't be knocked down, and it was incapable of falling down. When the Great Northern was completed seven months after the shovels broke ground, it was the largest grain elevator in the world. It was built to last, and last it did until the eight-month task of tearing it apart began on September 16, 2022.

Photographer and activist Bruce Jackson documents the story of this key architectural landmark through text, documents, and his own photographs taken over a period of several decades to tell this tragic story that will appeal to anyone interested in the history and preservation of America's industrial culture.

Poignant and vulnerable essays that weave together seemingly disparate themes of wild places and mountain stewardship, books and reading, and building a new life after loss.

"This is some of the finest writing in Laura Waterman's long and distinguished career. Anyone who values the history of conservation, or the gnarled wilds of the Northeast, or the complexities of the human spirit will find nourishment in these pages." - Bill McKibben, author of Wandering Home

"In this new book, Laura Waterman tells the full story of her unique life. It began on the campus of a boy's school and took her to mountains, growing her own food, and writing. In these pages, readers find what it's like to grow up the daughter of the scholar who put the dashes back into Emily Dickinson's poetry; how Waterman coped with that brilliant father's alcoholism; her development as a groundbreaking climber; and her homesteading life for almost three decades. In these pages she reveals how she kept her strong sense of self while living with a dynamic, lovable, and often challenging man, her late husband, Guy Waterman. She examines closely her role in his suicide on Mount Lafayette in 2000." - Christine Woodside, editor of Appalachia and the author of Libertarians on the Prairie: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and the Making of the Little House Books

Long Island's longest-tenured winemaker weighs in on what makes the North Fork so unique for fine wine production.

Growing up a stone's throw away from New York City in a small house on suburban Long Island, Richard Olsen-Harbich always dreamed of being a farmer. After graduating from Cornell with a degree in viticulture, he found himself back on the Island at the heart of an emerging wine region that was struggling to find itself. Starting from the ground up with little information or experience, Olsen-Harbich began a lifelong quest to master the art and science of growing wine grapes less than 90 miles from Manhattan.

In the last half-century, the North Fork's bucolic seaside towns and humble potato farms were transformed into one of this country's most compelling agricultural success stories, garnering praise from wine critics around the world. Olsen-Harbich charts the meteoric rise of North Fork winemaking from the historic failures of colonial times to the modern triumph of becoming one of the most important wine-producing districts on the East Coast. Through a poetic interweaving of personal anecdotes with scientific reporting about climate, soils, geology, and botany, Olsen-Harbich drills deep into the topic, giving the world a new language for talking about wine. In doing so, he redefines what it means to make wine in the New World.

The neglected small group swing sound of the 1940s–60s takes its place in the pantheon of jazz literature.

Jazz with a Beat is the first book on the often overlooked but vitally important genre of small group swing jazz. Coming into being in the early 1940s, small group swing answered the need in the Black community for a form of jazz that was more accessible (and more danceable) than the new bebop. An adaptation of the big band Black swing (Erskine Hawkins, Jimmie Lunceford, Chick Webb) of the 1930s to small combos, and with a more vigorous beat for the new generation, this music developed and was beloved through the 1940s, continued to be enjoyed through the rock and roll years of the 1950s, and was a major influence on the soul jazz of the 1960s. Among the many hit artists portrayed in these pages are Illinois Jacquet, Louis Jordan, Big Jay McNeely, Joe Liggins, Nat "King" Cole, Red Prysock, Ruth Brown, Nellie Lutcher, Camille Howard, T-Bone Walker, and Ray Charles. Dismissed as "rhythm and blues," this music has been ignored by jazz historians. Jazz with a Beat honors this music as a legitimate genre of jazz and is a stirring evocation of an era. It should be of interest to lovers of jazz and Americana.

A granddaughter's intimate portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt at her longtime home of Val-Kill as well as on a diplomatic trip to Europe and the Middle East.

When Nina Roosevelt was just seven years old, her family moved from California to live with her grandmother at the small cottage, Val-Kill, in Hyde Park, New York. It was at Val-Kill Farm that Nina shared her childhood years with her remarkable grandmother, the woman who would change her life. To Nina, she was Grandmère, but, to most everyone else, she was Eleanor Roosevelt. Few people realize how important Val-Kill was for Eleanor Roosevelt. Returning "home again" nourished her, allowed her time for reflection, planning, and rejuvenation so that she could continue pouring her heart and soul into the needs of so many people the world over.

Growing Up Roosevelt gives an intimate picture of life at Val-Kill as well as Nina's wide-ranging experiences traveling as a teenager with her grandmother. Included are portraits of the family, staff, famous friends, people in need, and world leaders as disparate as Nikita Khrushchev, Haile Selassie, and John F. Kennedy. This book will appeal to anyone interested in the life and times of Eleanor Roosevelt, her work as a trailblazing political and feminist leader, and the intimate behind-the-scenes details that only her granddaughter can tell.

An explorer's walking guide to downstate New York's awesome boulders and rock formations.

Downstate New York Rock Walks is both a hiking guidebook and a history book, calling attention to some of downstate New York's most spectacular and historic rocks: balanced rocks, perched rocks, rock shelters, talus caves, glacial potholes, split rocks, rock profiles, historic rocks, and massive, larger-than-life boulders.

Many large glacial erratics have a history going back thousands of years to when they were moved to their present location by advancing glaciers. Many served as points of navigational reference at a time when the landscape was featureless and heavily forested, and still others were ceremonial sites for Native Americans. Rock shelters and talus caves have also been used for thousands of years by Native Americans and Europeans seeking refuge from the elements. It is important that these amazing natural wonders of stone be remembered and recorded before they are lost to collective memory or destroyed by the encroachment of civilization.

Providing precise GPS location information along with length and degree of difficulty for each hike, Downstate New York Rock Walks will appeal to casual hikers, serious rock explorers, historians, geologists, and anyone wishing to explore some of nature's greatest wonders within the reach of the lower Hudson River valley.

Originally published in Hebrew in 1944, this fascinating and moving account may well be the first memoir of the Holocaust.

At the end of 1944, while World War II was still raging, nineteen-year-old Renia Kukielka published her Hebrew language memoir about the Holocaust. The account may well be the first of its kind. In her powerful and raw story, she portrays life in the ghettos and her three years of wandering in disguise as a Polish Catholic, trying to escape from the German onslaught. She also recounts how she served for almost a year as a courier between ghettos for the Zionist youth movement's underground cell in Bendzin, carrying weapons, money, and messages, until she was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943. She was tortured in a high-security prison, but, after a daring escape, she was able to flee to British Mandate Palestine with other members of the resistance.

Kukielka's memoir manages to combine both immediacy and hindsight. It stands out for its descriptions of life and activities outside of the ghettos and concentration camps in wartime Poland and for its focus on Zionist youth resistance to the Holocaust. It also provides a somewhat rare female perspective on the Holocaust and offers insight into how much was known about the scale of the Nazi atrocities during the war. Following the book's initial publication in Hebrew in 1944, an unauthorized English-language edition was published in the United States in 1947. The present expanded text includes a scholarly introduction, notes, and a historical afterword, which help to explain and contextualize Kukielka's personal account.

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Reality merges with illusion in this novel of northwestern China.

Winner of the 2024 New York City Big Book Award in the World Literature category

Finalist for the 2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Multicultural Fiction category

Xue Mo's novel Curses of the Kingdom of Xixia presents a rich tapestry of the history, religion, lore, and customs of a region in present-day northwestern China. During its heyday, the Sino-Tibetan kingdom of Xixia (pronounced see-sia; 1038–1227), also known as the Tanguts, rivaled the Song dynasty (960–1279) of China and boasted a cavalry so formidable that the Chinese paid tribute to it to maintain peace. Using the discovery of "lost" manuscripts as a frame, the novel presents historical events and tales of semifictional characters, including the avatar of a local Tantric Buddhist goddess, a Dakini/Vajrayogini named Snow Feather. Taking the readers through different historical times and the various geographical and cultural spaces of the region, Xue Mo reveals truths by blurring the distinction between good and evil, beauty and hideousness, reality and fiction, permanence and impermanence. Magical realism and mimesis coexist. Reality merges with illusion, the mundane with the supernatural.

A detailed, historic guide to the rich physical history of New York City, from its founding by Dutch settlers to the turn of the twentieth century.

Nooks and Corners of Old New York celebrates the people, places, and events that shaped New York City's history. The author-a newspaper reporter and novelist who wrote extensively on New York's early history-paints a vivid picture of several centuries of stories, scandals, and celebrations. While the history may be old, its appeal is not dated; any fan of contemporary city lore will be fascinated by the many echoes that can be discovered by learning more about the city's colorful past. Whether an armchair traveler or someone retracing the author's steps, the reader will enjoy imagining a city that still featured sheep meadows, fresh streams, and verdant hills. And, surprisingly, many of the landmarks highlighted in this text remain on their original sites, testimony to the fact that the ever-changing city still has a history to be appreciated. Read selectively as you roam the streets or from first to last page in the comfort of your favorite chair, Nooks and Corners of Old New York will entertain and inform you about New York's rich story.

A compelling biography of virtuoso, baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams and how his life intersected with some of the greatest poets, writers, painters, and musicians of his time.

Pepper Adams is more than a definitive biography of Park "Pepper" Adams (1930–1986). The culmination of thirty-seven years of research, it's a fascinating account of Adams's life and times, thanks to colorful vignettes drawn from the author's 250 unpublished conversations with Adams and other esteemed musicians. These candid observations about Adams and his colleagues reveal previously confidential aspects of Adams's complex personality, his many outstanding achievements, and little-known facts about musicians with whom he worked, such as Thad Jones, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Elvin Jones, Charles Mingus, Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington, Bobby Timmons, Wardell Gray, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and others. Musicians, jazz fans and collectors, and readers who enjoy a hero's journey will be intrigued by Adams's extraordinary intelligence, the extent of his influence, the reverence he commanded, and his struggle to be rewarded as the unique stylist that he was throughout his career. Moreover, readers will be enlivened by the author's unique approach to biography, in which storytelling moves thematically, sometimes in reverse chronological order.

How New Yorkers transformed the world!

When singer Frank Sinatra famously crooned about New York, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere," he could have been talking about New York's great inventors whose works have travelled across the globe. New York has been a hotbed of innovation since its founding. Made in New York tells the stories behind the innovators and their inventions. Like many New Yorkers, some came from elsewhere to find success in their new home. Some became famous; others struggled for recognition. All were visionaries and risk-takers who were willing to put their lives on the line if necessary. From the first brassiere to the life-saving pacemaker, and from a solar lantern to the first mass-produced cameras, New York has been the seedbed of life-changing technologies that have altered how we live. Made in New York celebrates these compelling stories.

Illuminates the beginnings, downfall, and legacy of the acid-inspired, spontaneous, and playful approach to life and music in Haight-Ashbury from 1964–1967.

Combining literature, social history, and personal experience, author Robert J. Campbell traces the birth, downfall, and legacy of the innovative, playful, and spontaneous counterculture launched in 1960s Haight-Ashbury. In a lively writing style, Campbell describes the discovery of LSD, its slow adoption, and the promotion of it by Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey, who each became missionaries for the drug. Campbell relates how LSD allowed users to enhance the perception of alternative realities and describes its wide-scale use in the Haight-Ashbury District of San Francisco from 1964 to 1967 that led to imaginative and creative change, including collaborative behavior, a new way of looking at the world, acid rock, and a host of other paradigm shifts. Haight-Ashbury, Psychedelics, and the Birth of Acid Rock concludes by examining the inherent dangers of constant drug use as well as the positive legacy of the 1960s, including a focus on health food, cooperative living arrangements, recycling, battling climate change, free medical help, and personal responsibility. The book incorporates ideas from a broad range of disciplines for general readers for a unique and fresh look at this impactful era.

An unflinching look at the triumphs and tragedies of '50s rock and roll, from the biggest stars, like Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins, to those who barely grabbed the spotlight.

They all tried, but few singers and musicians from the 1950s became stars. Yet many of them had stories to tell that were far more interesting than the ones you already know. Author Hank Davis was bitten by the music bug as a teenager. By the time he entered college in 1959, he was no stranger to New York's recording studios and had a few 45s of his own on the market.

Spanning a 45 year career in music journalism, Davis has spent time backstage, in motel rooms, and on tour buses to uncover stories that rarely made the official annals of pop music history. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews and new research, Ducktails, Drive-Ins, and Broken Hearts offers a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the winners and losers during rock 'n' roll's formative era.

How did a decade as uptight and puritanical as the '50s produce so much cringe-worthy, politically incorrect music? What was it like to see a pale cover version of your latest record climb the charts while yours sat unplayed by mainstream radio stations? How did precious Elvis tapes end up in a Memphis landfill? And who was that thirteen-year-old girl who made a five-dollar vanity record at Sun just two years after Elvis had-and ended up singing backup on "Suspicious Minds" and "In the Ghetto?" This book is a must-read for all fans of '50s music.

In the words of Jerry Phillips, son of Sun Records founder, Sam Phillips, "Hank Davis is one of the few guys who really gets it."

The saga of New York's push to build two minor-league baseball stadiums, colored by dollars, politics, and dreams.

Bush League, Big City tells the interwoven stories of two low-level minor league baseball teams brought to New York City in the late 1990s. It also illuminates the history of the New York-Penn League, America’s oldest and longest-running minor league, from its inception in 1939 until its abrupt contraction by Major League Baseball in 2020. With an eye for details and firsthand accounts by many of the baseball people involved, Michael Sokolow tells the story of two franchises that went in very different directions, as the Cyclones achieved astronomical success while Staten Island’s ‘Baby Bombers’ sank under the weight of debt and recriminations. Along the way, the book visits small communities in upstate New York, New England, and Canada, introduces the multimillionaires who came to dominate small-time baseball ownership, and tells the tale of two of the most expensive minor-league baseball stadiums ever built. It also sheds light on the complex, behind-the-scenes influence of New York City politics, as the indomitable will of Mayor Rudy Giuliani reshaped the geography of both the city and professional baseball. Bush League, Big City is a compelling examination of both the power and limits of nostalgia in a sport that is increasingly focused on the bottom line.

The personal and legal struggle of eight enslaved people for freedom in New York in the period just before the Civil War.

Gold Winner of the 2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the History category

The Eight tells the story of Lemmon v. New York-or, as it's more popularly known, the Lemmon Slave Case. All but forgotten today, it was one of the most momentous civil rights cases in American history. There had been cases in which the enslaved had won their freedom after having resided in free states, but the Lemmon case was unique, posing the question of whether an enslaved person can win freedom by merely setting foot on New York soil-when brought there in the keep of an "owner." The case concerned the fates of eight enslaved people from Virginia, brought through New York in 1852 by their owners, Juliet and Jonathan Lemmon. The Eight were in court seeking, legally, to become people-to change their status under law from objects into human beings. The Eight encountered Louis Napoleon, the son of a slave, an abolitionist activist, and a "conductor" of the Underground Railroad, who took enormous risks to help others. He was part of an anti-slavery movement in which African-Americans played an integral role in the fight for freedom. The case was part of the broader judicial landscape at the time: If a law was morally repugnant but enshrined in the Constitution, what was the duty of the judge? Should there be, as some people advocated, a "higher law" that transcends the written law? These questions were at the heart of the Lemmon case. They were difficult and important ones in the 1850s-and, more than a century and a half later, we must still grapple with them today.

