Books

Frederick Douglass Book Prize Submission Sought

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Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition has announced the twelfth annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize, a $25,000 award for the most outstanding nonfiction book published in English in 2009 on the subject of slavery and/or abolition and antislavery movements. Publishers and authors are invited to submit books that meet these criteria.

The center is interested in all geographical areas and time periods, however, works related to the Civil War are acceptable only if their primary focus relates to slavery or emancipation. The submission deadline is April 2, 2010.

For information on submitting books e-mail them at [email protected].

A list of past winners can be found at www.yale.edu/glc.

Photo: The Black Community at Hurricane Garden Cottage, Davis Bend, courtesy New-York Historical Society.

Theodore Roosevelt: The Wilderness Warrior

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A new book on Teddy Roosevelt by New York Times bestselling historian Douglas Brinkley is described by the publisher as &#8220a sweeping historical narrative and eye-opening look at the pioneering environmental policies of President Theodore Roosevelt, avid bird-watcher, naturalist, and the founding father of America’s conservation movement.&#8221 For those interested in the Adirondack region, this new biography helps put TR’s Adirondack experiences into the lager context of wilderness protection and wildlife conservation history.

Brinkley draws on never-before-published materials for his look at the life of what he calls our &#8220naturalist president.&#8221 Launching from conservation work as New York State Governor, TR set aside more than 230 million acres of American wild lands between 1901 and 1909, and helped popularize the conservation of wild places.

Brinkley’s new book singles out the influential contributions of James Audubon, Charles Darwin, and John Muir in shaping Roosevelt’s view of the natural world. Some of the most interesting parts of the book relate to TR’s relationship with Dr. C. Hart Merriam, who reviewed the future president’s The Summer Birds of the Adirondacks in 1877- Merriam’s own The Mammals of the Adirondacks Region of Northeastern New York, published in 1884, was duly praised by TR.

Merriam and Roosevelt later worked successfully to reverse the declining Adirondack deer population (they brought whitetail from Maine), and to outlaw jack-lighting and hunting deer with dogs and so helped establish the principles of wildlife management by New York State.

During his political stepping-stone term as 33rd Governor of New York (1899-1900) TR made the forests of the state a focus of his policies. He pushed against &#8220the depredations of man,&#8221 the recurrent forest fires, and worked to strengthen fish and game laws. Roosevelt provided stewardship of the state’s forests and the Adirondack Park in particular, that led to the most progressive conservation and wilderness protection laws in the country.

TR also worked to replace political hacks on the New York Fisheries, Game, and Forest Commission (forerunner of the DEC), according to Brinkley, and replaced them with highly trained &#8220independent-minded biologists, zoologists, entomologists, foresters, sportsman hunters, algae specialists, trail guides, botanists, and activists for clean rivers.&#8221 To help pay the bill he pushed for higher taxes on corporations while also pursuing a progressive politics &#8211 what Brinkley calls &#8220an activist reformist agenda.&#8221

The book ranges with Roosevelt to Yellowstone, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Dakota Territory, and the Big Horn Mountains. It does capture Roosevelt’s time in the Adirondacks, but its’ strength is in putting that time into the larger context of Roosevelt’s life as a wilderness conservationist. For example, TR’s opposition to the Utica Electric Light Company’s Adirondack incursions is only mentioned in passing, though Brinkley’s treatment of the relationship between Gifford Pinchot and TR is more developed. An index entry &#8211 &#8220Adirondack National Park&#8221 &#8211 is lightly misused bringing into concern how much Brinkley really appreciates the impact of Roosevelt’s Adirondack experiences (both in-country and in Albany) on his wilderness ethic.

All in all, however, Wilderness Warrior is a well written collection of the strands of Roosevelt’s conservationist ideas, woven into a readable narrative. Considering TR’s role in so many disciplines related to our forests, that’s no mean feat.

Looking for things to do in NY? Check out Citypath


Dutch Influence: Cookies, Coleslaw and Stoops

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To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Dutch arrival off the coast of Manhattan, the renowned linguist Nicoline van der Sijs along with Amsterdam University Press have published Cookies, Coleslaw, and Stoops: The Influence of Dutch on the North American Languages.

