The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness

by Paul Schneider

Overview

His book is a romance, a story of first love between Americans and a thing they call "wilderness." For it was in the Adirondacks that masses of non-Native Americans first learned to cherish the wilderness as a place of recreation and solace.

In this lyrical narrative history, the author reveals that the affair between Americans and the Adirondacks was by no means one of love at first sight. And even now, Schneider shows that Americans' relationship with the glorious mountains and rivers of the Adirondacks continues to change. As in every good romance, nothing is as simple as it appears.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805059908
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/15/1998
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.15(w) x 9.15(h) x 1.05(d)

About the Author

Paul Schneider is the acclaimed author of Bonnie and Clyde, Brutal Journey, The Enduring Shore, and The Adirondacks, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. He and his family live in West Tisbury, Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

A biography of a place, a life of the Adirondacks . . . irresistible.” —James Gorman, The New York Times Book Review

“Absolutely fascinating. Paul Schneider conjures the Adirondack wilderness as a vast and imposing stage on which a succession of human dramas-from the romantic to the terrifying—come alive.” —John Bert

“A delicious look at America's original summer paradise.” —Elle

From the Publisher

A crisp, filigreed history of the Adirondacks—from their beginnings in Grenville orogeny to last year's trapping harvest—from Paul Schneider, an editor at Mirabella. There is something about the Adirondacks—six million acres of forest and water and biting flies in northern New York State, half public, half private—that has drawn to it painters and scientists, hunters and trappers, the sick and weary looking for surcease, writers and philosophers in search of answers. Biologically, it sports an impressive 90 percent of the known animal species in the eastern half of the country. Spiritually, it has hosted the likes of Thoreau and Emerson ('in the wilderness we return to reason and faith'). Painters—Cole, Homer, Remington—have been inspired by its raw beauty. It has heard the ring of axe and buzz of sawmill, felt seekers of iron and lead and garnet excavate its ground. Great camps, more an embodiment of nature tamed than nature wild, but of undeniable architectural and decorative ingenuity, were built along its shores. The history of geologic thought was in part minted here, wilderness guides were mythologized here, John Brown (of Brown University) held a big claim here, and a later John Brown's body lies moldering in his grave on the small stake he owned there. And of course, there are the black flies. Any which way you look at it, the place is a gold mine. What makes Schneider's book distinctive is that he not only quarries these obvious attention-grabbers, but as well does a neat job of explicating the more mundane matters of the park, in particular the sometimes peaceful coexistence, sometimes dysfunctional marriage between private and publicnotions of the future of the parkland. For a slice of real estate that doesn't suffer from literary neglect, Schneider's contribution is a welcome, lively, and ranging consideration.

Kirkus Reviews