A classic work on the history of New York City written by one of America's greatest politicians.

Theodore Roosevelt's New York, published in 1891, was one of forty titles he authored during his lifetime. Roosevelt sets out, as he declares in his preface, "to trace the causes which gradually changed a little Dutch trading-hamlet into a huge American city." New York admirably accomplishes this objective. Proceeding chronologically, Roosevelt maintains control of his concise narrative throughout, recounting events clearly while continually providing well-considered and enlightening analysis. In suitable places-without disrupting the narrative-Roosevelt offers the reader his perspectives on a variety of broader topics, including his admiration for leaders who combine boldness with wisdom and moderation and his perceptive outlook on the frequent lack of connection between wealth accumulation and good character and meaningful living. While Roosevelt's own time as an exemplary top-level "man in the arena" was still years away, in this revealing and engaging book about his native city by a historian then in his early thirties, there are glimpses of the mindset and temperament of the world-historical leader who was to preside over the government of the United States from 1901 to 1909-yet another reason why Roosevelt's classic book New York remains well worth reading.

The uplifting story of how one camp gave children with visual impairment new confidence in their own abilities.

In 1995, Lauren Lieberman was an assistant professor with a dream: to form an educational sports camp for children who are visually impaired. Beginning with a small grant, Lieberman built a local program that grew into a worldwide movement. The Camp Abilities model has now been replicated all over the United States and in ten other countries. The Camp Abilities Story relates Lieberman's journey-from her earliest experiences in sports, to her "aha moment" during college, to her Fulbright scholarship and starting Camp Abilities programs worldwide. With an inspirational yet honest view of how a dream to make a difference in the world was tempered by the reality of the hard work necessary to change lives, the lessons herein are applicable to anyone with a dream to make the world a better place.

The first book to comprehensively examine Lou Gehrig's famous "Luckiest Man" speech.

When Lou Gehrig stepped to the plate on Independence Day 1939, he was not there to deliver a home run. For the first time in seventeen years, Gehrig was there to deliver his heart. In recent weeks he had lost his job as the Yankees' first baseman as well as the good health that had made him the team's respected Iron Horse and was facing a death sentence. Nervous and fidgety as he walked through a forest of microphones, Gehrig collected himself and delivered thirteen words that will live forever: "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

Bronx Epitaph, the first comprehensive look at the slugger's epic speech, is the story of Lou Gehrig's finest hour, a homily of so little consequence when first delivered that few newspapers published more than a sentence or two the following day. Over time, however, Gehrig's "Luckiest Man" speech has settled into a sphere so timeless and essential that it seems he delivered it only yesterday. It was, to be sure, his Bronx Epitaph.

The cultural history of one of rock's greatest masterpieces told through the eyes of its creator.

Tommy, Trauma, and Postwar Youth Culture traces the development of one of rock music's central masterpieces and its relation to the social-cultural history of the era. Composer and guitarist Pete Townshend was the creative force behind the Who, one of Britain's greatest rock bands. Townshend grew up in an England decimated by the loss of life and hope that was the initial legacy of World War II. The product of a troubled childhood, Townshend faced ongoing struggles with sexual and personal trauma that colored his later work as a performer. An ambitious composer who wanted to create both pop hits and lasting personal works, Townshend achieved his greatest success with the Who through their 1969 rock opera, Tommy. Townshend gave many accounts of the work's evolution and its significance to him and he participated in and encouraged its continued legacy. Dewar MacLeod recounts his own interactions with Townshend and Tommy to draw out the work's impact, its critical reception, its place both in postwar history and the rock era, and its continuing relevance. This book will appeal to all interested in the history of rock, the creative process, and the long shadow of the 1960s.

Tells the story of classic blues singers from Ma Rainey to Bessie Smith.

Blues on Stage presents a new history of the development of the "Classic Blues" of the 1920s, offering a comprehensive review of various Black singers who recorded and were influential in this era, including Bessie Smith, Trixie Smith, Butterbeans and Susie, and Ma Rainey. The business of music recording and publishing, including songwriting and touring theater circuits, is explored as part of the narrative of how and when these artists became nationally popular. The most highly regarded singers of this period were not folk or rural artists, but rather highly experienced stage professionals whose careers often extended two decades or more prior to their first recordings. These artists, some of the most famous acts on the Black vaudeville and tent show circuits, were preceded in the recording studio by many cabaret and nightclub singers with a different entertainment perspective and were followed by artists who came from a more rural, less professional background. For anyone interested in the roots of jazz and blues, Blues on Stage offers a new and comprehensive introduction to the development of this American musical style.

An annotated collection of over one hundred Civil War letters that trace a Union soldier's transformation from eager recruit to war-weary, battle-tested veteran.

From Binghamton to the Battlefield draws the reader alongside Rollin B. Truesdell, a prolific letter-writer and an early enlistee in the 27th NY Volunteers, an infantry regiment that was one of the first to form and that was in the thick of some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Rollin vividly described his day-to-day life as a soldier in such clashes as Gaines' Mill, Crampton's Gap, and Antietam, and in the camps where soldiers were tormented by disease as well as the slow passage of time. Rollin's letters shine a light on the unbreakable bonds of comradeship borne of shared war experience even as he clearly ached for home and family. Through his own words and additional supporting context about the military and political environment within which Rollin soldiered, this book chronicles events from the day Rollin mustered into service as an eager recruit until the day he returned home a war-weary, battle-tested veteran disillusioned by the unseemly political machinations of war, yet steadfast in his commitment to victory for the North.

Provides a reimagined but historically accurate account of the life of the notorious gangster Frank Costello through his own words.

As Frank Costello looks back over his life as head of the most powerful crime family in America, he doesn't focus on the triumphs of his bootlegging empire, his nationwide gambling network, or his de facto control of Tammany Hall. Instead, Costello-the politically connected "Prime Minister of the Underworld"-remembers the lies he's told, the mistakes he's made, and his fateful decision to testify before the televised Kefauver hearings investigating organized crime in America. The novel reaches its climax as Costello-in a naïve attempt to preserve the patina of respectability he's spent his life creating-tries to defend himself before senators out to expose the full extent of the Mafia's reach. The result is a humiliating, very public lesson about who holds the real power in America. This is an historically accurate work of fiction told in Costello's imagined, bitter, street-wise voice.

Relive the glory days of New York's poshest night spot with recipes and drinks you can prepare at your own home!

In its heyday, The Stork Club was the "place to be seen" among New York's glitterati. Gossip columnist Walter Winchell held the corner table, recording the comings and goings of the brightest stars of stage and screen-including Lauren Bacall, Bette Davis, and Ralph Bellamy-along with shining literary lions-from Ernest Hemingway to Dashiell Hamett and Anita Loos-to politicians and bigwigs-including regulars like J. Edgar Hoover. And the Club's host-Sherman Billingsley-became famous for keeping the fun going to the early hours of the morning. The Stork Club Cookbook and Bar Book brings back these two classic works along with Shermane Billingsley's own "How to Throw a Stork Club Party" and her memories of her father's nightclub. Long unavailable in print, and never gathered together before, the entire suite of classic works is introduced with a brief history of the Stork Club by Broadway historian Ken Bloom. You'll be able to follow in the culinary footsteps of major stars while you enjoy Quail à la Jane Russell and Eggs Eva Gabor that you can whip up in your own kitchen. You'll tipple along with your favorite bar-hoppers, enjoying drinks like Nelson Eddy's Alexander the Great and Ralph Bellamy's Scotch Sour right in your own living room!

A walking tour and history of Bob Dylan's life and time in New York, from Greenwich Village to Woodstock.

Bob Dylan's New York is a guidebook and a history of New York's key role through Dylan's lengthy career. It places Dylan's early career in the storied history of Greenwich Village, a hotbed of new developments in the arts. A contemporary of Dylan's, author Dick Weissman walked the same streets, played music in the same venues, and witnessed the growth of the folk music revival from before Dylan became popular to after the height of his impact on the music scene. The book features ten easy-to-follow walking maps and historic photographs, allowing the reader to retrace Dylan's footsteps and simultaneously experience Dylan's New York and contemporary New York. It also goes beyond the Village to include the many areas of the city where Dylan lived and worked, as well as the storied time he spent in Woodstock. Combining cultural history with personal history and anecdotes, Bob Dylan's New York illuminates the life and times of this seminal artist.

The best of W.H.H. Murray's 19th century Adirondack stories, selected by Murray's biographer and great, great grandson, Randall S. Beach

William Henry Harrison Murray ("Adirondack Murray") is known as the father of the outdoor movement in America and the modern vacation. A passionate advocate for the wilderness and, specifically, the Adirondacks in New York State, Murray was the author of numerous books from the 1860s until his death in the early twentieth century. Many of his books and short stories focused on the Adirondacks and the importance of human interaction with nature. For the first time, The Best of the Adirondack Tales gathers his best and most beloved stories, drawn from many sources and selected by Murray's biographer and great-great grandson, Randall S. Beach. Among the favorites included: "The Freemasonry of Outdoor Life," "Jack Shooting in a Foggy Night," "The Story that the Keg Told Me," "Henry Herbert's Thanksgiving," and "How John Norton the Trapper Kept His Christmas."

The engaging memoir of a college president and public intellectual who became one of America's leading mid-twentieth-century social and educational activists.

Winner of the 2023 Outstanding Book Award presented by the Society of Professors of Education

Harold Taylor and Sarah Lawrence College is the posthumous memoir of Harold Taylor (1914–1993) told through thoughtful and entertaining accounts of his many interactions with leading cultural and political figures of his time. Taylor distinguished himself as a spokesperson for progressive education and educational experimentation during the 1950s and would emerge in the 1960s as one of the country's leading public intellectuals and campus speakers, addressing issues related to student activism, peace education, and international studies. Written with insight and wit and carefully edited and reconstructed, Harold Taylor and Sarah Lawrence College will inspire college students, professors, and administrators to reconsider the most fundamental purposes of higher education and social and educational change.

Reveals the life and lore of a vanished era of railroad history.

Hopewell Junction: A Railroader's Town tells the remarkable history of the east-west, short-line railroads that ran throughout Dutchess County, New York from 1869 to 1984, centering on the hamlet of Hopewell Junction. It explains how these lines transformed the rural countryside and supercharged the growth of the agricultural and small-mill communities of Dutchess County during the last half of the nineteenth century and throughout most of the twentieth century. The story includes a group of hardscrabble pioneers who struggled to establish their own rail networks. It relates the innovations in design and construction that made these lines possible and the challenges posed to their success by accidents, bad weather, and bad luck. After World War II, new modes of transportation and the growth of suburbia lead to the decline and eventual abandonment of many of these rail lines. However, a group of dedicated local historians and citizens banded together to make sure that this history was preserved, including the restoration of the historic depot at Hopewell Junction, listed as a historic and architectural resource on the New York State Register of Historical Places in 2020 and on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.

A visual and narrative memoir of a lifetime's encounters with 112 trendsetters, musicians, politicians, writers, and ordinary people by a noted folklorist-photographer.

Honorable Mention, for the 2022 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Photography Category

Rocker Rod Stewart, Jackson says, had it wrong when he titled his breakthrough album Every Picture Tells a Story. Pictures don't tell stories-but many of them call to mind stories or have stories about their making.

Throughout his sixty-year career as folklorist, ethnographer, criminologist, filmmaker, and journalist, Bruce Jackson has taken photographs of family, friends, people he worked with, people he studied, and people he encountered. Ways of the Hand includes 112 of his favorite portraits, portraits in which the hands are often as expressive as the faces. In six sections, Jackson shares photographs of notable musicians, political figures, activists, actors, artists, and writers. These portraits are accompanied by stories of how and where they were taken and the stories they invoke or reflect. The result is a stunning visual and narrative memoir of a lifetime of encounters.

A time capsule of a classic Italian American neighborhood, told in the voices of its inhabitants.

Stories, Streets, and Saints documents the history of an important Italian American neighborhood, Boston's North End, from the age of immigration at the turn of the twentieth century to the era of neighborhood upheaval in the "New Boston" of the 1980s. Drawing on years of fieldwork, on-site photography, and scholarly research, Anthony V. Riccio records, translates, and transcribes compelling oral histories of elderly Italian American storytellers who weave social history in their unique village idiom, providing an intimate look at daily life in an Italian American neighborhood. Testimonies of post-Unification southern Italy reconstruct the dire social and economic conditions that caused millions to pursue the promise of America. Rare firsthand stories of the Spanish Flu offer timely narratives in the wake of COVID-19, and eyewitness descriptions reconstruct the horrific Molasses Explosion of 1919. Riccio's own photographs from 1979 to 1983, along with images from old family albums, illustrate these oral histories, creating a lasting record of the experiences of Italian Americans, who, like many other ethnic groups, contributed mightily to the building of America.

Tells the story of New York's playing grounds, teams, and ballparks of yesteryear.

Finalist for the 2022 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Regional Category

New York's Great Lost Ballparks tells the story of New York playing grounds and ballparks of yesteryear. Organized by region and city, the book includes a complete list of New York's historic ballparks in an easy-to-read guidebook format. Each listing includes the name and location of the park, the years in operation, the names of the professional clubs that called it their home, the park's seating capacity, and a "Fun Fact" or two that distinguishes each locale. More famous ballparks include an extended history that examines the importance of the field in the annals of the game. The book is richly illustrated with historic photos of the parks and players and ten maps of key locations (including New York City's boroughs). Special attention is given to locales that hosted the Negro League and all-women teams.

Recounts the compelling stories of Civil War soldiers and sailors who lived in Oswego County, New York.

Of the 400,000 men from New York State called to duty in the Union armed forces during the Civil War, approximately 12,000 or 75 percent of the voting population, called Oswego County home. Veterans from other states or Canada later settled in Oswego County and made the place their home as well. This book tells the stories of thirty-seven of these soldiers. Some were chosen for their post-war activities, whether it was volunteerism, politics, or profession. Others were selected to demonstrate the high cost of war for survivors who returned to civilian life. Still others, who had re-enlisted for a second tour of duty, made the ultimate sacrifice, leading to far-reaching consequences for those they left behind. Along with the men who served, this book also tells the story of the women who supported them and who were involved in supporting the Union cause. Author Natalie Joy Woodall has conducted extensive research to uncover many previously unknown stories of many of these brave men and gives the precise location for each gravesite.

The first full biography of W. H. H. Murray (1849-1904), a Boston preacher often described as the father of the American outdoor movement and the modern vacation.

