Hudson Valley Faces and Places


Book Description

"Hudson Valley Faces and Places takes an excursion into the incomparable Hudson, focusing on personalities who have left their mark on the region, from Ulysses S. Grant to Ed Wood. Revealing ties to the valley shared by dozens of American inventors, leaders, industrialists, writers, performers, and miscreants, Clyne tells their fascinating stories and details the places imbued with their legacy. She reveals little-known sites and surprising chapters in the lives of Thomas Edison, Harriet Tubman, James Garfield, James Fenimore Cooper, and dozens more--even Santa Claus!" -- Publisher's description




River of Words


Book Description

An intimate group portrait of contemporary Hudson Valley writers.




Organic


Book Description

A gorgeous book about food, with information and commentaries from the top chefs behind a number of renowned American restaurants. The Hudson Valley in New York has become a hub of culinary creativity - an epicentre for the local, organic, sustainable food movement. With its rich agricultural land, awareness of sustainable living and increasing demand for local, organic food, the farm-to-table 'locavore' (those who only eat locally-sourced food) movement is gathering momentum across the area.




Possessions


Book Description

The cultural landscape of the Hudson River Valley is crowded with ghosts--the ghosts of Native Americans and Dutch colonists, of Revolutionary War soldiers and spies, of presidents, slaves, priests, and laborers. Possessions asks why this region just outside New York City became the locus for so many ghostly tales, and shows how these hauntings came to operate as a peculiar type of social memory whereby things lost, forgotten, or marginalized returned to claim possession of imaginations and territories. Reading Washington Irving's stories along with a diverse array of narratives from local folklore and regional writings, Judith Richardson explores the causes and consequences of Hudson Valley hauntings to reveal how ghosts both evolve from specific historical contexts and are conjured to serve the present needs of those they haunt. These tales of haunting, Richardson argues, are no mere echoes of the past but function in an ongoing, contentious politics of place. Through its tight geographical focus, Possessions illuminates problems of belonging and possessing that haunt the nation as a whole. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. "How Comes theHudson to this Unique Heritage?" 2. Irving's Web 3. The Colorful Career of a Ghost from Leeds 4. Local Characters 5. Possessing High Tor Mountain Epilogue: Hauntings without End Notes Index Reviews of this book: The author traces changing versions of several ghostly tales that mutated over time to reflect local conditions and controversies as well as national political issues like abolitionism. Richardson shows that, thanks to the Hudson Valley's long history of settlement, the 'legendizing impetus' created by Washington Irving, and the area's established position as a tourist destination, it inspired at least three sometimes overlapping traditions of hauntings: the 'aboriginal' Dutch and Indian hauntings, the Revolutionary War hauntings, and industrial hauntings, which are traced in Maxwell Anderson's High Tor (1937) and T. Coraghessan Boyle's World's End (1987). --J. J. Benardete, Choice Possessions is a rare and brilliant book that seamlessly combines history and literature--revealing how richly they can support one another. It is a great pleasure to read: both fluent and profound. --Alan Taylor, author of American Colonies and William Cooper's Town This is a lively, well-written, and engaging interdisciplinary study. Richardson pursues two main goals: probing in considerable detail a body of early national folklore and its modern revivals and testing some more general notions about the uses to which such lore is put in the periods when it is recovered, reshaped, and reinvigorated. It is smart without being condescending, locally inflected without exhibiting the least bit of piety - and, I think, quite suggestive for scholars looking at other domains far beyond the Hudson Valley. She gives us a way of understanding how the "local" has figured in the cultural construction of Americanness. --Wayne Franklin, author of Discoverers, Explorers, Settlers and The New World of James Fenimore Cooper




Farm, Shop, Landing


Book Description

DIVBruegel shows how the development of a market economy created historical change in a parochial community./div




Legends and Lore of Sleepy Hollow and the Hudson Valley


Book Description

A storyteller examines Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and the lore that inspired it, as well as other local legends of the Hudson Valley. The story of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman is one of America's best-known fables, but what other stories does the Hudson Valley hold? Imps cause mischief on the Hudson River, a white lady haunts Raven Rock, Major Andre’s ghost seeks redemption and real headless Hessians search for their severed skulls. These mysterious and spooky tales from the region’s past inspired Irving and continue to captivate the imagination to this day. “Kruk has been enchanting audiences with his dramatic, enticing storytelling ability for 20 years.” —Suzanne Rothberg, Tarrytown-Sleepy Hollow Patch




Hudson Valley Murder & Mayhem


Book Description

Visit the long ago crime and dire deeds in the Hudson Valley of New York. The Hudson Valley is drenched in history, culture and blood. In the fall of 1893, Lizzie Halliday left a trail of bodies in her wake, slaughtering two strangers and her husband before stabbing a nurse to death at the asylum housing her. A Jazz Age politician, tired of fighting with his overbearing wife, murdered her and buried the body under the front porch. In 1882, a cantankerous old miner, dubbed the Austerlitz Cannibal by the press, chopped up his partner before he himself swung from the end of a rope. Author Andrew Amelinckx dredges up the Hudson Valley's dark past, from Prohibition-era shootouts to unsolved murders, in eleven heart-pounding true stories.




Legends and Lore of the Hudson Highlands


Book Description

The Hudson Highlands launched revolutions of independence, industry and creativity, and have long enchanted artists and hikers with countless mysteries that still thrive in the area. Leni-Lenape legend told of an ancient giant slumbering between Storm King and Breakneck Ridge. During the Revolution, George Washington saved the new nation from a military coup by donning glasses. The ghost of the twice-hanged pirate William Kidd returns to secluded caves and hamlets in the Highlands to guard his treasure. Professional storyteller Jonathan Kruk unveils a treasure of stories of the historic, mysterious and colorful Hudson Highlands.




Conversations on the Hudson


Book Description

One spring day in 2012, fresh from his circumnavigation of the British Isles, English designer Nick Hand set off on his bicycle from Brooklyn, New York, and pedaled north along the Hudson River toward its source in the Adirondack Mountains. His leisurely pace suited his simple agenda—to talk to the artists and craftspeople he met along the way. Conversations on the Hudson is a visual record of his five-hundred-mile journey through the hills, mountains, and countryside of the Hudson Valley. Hand's casual approach brings out the best in people, who eagerly open up their studios and workshops and share their personal stories. This one-of-a-kind collection pairs Hand's beautiful photographs alongside visits to a seed librarian, a printer and publisher, a brewer, a stone sculptor, a sheep farmer, a distiller, a maple syrup producer, and a boat restorer, among others.




Mount Pleasant


Book Description

Mount Pleasant has deep American roots going back to the Revolutionary War, when local tenant farmers filled the ranks of General Washingtons Continental army. For years, travel to New York City was difficult, until the arrival of the railroad in 1846 allowed easy transportation to lower Manhattan. In 1893, John D. Rockefeller Sr. began buying land in Pocantico and built his classic Georgian mansion. The massive Kensico Dam in Valhalla was completed in 1917 to satisfy the growing thirst of New York City. In 1927, Rose Hawthorne, the daughter of writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, completed the Rosary Hill Home to care for the unfortunate. The following year, Dewitt Wallace and his wife Lila moved to Pleasantville to launch the production of Readers Digest. Through photographs, Mount Pleasant remembers these historic moments.