Finalist for the 2022 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Biography Category

One hundred fifty years ago, the Adirondack Mountains were overrun. Thousands of middle-class urbanites from Boston and New York City abandoned the comfort of their homes and rushed into the unknown, northern wilderness, believing they would find great restorative and even curative powers. These would-be adventurers were informed by one man, William Henry Harrison Murray, a preacher from Boston. A Passionate Life is the first comprehensive biography of Murray, a man who has been described as the father of the American outdoor movement and the modern vacation. While he is best known for his promotion of the Adirondacks in the late nineteenth century, Murray was a complex character who was driven to promote his many passions. From the 1860s until his early twentieth-century death, Murray was a famous preacher, popular writer and lecturer, an equine enthusiast, patent owner, publisher, businessman, lumberman, temperance advocate, free lover, women's rights advocate and advocate for educational reform. In many ways, Murray's passions followed the progressive movements within nineteenth-century America and attempted to address questions still relevant to today's society.

A New York soldier's eyewitness account of life in the first year of the Civil War, from the campgrounds to the battlefields.

Dear Uncles is one young man's story from the beginning of the American Civil War. Taken from letters sent home to family and friends, including correspondence written for his uncles' local newspaper, this book gives an intimate portrait of Arthur McKinstry's journey from a small town in upstate New York to confront Confederate forces in Virginia. Articulate, confident, and observant, McKinstry's letters are written with a journalist's eye and poet's heart, giving us a vivid, humorous, and ultimately heartbreaking view into his experiences of going to war. Whether slogging through rain and mud, waiting for care packages from home, or watching cannonballs land in camp, these dispatches place readers in a young soldier's boots and help them to imagine how family and friends experienced this crisis in American history. Dear Uncles also offers new insights into regimental organization, training, and the often-overlooked attempt of Confederates to blockade Washington, DC's Potomac River supply route. Dear Uncles will fascinate and entertain readers with an interest in American Civil War history.

A visitor's companion to New York's Letchworth State Park, richly illustrated with ninety maps and thirty-five photographs.

Finalist for the 2022 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Regional Category

With thundering waterfalls, towering cliffs, and vibrant autumn foliage, Letchworth State Park in New York is one of the most scenically spectacular parks in the eastern United States, attracting one million visitors per year. Modern tourists visit the park primarily to appreciate its scenery. However, the park has a long, complex, and sometimes contentious environmental and human history that spans back to Native American settlement. The Letchworth State Park Atlas includes over one-hundred pages of maps that shine new light on the nature, history, and tourism of the park. Maps feature the park's geology, ecological communities, weather and climate, water, Native American settlement, nineteenth-century settlement, tourist origins, and recreational opportunities. An ideal cartographic companion for a park visit, The Letchworth State Park Atlas is an educational resource for newcomers and those with a long-held interest in the park.

A county history book that includes town histories, biographical sketches, and lithographs of pioneers and homesteads, as well as their Civil War military service.

Originally published by F.W. Beers & Company in 1880, History of Wyoming County, N.Y. is still one of the most referenced histories of the county. Exploring Wyoming County pre-formation, the book also delves into the history of sixteen towns and their prominent residents and records residents' Civil War service.

Officially named a county in 1841, this southwestern farming county of New York State is the home of several New York landmarks, including Letchworth State Park, Middlebury Academy (listed on the National Register of Historic Places), and Attica Prison. Notable Wyoming County residents have included Josiah Andrews (an abolitionist newspaper owner), Mary Jemison (the "White Woman of the Genesee" who lived among the Seneca), Barber Conable (former President of the World Bank Group and US Congressman from New York), Chester A. Arthur (the twenty-first President of the United States), Ella Hawley Crossett (former President of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association), Lemuel M. Wiles (American landscape painter), and Charlotte Smallwood-Cook (the first woman elected district attorney in New York State). Newly released by SUNY Press with an introduction by Cindy Amrhein, Wyoming County Historian, History of Wyoming County, N.Y. offers a fascinating and comprehensive reference work that is useful to family and local historians, genealogists, and those interested in the development and history of New York State.

Fifty-one unique New York towns with great stories to tell, from L. Frank Baum's and Jello's hometowns to the birthplace of the Women's Rights Movement.

Across New York State, small towns and big cities alike have stories to tell. A unique travel guide for history buffs, Signs of Distinction delves into the varied stories revealed on town welcome signs. Welcome signs in every corner of the state beckon visitors, urging you to stop and explore. After all, who could resist stopping in a village that declares itself, "The Birthplace of Jell-O?" Similarly, the town that calls itself, "The Bandstand of the Finger Lakes," makes you want to dance! Fifty-one stories-each accompanied by a photograph of the welcome sign-share the history of these communities and their unique attributes. History lovers, road warriors, and folks who love trivia will enjoy reading about these New York towns and the stories behind their welcome signs.

An intimate and moving account of how the author rose from poverty to become a major Black political figure in New York State.

Truly Blessed and Highly Favored is the story of the remarkable rise and illustrious career of H. Carl McCall, a revered figure in New York State politics and the first Black official elected to statewide office. Growing up in Roxbury, Massachusetts, one of six children reared by a single mother, he experiences the difficulties of poverty, the heartache of an absent father, and incidents of racism, but these challenges are juxtaposed with the triumphs of attaining an Ivy League degree, becoming a popular preacher, and attaining success at the highest levels of business and politics. He provides a behind-the-scenes political primer on his mentorship with Harlem political power brokers Percy Sutton, Charles Rangel, and David Dinkins, and offers hard-won lessons from his time in the York State Senate, his tenure as New York State Comptroller, and his bruising campaign for governor. Along the way, he includes engrossing stories about Bill and Hillary Clinton, Mario and Andrew Cuomo, and such icons as Nelson Mandela and Jimmy Carter. Mixing the personal and the political, this memoir is the story of the drive and determination of a Black man who never forgot his roots and always tried to pay it forward.

A gripping tale of conspiracy and a love triangle set against the background of 19th century New York City.

The Toltec Cup was published in 1890 by A. C. Wheeler under the pseudonym of "Nym Crinkle." A tale of conspiracy and love triangles, the novel centers on a mysterious silver cup covered in hieroglyphs that goes missing just days after its owner's death. New York Police Inspector John Wilder grows suspicious when someone offers a huge reward for the cup's return. Wilder traces the reward to Colin Carteret, an artist engaged to the murdered man's daughter, who swears he did not know of the cup before the reward appeared in the newspaper. Together, the two men follow a trail of clues that lead them to New York City slums, a beautiful young woman named Manuella Castleton, and a syndicate that believes that the cup will lead to an extraordinary buried treasure.

Contemporary readers will enjoy the novel's remarkable depictions of mid-nineteenth-century New York City. Roaming the Gas House District, the Bowery, Union Square, Harlem, and the Meatpacking District, The Toltec Cup explores a dynamic landscape and diverse peoples. This new edition revives a forgotten world for a new generation of readers.

Relates the dramatic role of New York courts in shaping public policy on key reform legislation in the progressive era.

The Crucible of Public Policy: New York Courts in the Progressive Era relates the dramatic story of New York State courts, particularly the Court of Appeals, in deciding on the constitutionality of key state statutes in the progressive era. The Court of Appeals, second in importance only to the United States Supreme Court, made groundbreaking decisions on the constitutional validity of laws relating to privacy, personal liberty, state regulation of business, women workers' hours, compensation for on-the-job injuries, public health, and other vital areas. In the process, the Court became a crucible of sorts-a place where complex public policy issues of the day were argued and decided. These decisions set precedents that continue to influence contemporary debates. The book puts people-those who made the laws, were impacted by them, supported or opposed them in public forums, and the courts, attorneys, and judges-at the center of the story. Author Bruce W. Dearstyne presents new material previously unused by scholars, reflecting extensive research in the Court of Appeals' archival records.

An idealistic, occasionally naïve and somewhat irreverent young attorney becomes the District Attorney of Rockland County, New York, in the 1960s and faces the challenges of fighting crime in a rapidly changing world.

In the 1960s, the small county of Rockland, north of New York City, went through a period of rapid expansion. Although beneficial, this explosive growth also led to the unwelcome encroachment of crime like the county had never seen before. Enter Robert Meehan, a young, idealistic defense attorney who hatched an impossible scheme to become the first Democrat elected District Attorney of Rockland County in more than half a century. In this compelling page-turner, Meehan takes us through his journey from naive do-gooder to seasoned prosecutor, investigating and solving heinous crimes and surviving an attempt on his life that upended his family's world. This manuscript, completed in 1978, was discovered by Meehan's daughter years after his passing. She has edited the text, researched cases cited by her father, and interviewed some of the key players whose names appear within these pages.

The incredible, true story of the twentieth century's greatest performing sea lion and the man who trained him.

Gold Winner for the 2022 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Performing Arts & Music Category

"Sharkey is the natural artist, performing his magic for nothing but love." - Wolcott Gibbs, the New Yorker

Sharkey tells the compelling story of an unusually gifted, trained sea lion who shared the stage with practically every important performer of the first half of the twentieth century-from Bob Hope to Ella Fitzgerald, from Broadway to Hollywood and beyond. Readers follow Sharkey and his flippered colleagues as they travel the world with stops at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, vaudeville houses, Manhattan during the Harlem Renaissance, burlesque nightclubs, movie palaces, Radio City Music Hall, and the legendary studios of early radio, movies, and television, meeting a who's who of showbiz entertainers, sports superstars, and even a US president. Meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated, Sharkey is a quirky slice of New York and entertainment history sure to delight fans of vintage pop culture and Americana, as well as animal lovers.

The first comprehensive history of the development of early Jewish life on Long Island.

In an engaging narrative, The Jews of Long Island tells the story of how Jewish communities were established and developed east of New York City, from Great Neck to Greenport and Cedarhurst to Sag Harbor. Including peddlers, farmers, and factory workers struggling to make a living, as well as successful merchants and even wealthy industrialists like the Guggenheims, Brad Kolodny spent six years researching how, when, and why Jewish families settled and thrived there. Archival material, including census records, newspaper accounts, never-before-published photos, and personal family histories illuminate Jewish life and experiences during these formative years. With over 4,400 names of people who lived in Nassau and Suffolk counties prior to the end of World War I, The Jews of Long Island is a fascinating history of those who laid the foundation for what has become the fourth largest Jewish community in the United States today.

A fascinating fusion of New York history and local folklore sure to send shivers up your spine!

The Haunted History of Pelham, New York is an unusual and fascinating fusion of New York history and folklore. Recognizing that virtually every gripping regional ghost drama springs from kernels of fact, Blake A. Bell weaves spellbinding accounts of ghosts, spirits, and specters together with well-documented context for the stories to help readers understand the actual events and historical developments that underlie each. With nine sections including those on Indigenous American Hauntings, Revolutionary War Specters, Ghostly Treasure Guards, and Phantom Ships off Pelham Shores, Bell relates entertaining and dramatic ghost stories that have been passed from generation to generation as he helps readers understand how local lore came to be and why it is important to an understanding of the region, its culture, and its self-awareness.

A veteran environmental lobbyist reveals the behind-the-scenes struggles to address threats to the future of New York's Adirondack Park.

Finalist in the 2023 National Indie Excellence® Awards in the Political Category

Inside the Green Lobby recounts the behind-the-scenes efforts, both at the State Capitol in Albany and the halls of Congress, of a lobbyist for a major environmental advocacy group. Bernard C. Melewski worked to save the six-million acre Adirondack Park from twin threats to its future: the devastating damage from acid rain and the sudden breakup of massive private land holdings that had been intact for almost one hundred years. Starting with the political uproar ignited by the recommendations of New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s 1990 Adirondack Park Commission, and the rejection by the public of a new environmental bond act, Inside the Green Lobby documents the events that led to the sudden acquisition by New York State of tens of thousands of acres within the park that the public now enjoys. From strategy sessions with lobbyists to private meetings with legislators, governors, members of Congress, and even the President of the United States, Melewski recounts engaging and entertaining stories that introduce how environmental advocates successfully pursue legislative and policy change.

Chronicles the creation of a picturesque home and landscape on the Hudson River by one of the nineteenth century's leading authors.

During the 1850s and '60s, by far the most prominent author in all of New York State was the writer, editor, and publisher Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–1867). Nearly as prominent as Willis himself was his Hudson Valley estate, Idlewild, where literary elites gathered and about which Willis himself wrote and published extensively. In 1846, Willis founded the Home Journal, which would go on to become Town and Country. In Out-Doors at Idlewild, first published in 1855, Willis chronicled the creation of his estate at Cornwall-on-Hudson (near West Point), as well as life amid its countryside. The land afforded brilliant views of the river and the mountains to the East. Calvert Vaux, the famed architect of both landscapes and houses, designed the elaborate and ornate Gothic Revival home, which Willis named Idlewood (whereas he called the estate Idlewild), and into which the Willis family moved in July of 1853. Here, Willis wrote a series of papers for the Home Journal documenting life at the seventy-acre estate. These papers were gathered together in Out-Doors at Idlewild, a celebration of Willis's home and estate.

Classic works by naturalist John Burroughs on his beloved Catskill region.

Henry James called John Burroughs (1837–1921) "a more humorous, more available, and more sociable Thoreau." Walt Whitman in turn extolled Burroughs as "a child of the woods, fields, hills-native to them in a rare sense (in a sense almost a miracle)." Throughout his many books and essays, Burroughs was never more eloquent on nature themes than when writing about his native countryside: the woods, streams, and mountains of the Catskills in New York. In the Catskills collects the very best of Burroughs's writings about his birthplace in a book that is sure to be treasured by all lovers of the region as well as lovers of the literature of nature. This new edition includes an introduction by Burroughs biographer Edward Renehan and an additional work not included in previous editions, entitled My Boyhood.

A classic history of Delaware County and the border wars written by none other than prominent Gilded Age "Robber Baron" Jay Gould.

When Jay Gould died in 1892 he left behind an estate worth the equivalent of seventy-eight billion in today's dollars. He also left behind a reputation as one of Wall Street's most shrewd, astute, and (some said) manipulative operators. Long before his adventures in finance, the future "robber baron" was a young man on the make in his native Catskills, working as a surveyor and mapmaker in his natal place of Delaware County, where he had grown up side by side with the future writer and naturalist John Burroughs. Originally published in 1856, when Gould was just twenty, Gould's History of Delaware County and Border Wars of New York is based on primary sources and original testimony from second and third generation settlers, many of them Gould's own friends and cousins. The book continues to be an important source on the first settlement of the region and is highly regarded by scholars. This edition features a new introduction by Edward Renehan, the biographer of both Gould and John Burroughs.

Third- and fourth-wave feminists write about their experiences with Catholicism and their visions for the future of women in the Church.

A collection of creative pieces, Unruly Catholic Feminists explores how women are coming to terms with their feminism and Catholicism in the twenty-first century. Through short stories, poems, and personal essays, third- and fourth-wave feminists write about the issues, reforms, and potential for progress. Giving voice to many younger writers, the book includes a variety of geographic and ethnic points of view from which women write about their experiences with Catholicism and their visions for the future. While change in the church may be slow to come, even the promise of progress may provide hope for women struggling with the conflicts between their religion and their sense of their own spirituality. Rather than always only oppressing or containing women, Catholicism also drives or inspires many to challenge literary, social, political, or religious hierarchies. By examining how women attempt to reconcile their unruliness with their Catholic backgrounds or conversions and their future hopes and dreams, Unruly Catholic Feminists offers new perspectives on gender and religion today-and for the days yet to come.

Draws on the author's own experiences as a watershed planner, teacher, and activist to tell the story of the Great Lakes region's experiment in restoring a complicated natural system of flowing water.

Meander tells the story of the Great Lakes region's experiment in restoring a complicated natural system of flowing water. Drawing on her own experience as a watershed planner, teacher, and Great Lakes activist, Margaret Wooster describes the language, history, and failures of many of our water management policies. She then turns to Buffalo Creek to teach us how the Great Lakes work-from a "hill made of water" to a cut-off oxbow to a buried delta transitioning from two centuries of industrialization. Wooster explores how, on the Niagara Frontier especially, traditional ecological knowledge and Indigenous values were suppressed by colonial rules of settlement. The ecosystem value of physical integrity-or connectivity between upstream and down, surface flow to aquifer, river to land was never fully unpacked. While our management policies often sever them, these connections are key to Buffalo Creek and Great Lakes recovery and resilience. Wooster leaves us with the idea that it is up to us, the people who live along these flows and in their watersheds, to learn as much as we can about these connections and to use our local authorities to "make room for rivers" and protect our planet's circulatory system for future generations.

The story of the suffrage movement and the ongoing struggle for women's rights through the lens of one family's history.

Through the lens of one family's history, An Unfinished Revolution tells the story of the suffrage movement and the ongoing struggle for women's rights in the United States. The book opens with ten-year-old Marguerite Kearns listening to her grandfather Wilmer's stories about how he met her grandmother Edna, a ninth-generation Quaker and ardent suffrage campaigner, and how he fell in love with her. Wilmer, who became a male suffrage activist himself, also shares the story of the "Spirit of 1776" suffrage campaign wagon that Edna and others used while organizing in New York State in 1913. After sitting for years in a Kearns family garage, the wagon is currently housed in the permanent collection of the New York State Museum as a prime artifact in the national suffrage movement.

As Marguerite grows older, she draws on a wide variety of sources-from family stories and photographs to archives and scholarly histories-to piece together the real-life narrative of her family. Profoundly changed in the process, she becomes an activist herself, and when she marches in a present-day women's march, she carries a photo of her grandparents participating in a 1914 women's march in New York. With the women's suffrage movement as the backdrop, this memoir and family history illuminates how activism passes from one generation to another-and how a horse-drawn suffrage campaign wagon became a symbol of freedom and equality.

A creative travelogue of landscape and memory.

We live in a future-facing world, consumed by a sense of urgency. Responsibilities press upon us and, inevitably, the stories of where we live scatter down unnamed streets and recede into the past. Hundred-Mile Home is an intimate portrait-a story map-of Albany, Troy, and the Hudson River that slows time and challenges us to reconsider what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget about the places we call home.

Inspired by the story of New York's capital region, Susan Petrie uses poetry, prose, photos, and drawings to uncover a place of intense natural beauty, legendary people, and remarkable events. She follows the course of its fabled Hudson River from Troy to Olana and back again, turning down dirt roads, wandering into forgotten terrains, and discovering layers of natural and human history that have become invisible.

As a work of art, Hundred-Mile Home moves between past and present. It revives a sense of wonder for what we speed past on our way to somewhere else, and reanimates the forgotten history and often-overlooked natural beauty of the mid-Hudson region. As a work of landscape and memory, it celebrates a place that-despite its instrumental role in the opening of America-has yet to take hold in the national imagination.

Part airport thriller, part family drama, part love story, In Security explores how those who strive to protect us are often unable to protect themselves.

Gary Waldman is a grief-stricken former tennis coach slowly reentering the world after the death of his wife. As he struggles to remain a good father to his six-year-old son, Waldman finds unexpected comfort and stability in the rule-bound confines of the TSA, working as a Transportation Security Officer in upstate New York. But his life is turned upside down again after he uses CPR to bring a passenger back from the dead.

Part airport thriller, part family drama, part love story, In Security explores how those who strive to protect us are often unable to protect themselves. Can someone who does security work ever feel truly safe? As the novel races toward its conclusion, Waldman discovers the limits of what he can control, both at the checkpoint and under his own roof.

Explores why people stay in vulnerable cities by looking at Syracuse, New York, through the contemporary experiences of five citizens.

Why do people stay in a struggling city? City on the Edge explores this question through the lives of five people in Syracuse, New York, a quintessential rust-belt metropolis. Once a booming industrial center with a dynamic civic life and prominence on the world stage, Syracuse has endured decades of crime, drugs, economic depression, absent-minded political leadership, and population decline. Michael Streissguth spent more than three years interviewing a young survivor of the streets, a refugee from Cuba, an urban farmer, a community activist, and a city elder, who shared their stories as they found ways to make life work against sometimes formidable odds. He also contextualizes their extended commentary and storytelling with secondary characters and various episodes, such as a tragic Father's Day riot and the trial that followed. The result is an eye-opening look at life in America in the twenty-first century, where people strive to turn their ideas, frustrations, and disadvantages into new hope for themselves and the city where they live.

Makes literature of Niagara Falls available to readers with a variety of interests in literature, culture, and place.

Niagara Falls is a place where lands are contested, industry debated, freedom harbored, the spirit uplifted, and fame won. It overflows with stories. Since before digital technologies made visual reproduction easier and more abundant than ever, writers composed Niagara Falls as symbolically meaningful. But in the face of four centuries of writing on this natural wonder, how does one make these stories new? Niagaras of Ink collects anecdotes of famous writers' experiences-previously untold tales, unique takes on well-known visits, and materials just too good to exclude-with an anthology of some of the most engaging Anglo-American writing on the Falls from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. This collection invites readers to re-see Niagara through these lenses.

Combining photography and essay, presents a speculative portrait of a Jewish immigrant living out the end of his days in New York's midcentury mental health system.

After the closure of Willard Psychiatric Center on New York's Seneca Lake in 1995, more than four hundred abandoned suitcases were discovered in its attic, containing thousands of personal possessions belonging to former patients. Three of the suitcases were owned by Charles F., an eighty-four-year-old Russian Jewish immigrant arrested at a Brooklyn subway station in 1946 and institutionalized at Willard State Hospital (as it was then known).

An extraordinary collaboration between image and text, What Remains pairs Jon Crispin's gripping photographs of Charles's belongings with Ilan Stavans's intriguing, speculative portrait of a patient and institution at odds with one another. Anxious, isolated, and senile, Charles strikes an unexpected friendship with a young doctor whose empathy accompanies him through a sudden spiritual awakening. As the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that Stavans, himself an immigrant from Mexico whose family history is marked by bouts of mental illness, approaches his character as a surrogate of his own personal journey. Crispin's photographs of Charles's possessions-including clothing, household tools, and Jewish ritual objects-are haunting in their ability to compel the reader to imagine a distant man's life. A moving blend of fact and fiction, photography and prose, What Remains reflects on questions of mental health, spirituality, and the Jewish immigrant experience in midcentury America.

A collection of plays by American Indian playwright William S. Yellow Robe Jr.

Finalist for the 2020 ForeWord INDIE Book of the Year in the Multicultural Adult Fiction Category

Restless Spirits is a collection of previously unpublished plays by contemporary Assiniboine playwright William S. Yellow Robe Jr. Including one full-length and seven one-act plays, this book reflects one of the author's most creative and productive periods in his career. Selected by Yellow Robe, in consultation with editor Jace Weaver, the plays reveal the range of Yellow Robe's writing from tragedies to farce. They are unified by their supernatural themes or significant elements, including Wood Bones, his most recent and highly successful full-length play. Weaver's introduction says that the works in this collection clearly demonstrate that Yellow Robe is not just a great American Indian playwright, but a great American playwright in the company of David Mamet, Lynn Nottage, and Wallace Shawn. Renowned American Indian playwright Hanay L. Geiogamah provides a foreword and calls this volume "a real gift to the American Indian theater-and to theater, more generally."

Biography of the early years of A. Bartlett Giamatti, who would become Yale University's first non-Anglo-Saxon Protestant president and commissioner of Major League Baseball.

Finalist for the 2021 The Next Generation Indie Book Award in the Autobiography/Biography Category presented by the Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group

Bronze Winner, 2020 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Biography Category

In 1977, a thirty-nine-year-old Italian American professor of Renaissance literature, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was chosen as the next president of Yale University, a radical act that was immediately perceived as a threat to the university's embedded, eugenics-driven, Anglo-Saxon mentality. Eugenics, as practiced in America, and especially at Yale, locked into place those who were deemed "unfit" due to beliefs about their ethnicity, class, and racial character, beliefs that had endured for decades and to which Giamatti's selection, as an Italian American and therefore, to some, one of the "unfit," was an open rebuke.

In Fearless, Neil Thomas Proto explores the origins of Giamatti's ethical convictions, including his insistence on fairness, his respect for the duty of responsible citizenship, and his advocacy for people on the margins. Proto argues that these convictions, which would inform Giamatti's time at Yale as well as his brief tenure as commissioner of Major League Baseball, can be understood only in the context of Giamatti's family and the deeply entwined and conflicted histories of Yale and New Haven itself-a history that Giamatti, who had been both a student and a professor at Yale and who had Italian American relatives in New Haven, knew very well.

Historian Sean Wilentz wrote that "Bart Giamatti was a phenomenon who lived the lives of several men even though his own ended tragically early." Giamatti confirmed his underlying imperative through to the end of his life: "Rest," he wrote, "will come by never resting." Fearless is a story about persistence against forces ugly, embedded, and more pernicious than simply racial and ethnic discrimination, and about the principled embrace of civic duty passed on generationally and used fully as the ethical sword and shield necessary to challenge them.

A collection of poems weaving together astrology, motherhood, music, and literary history.

In Birth Chart, a collection of heartfelt, ruthless poetry, Rachel Feder rethinks the relationship between astrology and motherhood. She asks, if astrology constellates the universe around the moment of one's birth, then how might it serve as shorthand for a vast number of personal experiences and cultural phenomena? How might it speak to and of friendship, motherhood, authorship, the mysteries of literary history, and the wonders of watching a child come into language? Across four sections, including a serial poem in sustained conversation with the modernist poet H.D., Feder's references range from group texts to the Talmud to ʼ90s song lyrics. In her hands-and her inimitable yet familiar, often straight-up funny voice-astrology is less a means of explaining the world than of communicating, of capturing a feeling, of sealing a bond. The result is an equally sentimental and sardonic collection in which "the language of explanation is a heart emoji. It means you know what I mean." And we do.

Chronicles the story of the Erie Canal from its inception to today.

One of the largest public works projects in American history, the Erie Canal inspired a nationwide transportation revolution and directed the course of New York and American history. When completed in 1825, the engineering marvel unlocked the Western interior for trade and settlement, boomtowns sprang up along the canal's path, and New York City grew to be the nation's most powerful center of international trade. Millions of people poured into New York (and some through it) to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities provided by the canal, influencing settlement and the social, political, and commercial landscapes of America.

Produced in honor of the bicentennial of the beginning of construction of the canal, Enterprising Waters-a companion catalog to the New York State Museum's exhibition of the same name-includes reproductions of objects and images from the collections of more than thirty-five different institutions and individual lenders. It also contains reproductions of fifty-nine works of art used in the companion exhibition "Art of the Erie Canal." Themes of politics, engineering, commerce, life on the canal, and more are paired with full color images of artifacts, documents, and images to bring this unique American story to life, from its inception to today.

A comprehensive guidebook for dog owners that includes seventy-seven great hikes from the Adirondacks through the Catskills.

Much more than a guidebook showing readers great places to hike with their canine companions in upstate New York, Doghiker is a dog owner's operating manual and tool kit. A lifelong dog owner, Alan Via makes a strong case for responsible ownership and offers guidance on selecting a canine hiking companion, training, safety, appropriate gear, canine first aid, and keeping your dog fit and healthy. Covering the Adirondacks through the Catskills, and areas in between, this unique guidebook includes seventy-seven beautiful hikes that are great for dogs. Each hike has a custom topographic map showing parking areas, trails, viewpoints, water sources, and other points of interest. Included are a peak-finder map and chart showing every hike and a summary of rating categories, as well as information on total mileage, elevation gain, ratings for views, difficulty level, dog safety and hazards, hiker traffic, trail conditions, and whether a leash is suggested or required. Detailed driving directions for each outing, including GPS coordinates for key intersections and trailheads, are also provided. By presenting all of this information, drawn from Via's forty-plus years of hike leadership, readers can easily evaluate which hike fits their needs and get outside and explore the great outdoors with their four-legged friends.

Can a person born outside of Italy be considered Italian?

"My ancestral Italian village in America was in Waterbury Connecticut." In this sentence, Joanna Clapps Herman raises the central question of this book: To what extent can a person born outside of Italy be considered Italian? The granddaughter of Italian immigrants who arrived in the United States in the early 1900s, Herman takes a complicated and nuanced look at the question of to whom and to which culture she ultimately belongs. Sometimes the Italian part of her identity-her Italianità-feels so aboriginal as to be inchoate, inexpressible. Sometimes it finds its expression in the rhythms of daily life. Sometimes it is embraced and enhanced; at others, it feels attenuated. "If, like me," Herman writes, "you are from one of Italy's overseas colonies, at least some of this Italianità will be in your skin, bones, and heart: other pieces have to be understood, considered, called to ourselves through study, travel, reading. Some of it is just longing. How do we know which pieces are which?"

Chronicles the history and archaeological study of Lake George, New York's sunken bateaux of 1758.

In Ghost Fleet Awakened, Joseph W. Zarzynski reveals the untold story of a little-recognized sunken fleet of British warships, bateaux, from the French and Indian War (1755–1763). The story begins more than 250 years ago, when bateaux first plied the waters of Lake George, New York. Zarzynski enlightens readers with a history of these utilitarian vessels, considered the most important vessels that transported armies during eighteenth-century wars in North America, and includes their origins and uses. By infusing the book with underwater archaeology doctrine, Zarzynski shows the nautical significance of these colonial craft.

In the autumn of 1758, the British command at Lake George made a daring decision to deliberately sink two floating batteries (radeaux), some row galleys and whaleboats, a sloop, and 260 bateaux, thereby placing the warships into wet storage and protecting them from marauding French during the coming winter. In 1759, many submerged boats were raised but some were not. Then, in 1960, two divers rediscovered several sunken bateaux, dubbed the "Ghost Fleet." These shipwrecks were the focus of underwater archaeological investigations that provided archaeologists with opportunities to gain unprecedented insight into eighteenth-century lifeways. Zarzynski explores and explains shipwreck preservation techniques, the creation of shipwreck parks for scuba enthusiasts, and the many multifaceted programs developed by the nonprofit organization Bateaux Below to help protect these finite cultural treasures.

Tells the forgotten but surprising stories of the many handsome and significant buildings in downtown Troy, New York.

Winner of the 2021 Antoinette Forrester Downing Book Award presented by the Society of Architectural Historians

Winner of the 2020 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award presented by the Preservation League of New York State

Located about 150 miles north of Manhattan, on the east bank of the Hudson River, the city of Troy, New York, was once an industrial giant. It led the nation in iron production throughout much of the nineteenth century, and its factories turned out bells and cast-iron stoves that were sold the world over. Its population was both enterprising and civic-minded.

Along with Troy's economic success came the public, commercial, educational, residential, and religious buildings to prove it. Stores, banks, churches, firehouses, and schools, both modest and sophisticated, sprouted up in the latest architectural styles, creating a lively and fashionable downtown. Row houses and brownstones for the middle class and the wealthy rivaled those in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

By the mid-twentieth century, however, Troy had dwindled in both prominence and population. Downtown stagnated, leaving building facades and interiors untouched, often for decades. A late-blooming urban-renewal program demolished many blocks of buildings, but preservationists fought back. Today, reinvestment is accelerating, and Troy now boasts what the New York Times has called "one of the most perfectly preserved nineteenth-century downtowns in the United States."

This book tells the stories behind the many handsome and significant buildings in downtown Troy and how they were designed and constructed-stories that have never been pulled together before. For the first time in generations, scores of Troy buildings are again linked with their architects, some local but others from out of town (the "starchitects" of their day) and even from Europe. In addition to numerous historic images, the book also includes contemporary photographs by local photographer Gary Gold. This book will inform, delight, and surprise readers, thereby helping to build an educated constituency for the preservation of an important American city.

Inside account of the negotiations between the football Bills, New York State, and Erie County to sign a long-term stadium lease and thereby keep the team in Buffalo.

Beyond the Xs and Os is the previously unpublished story of how a long-term stadium lease was negotiated and signed by New York's Erie County, the state, and the Buffalo Bills football team. Mark C. Poloncarz, the elected executive of the community that owned the stadium, provides a rare glimpse into the long, difficult, but ultimately rewarding effort to successfully conclude negotiations between a National Football League (NFL) franchise, the NFL, and a multitude of players from the political arena, including Governor Andrew Cuomo and US Senator Chuck Schumer. Poloncarz discusses the financial side of sports and reveals how the county was able to navigate what proved to be often-turbulent waters. Complicating negotiations was an ongoing frenzy in the local news media, hungry for any news about the new lease, and Bills team owner Ralph C. Wilson Jr., who was ninety-two and had said the team would be sold upon his death, thereby possibly being relocated to another city. In the end, a new lease was signed and the Bills remained in Buffalo at a time when a number of similar sized communities watched their teams relocate to other cities in larger markets.

Offers a firsthand account into early-nineteenth-century New York State and Lower Canada during a time of enormous growth and change.

Finalist for the 2019 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the History category

In the pre-dawn of August 2, 1826, Alexander Stewart Scott stepped aboard the steamboat Chambly in Quebec City, Canada. He was beginning a journey that not only took him across New York State but also ultimately changed his view of America and her people. A keen observer, the twenty-one-year-old meticulously recorded his travel experiences, observations about the people he encountered, impressions of things he saw, and reactions to events he witnessed.

This firsthand account immerses the reader in the world of early-nineteenth-century life in both New York and Lower Canada. Whether enduring the choking dust raised by a stagecoach, the frustration and delays caused by bad roads, or the wonders and occasional dangers of packet boat travel on the newly completed Erie Canal, all are vividly brought to life by Scott's pen. This journal also offers a unique blend of travel and domestic insights. With close family members living in both St. John's, Quebec, Canada, and Palmyra, New York, his travels were supplemented by long stays in these communities, offering readers comparative glimpses into the daily lives and activities in both countries. Gregarious, funny, and inquisitive, Scott missed nothing of what he thought worthy of observation.

A memoir and selected writings by the former Chief Judge of New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals.

In 1983, Judith S. Kaye (1938–2016) became the first woman appointed to the Court of Appeals, New York's highest court. Ten years later, she became the first woman to be appointed chief judge of the xourt, and by the time she retired, in 2008, she was the longest-serving chief judge in the court's history. During her long career, she distinguished herself as a lawyer, jurist, reformer, mentor, and colleague, as well as a wife and mother. Bringing together Kaye's own autobiography, completed shortly before her death, as well as selected judicial opinions, articles, and speeches, Judith S. Kaye in Her Own Words makes clear why she left such an enduring mark upon the court, the nation, and all who knew her.

The first section of the book, Kaye's memoir, focuses primarily on her years on the Court of Appeals, the inner workings of the court, and the challenges she faced, as chief judge, in managing a court system populated by hundreds of judges and thousands of employees.

The second section, a carefully chosen selection of her written opinions (and occasional dissents), reveals how she guided the law in New York State for almost a quarter century with uncommon vision and humanity. Her decisions cover every facet of New York and federal law and have often been quoted and followed nationally.

The final section of the book includes selections from her numerous articles and speeches, which cover the field, from common law jurisprudence to commercial law to constitutional analysis, all with an eye to the future and, above all, how the law can best affect the everyday lives of people who come to court-willingly or unwillingly-including, not least, those most in need of the law.

"An extraordinary woman, jurist, and leader who had a striking impact on the law and the administration of justice in New York State and beyond. This collection is more than a simple record of a remarkable life. It is a treasure-not only for those of us who knew and admired Judith but for all who may seek to understand and appreciate the profound impact she had on the law, the legal profession, and the administration of justice." - from the Foreword by Honorable Janet DiFiore

The decade comes alive in this whirlwind ride through the Sixties that begins in Brooklyn and ends at Woodstock.

The meadow outside Bethel, New York, is eerily empty and silent. Yesterday it held half a million cheering people, and only a few hours ago, the closer, Jimi Hendrix, recast the "Star Spangled Banner" as a firefight in the Mekong Delta. Mark Berger's been here the whole time. Arriving four days early, he helped set up kitchens and paths. During the festival, he worked to calm kids tripping out on bad acid, maneuvered a water truck through a sea of spectators, and fell in love, twice. Woodstock was the sixties condensed into seventy-two hours, and proof that peace and love could turn a potential disaster into a mythic celebration of life. Now, it's decision time: Does he drop out and move to a commune in New Mexico or return to Brooklyn and become a teacher?

Something's Happening Here begins in Brooklyn eight years earlier, in 1961, where Berger, determined to be true to himself, pledges to live his life boldly. With buddies like Zooby, Bird, and Spider, he experiences the thrilling fear of joy rides and the roller coaster of mind-altering drugs. He's swept up in the energy of revolutionary writers and musicians and connects with the counterculture's spirit. Scenes abound, from catching the Coasters at a Brooklyn R&B club to digging Allen Ginsberg reading his poetry in a Tennessee steak house to having only a second to talk his way out of being sent to Vietnam.

At Woodstock it all comes together-who he is, what he believes, and which path he has to take. Berger's vivid storytelling brings the moments to life with an immediacy that show you why something's happening here.

Editorials, op-eds, and other writings by a memorable newspaperman.

The winner of more awards than any editorial writer in the Albany Times Union's history, Jim McGrath was both an Albany institution and a keen observer of the world beyond his beloved adopted city. When he died in 2013 at the age of fifty-six, the newspaper lost a writer who combined a passionate advocacy for society's most vulnerable people with a scathing disregard for the elite whose actions created an underclass in the United States. His writing was often elegiac, but his take on his adopted home state of New York and his beloved Albany was variously bemused, witty, irreverent, and indignant. He could relate to the plight of the minimum-wage worker as easily as he could talk to a US senator, and he feared no one. His editorials and commentaries charted many of the most critical issues in New York and the country: the death penalty, civil liberties, gay rights, historic presidential campaigns, the economy, terrorism, and more-all with an incisiveness that remains relevant, if not more so, in the present political era.

In addition to his editorials and op-eds, I'll Be Home contains essays, critiques, and other writings that have never before been published, as well as appraisals of his work and life by former colleagues Rex Smith, Fred LeBrun, Dan Lynch, and others. The book is both a tribute to a memorable newspaperman and an insider's perspective on politics and life through the lens of an editorial writer, a position that Jim described as "a great seat at a really weird show."

Recounts the transformation of two daily newspapers in the face of economic downturns and sweeping technological change.

In 1978, Harry Rosenfeld left the Washington Post, where he oversaw the paper's standard-setting coverage of Watergate, to take charge of two daily papers under co-ownership in Albany, New York: the morning Times Union and the evening Knickerbocker News. It was a particularly challenging moment in newspaper history. While new technologies were reducing labor costs on the production side and providing ever more sophisticated tools for journalists to practice their craft, those very same technologies would soon turn a comparatively short-lived boom into a grave threat, as ever more digitally distracted readers turned to sources other than print and other legacy media for their news. Between these boundaries, Rosenfeld set about to do his work.

Picking up where his previous memoir, From Kristallnacht to Watergate, left off, Battling Editor tells the story of how Rosenfeld and his colleagues transformed two daily publications into alert and aggressive newspapers even in times of economic downturn. Bringing the investigative habits he had honed in his years at the New York Herald Tribune and the Washington Post, Rosenfeld's objective was to tell the fully rounded stories of the region's cities, suburbs, and rural towns, with awareness of both their achievements and their shortcomings. Furthermore, the misuse of power, whenever it happened, whether in city hall or the state capitol, in courtrooms or prisons, or in hospitals, corporations, community organizations, was to be exposed, and those accountable were to be held responsible.

More importantly, however, Rosenfeld's account is enlisted in the growing call to arms for all who cover the news and all who consume it. Written at a time when the credibility of news organizations is under attack by those at the highest levels of government, Battling Editor is a full-throated defense of fact-based journalism and hard-hitting reporting at the local as well as national level.

A beautifully rendered, brutally realistic Native American gang novel.

Finalist for the 2020 Colorado Book Award in the Literary Fiction category presented by the Colorado Center for the Book
Finalist for the 2019 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Multicultural (Adult Fiction) category
2020 In the Margins Top Ten and Fiction Recommendation

Matthew has grown up in hell. His father is gone, and his mother drinks and hooks up with men who abuse Matthew and his sister. He finally decides to hit the streets of Farmington to get away and to drink himself to death-in his mind, his destiny. He meets Chris, who saves him, takes him home, cleans him up, gets him sober, and initiates Matthew into one of Albuquerque's Native American gangs, the 505s. The 505s have been around for generations. They now sell heroin, and it's their subservience to the Mexican gangs that has allowed them to survive. However, Chris decides that his little Native American gang deserves to be as big as the Mexican gangs in Albuquerque, bringing in new business from deep inside Indigenous communities in Mexico. Then, Matthew falls in love with Chris's girlfriend. Matthew's story is one of terrible darkness, but also, unexpected beauty and tenderness.

A celebration of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist who put Albany on the world's literary map.

The award-winning novelist William Kennedy is perhaps best known for his Albany Cycle, a series of novels that put Albany on the world's literary map alongside James Joyce's Dublin, Gabriel García Márquez's Macondo, and William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. Bootlegger of the Soul offers a fresh and authoritative overview of Kennedy's long literary career and his astonishing trajectory from journalist to struggling novelist to Pulitzer Prize winner. Included here are reviews, interviews, and scholarly essays on Kennedy's work, as well as essays, speeches, a play, and a short story by the author himself, together with more than fifty historical and personal photographs. Lively, readable, and brimming with the infectious wit and lyrical prose that animates Kennedy's novels, Bootlegger of the Soul is a celebration of a writer still working hard at his craft at age ninety.

The first book-length collection in English of this major Israeli poet.

Finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Poetry presented by the Jewish Book Council

from "At Your Side"

Years I walked at your side

like our prophet Isaiah

barefoot naked and bare

I will put on no cover

until you see me

until you recognize an other

one person

at least

and so know yourself as well

Mordechai Geldman came of age as a poet in the seventies, an auspicious and transformative time in the development of modern Hebrew literature, as poets and writers rejected the flowery, the hyperbolic, and the sentimental and opted instead for a more direct and intimate speech. While his early poems tended to rely on linguistic exploration, his vision soon turned inward, as he came to favor the simple, the true, the authentic. Geldman's poems are direct and accessible, touching on and revealing the divine and the sacred in the so-called mundane.

Recounts the true story of an entrepreneurial woman who succeeded in a male-dominated industry in the twentieth century.

What would you do with your last sixty dollars? If you were Patricia Murphy you'd turn it into a fortune by buying a rundown Brooklyn diner. On the cusp of the Great Depression, the diner became an overnight sensation, the first of nine popular Patricia Murphy's Candlelight Restaurants that opened over the course of four decades in New York and Florida. Popovers and Candlelight recounts how Murphy bucked Mad Men–era sexism in a male-dominated field and created remarkable dining experiences with solid American fare, a talented staff, and eye-popping décor. Dripping in diamonds, she transcended ethnic prejudices to become a socialite and built a brand that sold fragrance as well as food. Mutinous siblings, a desperate manager, and a typhoid outbreak brought it all to an operatic end, but Marcia Biederman restores Murphy and her contributions to their proper place in women's and culinary history. This book will delight readers with its rags-to-riches story and fascinating view of class, gender, ethnicity, and food culture during much of the twentieth century.

Reveals the development of Maurice Kenny's growing artistic consciousness, while attesting to both the beauty and brutality of the world in which he lived.

Maurice Kenny's career as a writer, teacher, publisher, and storyteller spanned more than six decades, during which he published over thirty books and became one of the most prominent voices in American poetry. From the early 1970s onward, he was instrumental in the resurgence of Native American literature through both his celebrated volumes of poetry, such as I Am the Sun and the award-winning The Mama Poems, and his work as an editor and publisher.

Angry Rain, his bittersweet memoir, reveals this rich literary life by recounting its tumultuous "first half…plus a bit," a time during which he moved through a series of worlds that all left their marks on him. Kenny begins with his early years spent among his family in the small northern New York city of Watertown and continues through an adolescence marked by both significant awakenings and grievous traumas. Determined, Kenny sets out to seek his fortunes and find his poetic voice, landing in the Jim Crow-era South, in St. Louis, in Indiana, and finally in New York City, where he becomes part of a motley creative group of performers and poets that offers both fascinating inspiration and disheartening rejection. These recollections end with Kenny's maturation into a poet whose reaffirmed indigenous heritage unified an artistic vision that remained in conversation with a wide range of other themes and traditions until his death in 2016.

Depicts a man's exploration of the landscape, history, and toponymy of Hell Gate, a notorious stretch of water in New York City's East River.

Part history and part memoir, Hell Gate tells of a man's excursions along and through Hell Gate, a narrow stretch of water in New York City's East River, notorious for dangerous currents, shipwrecks, and its melancholic islands and rocks. Drawn to the area by his fascination with its name-from the Dutch Hellegat, translated into English as both "bright passage" and "hellhole"-what begins as a set of casual walks for Michael Nichols becomes an exploration of landscape and history as he traces these idyllic and hellish images in an attempt to discover Hell Gate's hidden character and the meaning of its elusive name. Using a loosely constructed set of sketches organized as a kind of tour along the edge of the river and then from a rowboat in the river, Nichols describes scenes and events as they present themselves, mixing history and lore with contemporary scenes.

Stories anchored in the Welsh American immigrant experience.

Anchored in the community of first-, second-, and third-generation Welsh Americans in Utica, New York, during the 1960s, the stories in David Lloyd's The Moving of the Water delve into universal concerns: identity, home, religion, language, culture, belonging, personal and national histories, mortality. Unflinching in their portrayal of the traumas and conflicts of fictional Welsh Americans, these stories also embrace multiple communities and diverse experiences in linked, innovative narratives: soldiers fighting in World War I and in Vietnam, the criminal underworld, the poignant struggles of children and adults caught between old and new worlds. The complexly damaged characters of these surprising and affecting stories seek transformation and revelation, healing and regeneration: a sometimes traumatic "moving of the water."

An evocative and personal history of a unique historic place in the Adirondacks.

Silver Winner, for Regional Nonfiction, 2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards

In 1968 Fran and Jay Yardley, a young couple with pioneering spirit, moved to a remote corner of the Adirondacks to revive the long-abandoned but historic Bartlett Carry Club, with its one thousand acres and thirty-seven buildings. The Saranac Lake–area property had been in Jay's family for generations, and his dream was to restore this summer resort to support himself and, eventually, a growing family. Fran chronicles their journey and, along the way, unearths the history of those who came before, from the 1800s to the present. Offering an evocative glimpse into the past, Finding True North traces the challenges and transformations of one of the world's most beautiful, least-celebrated places and the people who were tirelessly devoted to it.

Tells the story of a young couple in love during World War II, and the difficulties they faced both at war and on the home front.

We Are Going to Be Lucky tells the story of a first-generation Jewish American couple separated by war, captured in their own words. Lenny and Diana Miller were married just one year before America entered World War II. Deeply committed to social justice and bonded by love, both vowed to write to one another daily after Lenny enlisted in 1943. As Lenny made his way through basic training in Mississippi to the beaches of Normandy and eventually to the Battle of the Bulge, Diana struggled financially, giving up her job as a machinist to become a mother. Their contributions to the war effort-Lenny's crucial missions as an Army scout and Diana's work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard-are the backdrop to their daily correspondence, including insightful discussions of democracy, politics, and economic hardship.

Faced with grueling conditions overseas, Lenny managed to preserve every letter his wife sent, mailing them back to her for safekeeping. The couple's extraordinary letters, preserved in their entirety, reveal and reflect the excruciating personal sacrifices endured by both soldiers at war and their young families back home. After decades of gathering dust, their words have been carefully transcribed and thoughtfully edited and annotated by Elizabeth L. Fox, Lenny and Diana's daughter.

The first comprehensive biography of an important yet understudied figure in the Dutch colony of New Netherland.

This book tells the compelling story of the young legal activist Adriaen van der Donck (1618–1655), whose fight to secure the struggling Dutch colony of New Netherland made him a controversial but pivotal figure in early America. At best, he has been labeled a hero, a visionary, and a spokesman of the people. At worst, he has been branded arrogant and selfish, thinking only of his own ambitions. The wide range of opinions about him testifies to the fact that, more than three centuries after his death, Van der Donck remains an intriguing character.

J. van den Hout follows Van der Donck from his war-torn seventeenth-century childhood and privileged university education to the New World, as he attempted to make his mark on the fledgling fur trading settlement. When he became embroiled in the politics of Manhattan, he took the colonists' complaints against their Dutch West India Company administrators to the highest level of government in the Dutch Republic, in what became a fight for his adopted homeland and a bicontinental showdown. Denounced and detained, but not deterred, Van der Donck wrote a landmark book that stands as a testament to his vision for the country, as the changes he set in motion continued long after his early death and his influence became firmly embedded in the American landscape. Van der Donck's determination to stand by his convictions offers a revealing look into the human spirit and the strong will that drives it against adversity and in search of justice.

From the Nile to the Hudson, the story of how two Egyptian mummies joined an American museum collection.

In 1909, two mummies, one dating from the 21st Dynasty and the other from the Ptolemaic Period, arrived in Albany, New York. Purchased from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo by Albany businessman Samuel Brown for the Albany Institute of History & Art (AIHA), they have been on continuous exhibition since then and are the most popular, celebrated, and best remembered of the museum's collections. The story of their discovery in the tombs at Deir el-Bahri and their subsequent purchase by Brown, transport by steamship from Cairo to New York City, and steamboat travel to Albany was covered extensively by the Albany newspapers, and visitors from school-aged children to senior citizens often recount stories about their first encounter with the Albany mummies.

The Mystery of the Albany Mummies tells the fascinating tale of these two mummies, from their initial mummification in ancient Egypt, to their acquisition by the AIHA in 1909, and finally to 2013, when the mystery of their identities was uncovered through the intersection of historical scholarship, science, and technology. In the book, which draws on the Institute's 2013–2014 exhibition "GE Presents: The Mystery of the Albany Mummies," scholars from around the world use new scholarship, scientific methods, and medical technology to determine the ages, sexes, occupations, and lifestyles of these two ancient denizens of the AIHA.

How the Pine Hills neighborhood in Albany, New York, changed and grew, as reflected in the history of one house and the lives of its residents.

When you buy an old house, you get much more than a house. In all its quirks, its alterations, in fragments of memory and traces left behind, you get a bundle of small mysteries. Who used to live here? Why did they come here, and where did they go? Whose name is that written on the attic wall? When did that odd little bathroom get shoehorned in there, and what did the room look like before? If you're lucky, one or two of your house's mysteries might unfold into stories. Akum Norder was very lucky.

The History of Here follows Albany, New York's, Pine Hills neighborhood through more than one hundred years of change. At its heart is the story of Norder's 1912 house and the people who built and lived in it. As Norder traced their histories, she came to see the development of her house, her street, and her neighborhood as a piece of Albany's story. In the lives of its residents, their struggles and triumphs, she saw a reflection of twentieth-century America.

Drawing on interviews, city records, newspapers, out-of-print books, and other sources, Norder's narrative makes a case for city neighborhoods: their value, their preservation, and the grassroots involvement that turns a jumble of houses into a community. Funny and thought-provoking, readable and relevant, The History of Here celebrates the sense of place that fuels the new urbanism.

Offers a detailed account of the political and military history of the Irish American Fenian Brotherhood in the nineteenth century.

In what is now largely considered a footnote in history, Americans invaded Canada along the Niagara Frontier in 1866. The group behind the invasion-the Fenian Brotherhood-was formed in 1858 by Irish nationalists in New York City in order to fight for Irish independence from Britain. At the end of the American Civil War, Fenian leaders attempted to use Irish Americans, many of them combat veterans, to seize Canada and make it the "New Ireland" as a means to force the British from "old" Ireland. New York State was both the epicenter of Fenian leadership and a key support base and staging area for the military operations. Although relatively short-lived and with some of its military operations being somewhere between farce and tragedy, the Fenian Brotherhood had a very important impact on nineteenth-century New York and America, but remains largely forgotten. In Rebels on the Niagara Lawrence E. Cline examines not only the Fenian operations and their impact on Canada, but also the role the United States and New York played in both the initial support for the Fenian movement and its subsequent collapse in America.

Combining humor and memorable anecdotes, five famous ecotourist destinations offer a breathtaking backdrop to better understanding climate change.

Crossing the far corners of the globe, Tales of an Ecotourist showcases travel, from the hot and humid Amazon jungle to the frozen but dry Antarctic, as a simple yet spellbinding lens to better understand the complex issue of climate change. At its core, climate change is an issue few truly understand, in large part due to its dizzying array of scientific, economic, cultural, social, and political variables.

Using both keen humor and memorable anecdotes, while weaving respected scientific studies along the way, Mike Gunter Jr. transports the reader to five famous ecodestinations, from the Galapagos Islands to the Great Barrier Reef, revealing firsthand the increasing threats of climate change. Part travelogue, part current events exposé, with a healthy dose of history, ecology, and politics, these tales of ecoadventure tackle such obstacles head on while fleshing out much-needed personal context to perhaps society's greatest threat of all.

Uses real-life episodes of psychosis and recovery to show how poetic paradigms for thinking about psychiatric symptoms can enlarge contemporary understandings of mental illness and improve long-term treatment outcome.

"Twenty-two years ago, I lost my mind." So begins Jeanne Ellen Petrolle's fascinating personal narrative about her mental illness and recovery. Drawing on literature, art, and philosophy, Petrolle explores a unique understanding of madness that allowed her to achieve lasting mental health without using long-term psychiatric drugs.

Traditionally, Western literature, art, and philosophy have portrayed madness through six concepts created from myth-Escape into the Wild, Flight from a Scene of Terror, Visit to the Underworld, Dark Night of the Soul, Spiritual Passion, and Fire in the Mind. Rather than conceptualizing madness as "illness," a mythopoetic concept assumes that madness contains symbolic meaning and offers valuable insight into human concerns like love, desire, sex, adventure, work, fate, spirituality, and God. Madness becomes an experience that unleashes extraordinary creativity by generating the spiritual insight that fuels artistic productivity and personal transformation. By weaving her personal experiences with the life stories and work of surrealist painter Leonora Carrington and modernist novelist Djuna Barnes, Petrolle shows how poetic thinking about severe mental distress can complement strategies for managing mental illness. This approach allowed her, and hopefully others, to produce better long-term treatment outcomes.

Tells the untold story of the life and career of Nathan Sanford, a New York State lawyer-politician who capitalized on opportunities created by the new politics of the early Republic to achieve social mobility.

Set in the tumultuous decades of post-revolutionary America, Reluctant Reformer brings to light the long neglected New York lawyer-politician, Nathan Sanford. As a lawyer, Sanford contributed to modern property law. In the United States Senate, he dealt with central banking, struggled against slavery, and supported popular voting for presidential electors. He was a major designer of the program to rationalize the nation's currency. Against a backdrop of European wars and the War of 1812, he capitalized on opportunities for upward social mobility in a period of nation-building and commercial expansion. At the New York State Constitutional Convention of 1821, he fought for universal manhood suffrage.

Educated in history and government at Clinton Academy on Long Island and at Yale, and a student at the Litchfield School of Law, Sanford rose quickly to prominence as the federal attorney appointed by President Jefferson to serve all of New York State. Fueled by ambition, he navigated a career among Republican factional leaders-DeWitt Clinton, Aaron Burr, and Martin Van Buren-first in New York City, and then in the state and the nation. In 1824, he ran for vice president on the ticket with Henry Clay. Attuned to his familial ties to eastern Long Island but beyond the bounds of the rural community of his youth, Sanford faced decisions about whom to trust with a militia's gun and a citizen's vote. He could shift from his principles toward political compromise, as in restricting black male suffrage and in the removal of Indians from their ancestral lands.

In this book, Sanford is revealed as a wealth-seeking lawyer and officeholder who contributed to the expansion of democratic rights and responsive government in the Early Republic. In doing so, he proved to be a reluctant reformer who deserves a place in our public memory.

Explores the voices of current and former Catholic nuns as they share their lived experiences with Catholicism, both in accordance and in conflict with the institutional Church.

Unruly Catholic Nuns explores the voices of current and former Catholic nuns and, by doing so, contributes to the global conversation about the role of women in the Catholic Church today. Through autobiography, fiction, poetry, and prose, Sisters and former nuns write about their lived experiences with Catholicism, both in accordance and in conflict with the institutional Church. Through their stories we learn how these women act out their missions of social justice, challenge cultural and governmental policies, and attempt to reconcile their unruliness with their religious orders and the strictures of the church hierarchy. At a time when questions of gender, religion, race, and sexuality are provoking intense debate within Catholicism and other Christian traditions, and when religion is frequently invoked in political rhetoric, these stories provide a vital corrective to our contemporary understanding of the role of women and nuns in the Roman Catholic Church.

Chronicles the history of the women's rights and suffrage movements in New York State and examines the important role the state played in the national suffrage movement.

The work for women's suffrage started more than seventy years before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 when Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and one hundred supporters signed the Declaration of Sentiments asserting that "all men and women are created equal." This convention served as a catalyst for debates and action on both the national and state levels, and on November 6, 1917, New York State passed the referendum for women's suffrage. Its passing in New York signaled that the national passage of suffrage would soon follow. On August 18, 1920, "Votes for Women" was constitutionally granted.

Votes for Women, an exhibition catalog, celebrates the pivotal role the state played in the struggle for equal rights in the nineteenth century, the campaign for New York State suffrage, and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. It highlights the nationally significant role of state leaders in regards to women's rights and the feminist movement through the early twenty-first century and includes focused essays from historians on the various aspects of the suffrage and equal rights movements around New York, providing greater detail about local stories with statewide significance.

The exhibition of the same name, on display at the New York State Museum beginning November 2017, features artifacts from the New York State Museum, Library, and Archives, as well as historical institutions and private collections across the state.

Focuses on the posters of World War I as a medium to interpret the tremendous role played by New York State and its citizens in the war effort.

"New York's pride is the pride of things done. Her leadership is no more due to her great wealth or her large population than to the patriotism of her citizens and the uses to which her wealth is put. In every war in which this country has engaged, she has shown a spirit of sacrifice that has made her preeminent among the States."

It was with these words that New York State Governor Charles S. Whitman urged his fellow New Yorkers to purchase Liberty Bonds in support of the war effort on April 6, 1918. He reminded New Yorkers and the nation that the Empire State once again led all others in the numbers of men, the amount of money, and the tonnage of material supplied to American forces during World War I.

A companion catalog to the New York State Museum exhibition of the same name, A Spirit of Sacrifice documents the statewide story of New York in World War I through the collections of the State's Office of Cultural Education comprised of the New York State Museum, Library, and Archives. Within these world-class collections are the nearly 3,600 posters of the Benjamin W. Arnold World War I Poster Collection at the New York State Library. By interweaving the story of New York in the Great War and utilizing the tremendous artifacts within the pictorial history revealed by the posters of the era and primary source documentation, this exhibition catalog serves as both a display of poster art and a more comprehensive examination of the primacy of the state's contributions to America's foray into World War I. Posters and objects from museums, libraries, and historical societies from across New York State as well as iconic artifacts and images are all included here. Brought together they tell the story of New York State's essential role in the First World War.

Explores the rich history, collections, and significance of the only museum in the United States dedicated solely to the art form of dance.

The only museum in the United States dedicated entirely to the art form of dance, the National Museum of Dance and Hall of Fame opened in June 1987, after a short preview season the summer before. This unique and special place celebrates its thirtieth anniversary in 2017. To commemorate this milestone, Lisa Schlansker Kolosek has created a rich pictorial history tracing not only the museum's remarkable evolution but the relevance of the museum to the city of Saratoga Springs, New York.

Kolosek tells the story of the museum's origins, from its notable founders' grand idea to the selection and complete renovation of a historic 1920s bath house as its home. Combining a complete survey of exhibitions presented by the museum and the incredible history of the Hall of Fame, which recognizes dance luminaries across multiple genres, this book offers an in-depth look at the museum's expansive collection of costumes, visual art, and archival materials. The book also covers the history of the museum's Lewis A. Swyer Studios and School of the Arts, a leader in dance education. Beautifully illustrated with more than four hundred photographs, this book pays tribute to the immense impact of the National Museum of Dance and Hall of Fame.

Documents the arc of the Italian American immigrant experience on both sides of the Atlantic.

As a young boy, Anthony V. Riccio listened to his grandparents' stories of life in the small Italian villages where they had grown up and which they had left in order to emigrate to the United States. In the early 1970s, he traveled to those villages-Alvignano and Sippiciano-and elsewhere in Italy, taking photographs of a way of life that had persisted for centuries and meeting the relatives who had stayed behind. Several years later, he found himself in Boston's North End, again with camera in hand, photographing an Italian American immigrant neighborhood that was fast succumbing to the forces of gentrification. In a race against time, Riccio photographed the neighborhood and its residents, capturing images of street life, religious festivals, and colorful storefronts along with cellar winemaking sessions, rooftop gardens, and the stark interiors of cold-water flats.

Taken together, the photographs in From Italy to the North End document the arc of the Italian American experience on both sides of the Atlantic. Even as they forged new identities and new communities in the United States, Italian American immigrants kept many of their Old World traditions alive in their New World enclaves. Although elevators have replaced walkups and fancy Italian restaurants and upscale boutiques have replaced mom-and-pop storefronts, the "old neighborhood" and its Italian village roots survive in these photographs of la vita di quotidianità.

Presents a major new interpretation of the Ashcan School of Art, arguing that these artists made the working class city at the turn of the century a subject for beautiful art.

Gold Medalist, 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the US Northeast -Best Regional Non-Fiction Category
Finalist for the 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Regional category
Silver Winner, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in the History category

At the beginning of the twentieth century the Ashcan School of Art blazed onto the art scene, introducing a revolutionary vision of New York City. In contrast to the elite artists who painted the upper class bedecked in finery, in front of magnificent structures, or the progressive reformers who photographed the city as a slum, hopeless and full of despair, the Ashcan School held the unique belief that the industrial working-class city was a fit subject for great art. In Beauty in the City, Robert A. Slayton illustrates how these artists portrayed the working classes with respect and gloried in the drama of the subways and excavation sites, the office towers, and immigrant housing. Their art captured the emerging metropolis in all its facets, with its potent machinery and its class, ethnic, and gender issues. By exposing the realities of this new, modern America through their art-expressed in what they chose to draw, not in how they drew it-they created one of the great American art forms.

Explores the architectural treasures of the Southern-Central region of New York's Adirondack Park and places them in the context of Adirondack history and culture.

Finalist for the 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Regional category

The Adirondack Architecture Guide, Southern-Central Region provides a professional and insightful survey of the built environment of a unique area within New York's Adirondack Park. This book is the first field guide to the architecture of the Park, revealing the ordinary and the extraordinary, the remarkable buildings by prominent designers, as well as the hidden, unexpected gems few know exist.

Based on more than seven thousand miles of fieldwork and years of research, the guide comprises more than seven hundred sites traversing the geographic range, socioeconomic strata, and historical span of the region from the late 1700s to the present. Organized according to clearly marked travel routes and fourteen tours on the ground and on the water, it features detailed maps and coordinates for each site, along with many beautiful photographs. Also included are eleven companion essays drawing on the expertise of professionals, local historians, and Adirondack residents that delve into the what, where, and why people built in the Adirondacks.

The story of how and why a group of prominent and influential men in New York City and beyond came together to help women gain the right to vote.

Gold Medalist, 2018 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the U.S. History Category

Finalist for the 2018 Sally and Morris Lasky Prize presented by the Center for Political History at Lebanon Valley College

The Suffragents is the untold story of how some of New York's most powerful men formed the Men's League for Woman Suffrage, which grew between 1909 and 1917 from 150 founding members into a force of thousands across thirty-five states. Brooke Kroeger explores the formation of the League and the men who instigated it to involve themselves with the suffrage campaign, what they did at the behest of the movement's female leadership, and why. She details the National American Woman Suffrage Association's strategic decision to accept their organized help and then to deploy these influential new allies as suffrage foot soldiers, a role they accepted with uncommon grace. Led by such luminaries as Oswald Garrison Villard, John Dewey, Max Eastman, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and George Foster Peabody, members of the League worked the streets, the stage, the press, and the legislative and executive branches of government. In the process, they helped convince waffling politicians, a dismissive public, and a largely hostile press to support the women's demand. Together, they swayed the course of history.

A compelling, intimate account of how US foreign assistance in war zones and developing countries does not achieve its intended goals.

Honorable Mention, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in the Political Science Category

From the hot savannah of Malawi to the cold, damp gray of Kosovo and into the volatile war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States and other donors have invested enormous financial and human resources in major peacekeeping and development efforts. Why then is the world no closer to being a "better and safer" place? Both a salient critique of US foreign assistance and a thought-provoking memoir, Flash Points describes the issues with personnel, language, and gender dynamics, as well as the cross-cultural challenges that often undermine and betray the best intentions of policy makers comfortably situated in Washington. Revealed in illuminating flashbacks, Jade Wu recalls her experiences in each of these four countries highlighting how, all too often, Americans in the field and the US government were unable to learn the lessons that ought to have been learned when dealing with host countries and their people. The final results were efforts poorly conceived and executed and, ultimately, detrimental to American national interests.

A rare nineteenth-century journal of an everyday woman richly infused with the minutiae of antebellum daily life and work.

In 1820, Phebe Orvis began a journal that she faithfully kept for a decade. Richly detailed, her diary captures not only the everyday life of an ordinary woman in early nineteenth-century Vermont and New York, but also the unusual happenings of her family, neighborhood, and beyond. The journal entries trace Orvis's transition from single life to marriage and motherhood, including her time at the Middlebury Female Seminary and her observations about the changing social and economic environment of the period. A Quaker, Orvis also recorded the details of the waxing passion of the Second Great Awakening in the people around her, as well as the conflict the fervor caused within her own family.

In the first section of the book, Susan M. Ouellette includes a series of essays that illuminate Orvis's diary entries and broaden the social landscape she inhabited. These essays focus on Orvis and, more importantly, the experience of ordinary people as they navigated the new nation, the new century, and the emerging American society and culture. The second section is a transcript of the original journal. This combination of analytical essays and primary source material offers readers a unique perspective of domestic life in northern New England as well as upstate New York in the early nineteenth century.

Shines a light on the dark corners of New York's legislature and points the way to much-needed reform.

Failed State is both an original account of a state legislature in urgent need of reform and a call to action for those who would fix it. Drawing on his experiences both in and out of state government, former New York State senator Seymour P. Lachman reveals and explores Albany's hush-hush, top-down processes, illuminating the hidden, secretive corners where the state assembly and state senate conduct the people's business and spend public money. Part memoir and part exposé, Failed State is a revision of and follow-up to Three Men in a Room, published in 2006. The focus of the original book was the injury to democratic governance that arises when three individuals-governor, senate majority leader, and assembly speaker-tightly control one of the country's largest and most powerful state governments. Expanding on events that have occurred in the decade since the original book's publication, Failed State shows how this scenario has given way to widespread corruption, among them the convictions of two men in the room-the senate and assembly leaders-as well as a number of other state lawmakers. All chapters have been revised and expanded, new chapters have been added, and the final chapter charts a path to durable reform that would change New York's state government from its present-day status as a national disgrace to a model of transparent, more effective state politics and governance.

The first guidebook devoted exclusively to New York City's Art Deco treasures.

Winner of a 2017–2018 New York City Book Award presented by the New York Society Library

Of all the world's great cities, perhaps none is so defined by its Art Deco architecture as New York. Lively and informative, New York Art Deco leads readers step-by-step past the monuments of the 1920s and '30s that recast New York as the world's modern metropolis. Anthony W. Robins, New York's best-known Art Deco guide, includes an introductory essay describing the Art Deco phenomenon, followed by eleven walking tour itineraries in Manhattan-each accompanied by a map designed by legendary New York cartographer John Tauranac-and a survey of Deco sites across the four other boroughs. Also included is a photo gallery of sixteen color plates by nationally acclaimed Art Deco photographer Randy Juster. In New York Art Deco, Robins has distilled thirty years' worth of experience into a guidebook for all to enjoy at their own pace.

An exciting travel guide for Upstate New York road warriors, history lovers, and tourists.

In Ultimate Upstate! Chuck D'Imperio mines deep into his travel journal and shares an astonishing array of fun and amazing places in Upstate New York that the casual traveler might otherwise miss. As one of Upstate's most ardent advocates, D'Imperio has traveled the backroads and byways of the region seeking out the stories, tales, and folklore writ upon the landscape. He takes readers to one hundred small towns and cities from the Hudson Valley to the High Peaks of the Adirondacks and out through the rolling hills of the Finger Lakes region. Not only a reflection of "the road less traveled," Ultimate Upstate! includes pertinent information such as websites, photographs, personal interviews, and explicit directions to each of the included entries. While flipping through the pages, readers will be amazed at what turns up around every backroads corner in the region.

Examines the ecological and historical significance of the harbor and what it can bring to future residents.

Winner of the 2017 Robert Cushman Memorial Award presented by the Three Village Historical Society

Stony Brook Harbor, or Three Sisters Harbor as it was known historically, is perhaps the most pristine of the Long Island north shore pocket bays. Untouched by major commercialization, it has been designated a Significant Coastal Fish and Wildlife Habitat by the New York State Department of State and a Significant Coastal Habitat by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Despite these designations, however, there is constant pressure to increase development of and around the harbor.

Between Stony Brook Harbor Tides interweaves scientific understandings of the harbor with a consideration of its colorful history to inform and educate a general audience about its unique and delicate state. Data is used to illustrate the harbor's tides and currents and to show how they influence geological processes and pollution susceptibility. Storm surge measurements going back to the early 1990s document some of the extreme high waters experienced, and descriptions of some of the more interesting or important marine species of plants and animals found in the harbor are also included. The book discusses the century-long conflicts that local residents have fought in order to preserve this beautiful place, and it documents the tools that currently exist to help manage the harbor well into the twenty-first century. An excellent supplement to any high school or undergraduate environmental course, Between Stony Brook Harbor Tides provides readers with a basis for embracing the significance of the harbor and what it can bring to future residents.

Previously unpublished letters and private journal provide an intimate view of World War I through the eyes of an ordinary soldier from western New York.

The United States entered World War I in April 1917, and by the end of the conflict two million American soldiers were fighting on French soil. One of them was Private Frederick A. Kittleman, who was born in the small city of Olean in western New York. After being drafted in 1918, Kittleman was sent to France as a part of an artillery regiment. While overseas, he participated in several of the large battles in the final stages of the war, including the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. Throughout this time, he wrote regularly to his family.

In Somewhere in France, Thomas J. Schaeper transcribes these letters, which show a young man proud to join the army and excited about his adventures. The letters are contrasted with Kittleman's journal, which recounts the gritty details of battle that he shielded from his family in their correspondence. Schaeper provides detailed annotations of the journal and letters, which, together with a number of illustrations, paint a vivid picture of the experiences of a private in WWI, his opinion on America's participation in the final, bloody campaigns of the war, and the psychological and physical effects that the war had on him.

Presents and expands upon Roosevelt's daily nautical log as he was trying to regain the use of his polio-damaged legs.

In the midst of the Jazz Age, while Americans were making merry, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was stricken by polio and withdrew from public life. From 1924 to 1926, believing that warm water and warm air would help him walk again, he spent the winter months on his new houseboat, the Larooco, sailing the Florida Keys, fishing, swimming, playing Parcheesi, entertaining guests, and tending to engine mishaps. During his time on the boat, he kept a nautical log describing each day's events, including rare visits by his wife, Eleanor, who was busy carving out her own place in the world. Missy LeHand, his personal assistant, served as hostess aboard the Larooco.

While FDR was sailing the Keys, the larger world was glittering. Chaplin, Gershwin, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Gertrude Stein, Frida Kahlo, Martha Graham-all were flourishing in the Roaring Twenties, but so were Stalin, Al Capone, and Hitler. The world went on as Roosevelt fished for mangrove snapper and drank martinis.

Karen Chase presents FDR's log entries, interspersed with photographs from the tumultuous outer world, to form a kind of timeline between two arenas-one man's small private life full of struggle and fun, juxtaposed with the large public sphere. Chase gives us a side of FDR seldom seen before, revealing his wit, his penchant for practical jokes, and his zest for each day's ordinary concerns in the context of his painful struggle to regain the use of his legs. The book also includes a facsimile of the original Larooco log. For many decades FDR's log was virtually unknown to the public, appearing only once, in 1949, in his son Elliott's four-volume collection of Roosevelt's personal letters.

A quirky survival guide to New York's Capital District.

With new and updated entries on everything from food, shopping, and the arts to people, history, and places to visit, The Smalbanac 2.0 is a wry, affectionate, and practical guide to New York State's capital city and surrounding area. Packed with information, this guide is perfect not only for visitors, new students, and those relocating to the area but also for long-term residents who want to get out of their comfort zones and explore the many hidden-and some not-so-hidden-treasures the area has to offer.

An ultrarunner's fast-paced narrative into the wilds of New York's Hudson Valley, as he attempts to set a new record for completing the Long Path, a 350-mile hiking trail that links New York City and Albany.

Finalist for the 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Sports category

Have you ever considered running 350 miles in nine days? Kenneth A. Posner did just that when he completed a record-setting run along New York's Long Path, a 350-mile hiking trail that stretches from New York City to Albany. Running the Long Path's page-turning narrative combines the thrill and challenges of Posner's extreme endurance feat with the stunning natural beauty and deep historical significance of New York's Hudson Valley.

A one-time casual runner, Posner shares his excitement of developing into a trail-runner and eventually an ultrarunner, as well as the pursuit of a "fastest known time"-a new dimension of extreme trail running, where some of the sport's fastest and most experienced athletes vie to set new speed records for important trails. Hikers, walkers, and runners will appreciate his detailed descriptions of planning, pacing, gear selection, nutrition, hydration, and navigation, which will help them prepare for their own adventures on the trails.

Interspersed with the running adventure, Posner relates the interesting stories of the Long Path and the places it passes through, which include some of New York's most important parks and preserves and the distinctive mountains and forests they protect. Throughout the book, he channels the voices of famous New Yorkers associated with the Long Path-Walt Whitman, John Burroughs, Theodore Roosevelt, and Raymond Torrey-who express their appreciation of the natural beauty of the region.

Running the Long Path is the story of what ordinary people can accomplish with a little determination and a lot of grit. Whether you walk or run, you will find inspiration in Posner's tale.

Explores the hundred-year history of Piel Bros., one of the prominent German American brands that once made New York City the brewing capital of America.

Finalist for the 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Regional category

For more than a century, New York City was the brewing capital of America, with more breweries producing more beer than any other city, including Milwaukee and St. Louis. In Beer of Broadway Fame, Alfred W. McCoy traces the hundred-year history of the prominent Brooklyn brewery, Piel Bros., and provides an intimate portrait of the company's German American family. Through quality and innovation Piel Bros. grew from Brooklyn's smallest brewery in 1884, producing only 850 kegs, into the sixteenth-largest brewery in America, brewing over a million barrels by 1952.

Through a narrative spanning three generations, McCoy examines the demoralizing impact of pervasive US state surveillance during World War I and the Cold War, as well as the forced assimilation that virtually erased German American identity from public life after World War I. McCoy traces Piel Bros.'s changing fortunes from its early struggle to survive in New York's Gilded Age beer market, the travails of Prohibition with police raids and gangster death threats, to the crushing competition from the big national brands after World War II. Through a fusion of corporate records with intimate personal correspondence, McCoy reveals the social forces that changed a great city, the US brewing industry, and the country's economy.

Combining expert knowledge and first-hand experience, a noted elder care researcher confronts the long-distance care of her own mother.

Winner of a Gold Medal, 2017 Living Now Book Award in the Caregiving category

Shortlisted for the 2016 Sarton Women's Book Awards in the Memoir category presented by the Story Circle Network

For millions of Americans caregiving is the "new normal." For Laura Katz Olson, a respected researcher of long-term care for the aging, Elder Care Journey chronicles the disruption of her world and how it is upended by the ever-increasing long-distance needs of her own mother.

A healthy, Senior Olympics medal winner, Olson's mother is slowly and steadily incapacitated by Parkinson's disease and a gradual loss of vision. Thrust into a long-distance caregiving role, Olson finds her previous academic notions about assisting a frail parent increasingly at odds with the reality of the lived experience. In a narrative full of "ah-ha!" moments, tears, sighs, and outrage that will be familiar to many, Olson opens a window into the nursing home and home care industries that consume much in the way of taxpayer dollars, but often fail to deliver quality care. Olson's personal story vividly demonstrates not only the overwhelming bureaucratic barriers faced by care-dependent seniors but also their beleaguered adult children's attempts to ensure their parents' health, safety, and well-being.

Explores the life and times of John Drake Sloat, the US Navy Pacific Squadron commander who occupied Monterey and declared the annexation of California at the beginning of the war with Mexico.

Knickerbocker Commodore chronicles the life of Rear Admiral John Drake Sloat, an important but understudied naval figure in US history. Born and raised by a slave-owning gentry family in New York's Hudson Valley, Sloat moved to New York City at age nineteen. Bruce A. Castleman explores Sloat's forty-five-year career in the Navy, from his initial appointment as midshipman in the conflicts with revolutionary France to his service as commodore during the country's war with Mexico. As the commodore in command of the naval forces in the Pacific, Sloat occupied Monterey and declared the annexation of California in July 1846, controversial actions criticized by some and defended by others. More than a biography of one man, this book illustrates the evolution of the peacetime Navy as an institution and its conversion from sail to steam. Using shipping news and Customs Service records from Sloat's merchant voyages, Castleman offers a rare and insightful perspective on American maritime history.

A diverse collection of essays and companion interviews that offer insight into the inspiration, drafting, and revision process.

Gold Winner for Anthologies, 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards

With a title that suggests both the genre and the process of composing it, Creating Nonfiction is a collection of essays and interviews that aims to open readers' and writers' eyes to the formal possibilities of creative nonfiction. Included are memoirs, personal essays, literary journalism, graphic essays, and lyric essays, and the content is equally diverse, with topics ranging from childbirth to child labor, from dandelions to domestic violence.

Whereas most anthologies leave readers to speculate about the evolution of each contribution, Creating Nonfiction provides companion interviews that offer insight into the inspiration, drafting, and revision process that produced the essays. Cheryl Strayed talks about how working as a reporter for her hometown newspaper influenced her later writings. Dinty W. Moore reflects on the delicate balance between observation and judgment when writing about subjects whose values differ from your own. Kristen Radtke explains how she decides between textual and visual images when creating a graphic essay. Although they offer an eclectic mix of voices and styles, what these essays all have in common is that ultimately, as contributor Faith Adiele observes, "truth becomes art."

A haunting story of the disintegration of an American and Italian family caught in Europe during World War II.

Finlaist for the 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the General Adult Fiction category
Winner of the 2017 Italian American Studies Association Book Award

This gripping story of love and loss centers on Marco, an Italian diplomat; Alice, his American wife; and their young children. Stationed in Prague during World War II, Marco and Alice become enemies when the United States enters the war, forcing Alice and the children to move from Prague to Rome and finally to Cernobbio in a desperate attempt to flee to Switzerland. Through alternating passages narrated by Alice and daughter Susie, readers shuttle back and forth between war-torn Europe and 1950s Massachusetts to search for answers and unravel the mystery about what really happened to Alice during the war.

The frank and funny story of a church-geek girl who spent twenty years in the ecclesiastical trenches as a Lutheran pastor, preaching weekly words of hope she wasn't sure she even believed.

Finalist for the 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Autobiography & Memoir category

Longlisted for the 2017 Chautauqua Prize presented by the Chautauqua Institution

After a series of childhood misfortunes-her father's death, her mother's ill-advised love affair, her disabled sister wrecking the family GTO-self-avowed church-geek Jo Page decided it was her job to figure out how to stay on God's good side and maybe spare the family any more tragedy. But she was a girl. And a Lutheran. That ruled out the Roman Catholic sisterhood as so quasi-erotically portrayed by Audrey Hepburn in Page's favorite movie, The Nun's Story. Though women were ordained in the larger branch of the Lutheran church, when Page's own pastor handed her a brochure enumerating all the ways in which she, as a female, was to be silent and submissive, she gave up on the church and went off in search of sex and drugs and rock-and-roll like any rejected adolescent Lutheran girl would.

Eventually Page found her way back into the church and ultimately into ordained ministry, spending twenty years in the ecclesiastical trenches, presiding over life's rituals and preaching compulsory weekly words of hope she wasn't sure she even believed.

Comical, provocative, and heartbreaking, Preaching in My Yes Dress tells several stories: of a child's need to cleave to the very God who instills mortal terror; of the shape-shifting that a public "pastoral identity" entails; of the power of ritual and the weight involved in presiding over it; and of the rise of the religious right and the patriarchy endemic to both scripture and faith traditions. Page also raises the question of whether or not faith can heal the wounds the life of faith has itself inflicted.

When, in the late eighties, the author chooses to raise a child with her lesbian partner, she embraces a life outside the lines—one full of curious adventures as well as the usual catastrophes and everyday pleasures.

Finalist for the 2016 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Autobiography & Memoir category

As a child of the sixties, Leslie Lawrence knew she didn't want to duplicate her parents' lives, yet she never imagined she'd stray so far outside the lines of their-and her own-expectations.The Death of Fred Astaire opens with the story, both wrenching and funny, of how Lawrence says her goodbyes to the iconic images she's held since her youth; she then proceeds to bear a child and raise him with her lesbian partner. Some essays in this debut collection reflect on legacies Lawrence inherited from her Jewish family and culture. In others, she searches gamely for a rich, authentic life-a voice, a vocation, a community, even a "god" she can call her own.

Always a seeker, an adventurer resisting fear, Lawrence, a city girl, creates a summer home in the back woods of the "Live Free or Die" state. She attempts the flying trapeze and takes part in a cross-dressing workshop. Traveling alone to Morocco, she assists a veterinarian tending to an ailing donkey. Teaching in a vocational high school in Boston, she questions her methods and assumptions about race and class. With rare honesty, she confronts the complexities of motherhood, of caring for her ill partner, and of widowhood. In "Wonderlust," the collection's most ambitious piece, she explores the role of beauty and creativity in our spiritual lives, revealing how lifelong learning in dance, music, and the visual arts can make us all more alive even as we age.

Ranging widely in length, subject, and style, these personal essays place Lawrence among today's most vital writers of creative nonfiction. Her warmth and wisdom, her distinctive blend of humor and pathos, her reverence for what sustains us-food and family, community and beauty-all make this a book you'll want to share with those you love.

A comprehensive history of the first three decades of underwater exploration in antebellum America.

Winner of the 2016 Dr. Art Bachrach Literary Award presented by the Historical Diving Society

Silver Medalist, 2017 Independent Publisher Book Awards in the Sports/Fitness/Recreation Category

Beginning in 1837, some of the most brilliant engineers of America's Industrial Revolution turned their attention to undersea technology. Inventors developed practical hard-helmet diving suits, as well as new designs of submarines, diving bells, floating cranes, and undersea explosives. These innovations were used to clear shipping lanes, harvest pearls, mine gold, and wage war. All of these underwater technologies were brought together by entrepreneurs, treasure-hunters, and daring divers in the 1850s to salvage three infamous shipwrecks on Lake Erie, each of which had involved the loss of hundreds of lives, as well as the worldly goods of the passengers. The prospect of treasure, combined with the national notoriety of these disasters, soon attracted the attention of local adventurers and the country's leading divers and marine engineers. In The Heroic Age of Diving, Jerry Kuntz shares the fascinating stories of the pioneers of underwater invention and the brave divers who employed the new technologies as they raced with-and against-marine engineers to salvage the tragic wrecks of Lake Erie.

A poet and essayist attempt to find their bearings in a civilization lost at sea.

Dead reckoning is the nautical term for calculating a ship's position using the distance and direction traveled rather than instruments or astronomical observation. For those still recovering from the atrocities of the twentieth century, however, the term has an even grimmer meaning: toting up the butcher's bill of war and genocide.

As its title suggests, Dead Reckoning is an attempt to find our bearings in a civilization lost at sea. Conducted in the shadow of the centennial of the First World War, this dialogue between Romanian American poet Andrei Guruianu and Italian American essayist Anthony Di Renzo asks whether Western culture will successfully navigate the difficult waters of the new millennium or shipwreck itself on the mistakes of the past two centuries. Using historical and contemporary examples, they explore such topics as the limitations of memory, the transience of existence, the futility of history, and the difficulties of making art and meaning in the twenty-first century.

How a small group of New York biologists brought the peregrine falcon and bald eagle back from the brink of extinction.

Finalist for the 2017 da Vinci Eye presented by Hopewell Publications

In the late 1970s, the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon were heading toward extinction, victims of the combined threats of DDT, habitat loss, and lax regulation. Flight Paths tells the story of how a small group of New York biologists raced against nature's clock to bring these two beloved birds back from the brink in record-setting numbers.

In a narrative that reads like a suspense tale, Darryl McGrath documents both rescue projects in never-before-published detail. At Cornell University, a team of scientists worked to crack the problem of how to breed peregrine falcons in captivity and then restore them to the wild. Meanwhile, two young, untested biologists tackled the overwhelming assignment of rebuilding the bald eagle population from the state's last nesting pair, one of whom (the female) was sterile.

McGrath interweaves this dramatic retelling with contemporary accounts of four at-risk species: the short-eared owl, the common loon, the Bicknell's thrush, and the piping plover. She worked alongside biologists as they studied these elusive subjects in the Northeast's most remote regions, and the result is a story that combines vivid narrative with accessible science and is as much a tribute to these experts as it is a call to action for threatened birds.

Readers are taken to a snow-covered meadow as an owl hunts her prey, a loon family's secluded pond, an eagle nest above the Hudson River, and a mountaintop at dusk in search of the Bicknell's thrush, one of the planet's rarest birds. Combining a little-known chapter of New York's natural history with a deeply personal account of a lifelong devotion to birds, Flight Paths is not only a story of our rapidly changing environment and a tribute to some of New York's most heroic biologists, but also a captivating read for anyone who has ever thrilled to the sight of a rare bird.

An eloquent personal reflection on the fascination of family history and the desire to both discover and escape origins.

In Forgetting Fathers, David Marshall weaves together the stories of his grandfather and great-grandfather with his own quest to solve the mystery of his family's past. Beginning as a search for his lost family name, Marshall attempts to understand the origins of his grandfather, who spent part of his childhood in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of the City of New York. He also reconstructs the life and death of his great-grandfather, a Russian immigrant tailor who died at age thirty-six in a private sanitarium dedicated to the treatment of mental and nervous diseases. The narrative becomes a detective story that reflects on our ambivalence about origins, the relation between history and mourning, and the compulsion to search for life stories. Forgetting Fathers combines historical accounts based on records, reports, and public documents with autobiographical reflections and speculations. Included throughout are photographs, newspaper clippings, and facsimiles of original documents that provide a sense of both the texture of the times and the fabric of archival and genealogical research.

Challenges the traditional perception that Loyalists were ostracized as traitors to the United States, after the American Revolution.

The DePeyster family of New York was one of the first families of New Amsterdam, ranking among the wealthiest of New York during the early days of the American Republic. The DePeysters were also unapologetic Loyalists, serving in the King's forces during the American Revolution. After the war, the four sons left the United States for Canada and Great Britain. Ten years later, one son, Frederick DePeyster, returned to New York, embraced his Loyalist past, and utilized his British connections to become a prominent and successful merchant. The DePeysters went on to become true Patriots, zealously supporting US interests in the War of 1812. This book examines the forces at work in the lives of the DePeyster family and the decisions they made to navigate their way from loyal subjects of the British crown to loyal citizens of the United States. How this transformation occurred challenges many of the preconceived ideas we hold both about the Revolution and the formation of the American identity in the years following the war.

More stories of the outsized and the ordinary from the editor and publisher of Dan's Papers.

This is Dan Rattiner's fourth collection of essays about the fishermen, farmers, celebrities, billionaires, and artists who live, work, and play in the Hamptons. As the founder and publisher of Dan's Papers, a weekly community newspaper, Rattiner knows the Hamptons backwards and forwards, and stories of his encounters on the South Fork of Long Island give readers a greater understanding of how this community has changed over the years and the major figures who have shepherded these changes along.

In addition to well-known faces such as Dr. Oz and billionaires like Ira Rennert and his wife-who built the second-largest private home in America-you'll also read about motel owners, art gallery owners, an ad salesman for Dan's Papers, and a philanthropist who at one time had nearly a dozen historical buildings on her $100 million property in East Hampton. The book also provides some of the hoaxes and tall tales that the author has fabricated over the years to entertain the readers of Dan's Papers, including the moving radar tower at Montauk, the great Ecuadorian eel attack, and the Hamptons subway.

"Dan's book, as does his newspaper, creates a chronicle of the women and men who have chosen to live in this magical place over these different decades, so one gets a very personal picture of how it was and is. Dan's seen it all and isn't keeping it under his very real hat." - from the Foreword by Barbara L. Goldsmith

First book-length collection of the work of the celebrated Israeli poet.