From Santa Claus (after the Dutch folklore saint Sinterklaas) and his sleigh (the pronunciation of the Dutch slee is almost identical) to a dumbhead talking poppycock, the contributions of the Dutch language to American English are indelibly embedded in some of our most vernacular terms and expressions. This fascinating volume charts over 250 Dutch loan words that journeyed over the Atlantic on Henry Hudson’s ship the Halve Maan and into the American territory and languages. Each entry marks the original arrival of a particular term to American English and offers information on its evolving meaning, etymology, and regional spread.

Books: Adirondack, Lumber Capital of The World

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As you might expect, my desk-side book shelves are heavily burdened with Adirondack books. Guides to hiking, climbing, wildlife, forestry- books of photography, sit beside fiction and various technical reports &#8211 all here within easy reach. Most are history &#8211 general histories, political histories, environmental and cultural histories, books on logging, tanning, prohibition, Native Americans, county histories. Recently I received a tidy volume on Adirondack logging history that focuses on Warren County, Phillip J. Harris’s Adirondack, Lumber Capital of the World, which seems to have drawn from them all to good effect.

Harris’s book takes on, with incredible detail, the people and places that made the southeastern Adirondacks unique in the history of the American lumber industry. In 1850, New York produced more lumber &#8211 about a billion board feet a year from around a half million trees &#8211 than any other state in the nation. Southern Warren County was where much of the lumber was milled and where the Adirondack lumber barons reigned. Their names, James Morgan, William, Norman and Alison Fox, Jones Ordway, James Caldwell, John Thurman, Samuel Prime, Henry Crandall, Zenus VanDusen, Jeremiah and Daniel Finch, Augustus Sherman, George Freeman, William McEchron, are found scattered through the county’s history books &#8211 until now.

Harris’s book takes on the large and small, from the first pioneers and their patents, to the lumber camps, jobbers, log drives, log marks, and sawmills. The Delaware and Hudson Railroad is featured in one chapter, the Fort William Henry Hotel in another. In 1865 there were some 4,000 sawmills in New York State, one hundred years later there were fewer the 200 &#8211 today, maybe fewer then 50. One of the bigger contributions Harris makes to the history of the Adirondack lumber industry is in explaining how that came to pass.

Books: Madison Countys Frank L. Baum, Wizard of Oz

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This summer the film &#8220The Wizard of Oz&#8221 marked its 70th anniversary. Just in time comes The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baumby Rebecca Loncraine, the first full biography of L. Frank Baum &#8211 from his birth in 1856 and his youth in the Finger Lakes region, to the years following his death &#8211 that looks at the people, places, history, culture, and literature that influenced the renowned storyteller. From the Civil War to women’s suffrage, from amputation to modern medicine, from psychics to industrialization, Baum saw it all and it was reflected in his writings. Loncraine is an acknowledged expert on Oz and Baum who traveled the US to study him, his works and the impact they had on our culture for the book.

When The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written at the turn of the century, it quickly became an icon of American Culture. The public and the media were entranced by myths surrounding Baum’s creation, all covered in the book:

Was OZ really named from the O-Z on his file cabinet?

Was the book really a reaction to the Populist party?

What was Baum’s incredible connection to PT Barnum?

The Real Peter Stuyvesant? New Netherlands Fiction

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Bill Greer (a trustee of the New Netherland Institute) will talk about painting a portrait of New Netherland in a work of fiction, using his novel The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan: A Novel of New Amsterdam and the life of Peter Stuyvesant, Director general of the New Netherland colony. The event will take place on November 19th at the Hagaman Historical Society, Pawling Hall, 86 Pawling Street, in Hagaman (Montgomery County), NY at 7 pm.

Mostly Spruce And Hemlock Book Party in Tupper

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A book-release party for the reprint of the classic Adirondack history “Mostly Spruce and Hemlock” will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 19, 2009 at the Goff-Nelson Memorial Library, 41 Lake St., in Tupper Lake. The party will feature brief comments from library officials, Tupper Lake Free Press Publisher Dan McClelland, index author Carol Payment Poole, and publisher Andy Flynn. Refreshments will be served, and historical exhibits will be on display throughout the library.

“We see this party as a celebration of Tupper Lake’s heritage,” said Goff-Nelson Memorial Library Manager Linda Auclair. “Louis Simmons gave this community a huge gift in 1976 with ‘Mostly Spruce and Hemlock’ and the library is proud to give the same gift to even more people with a reprinting of this classic volume of Adirondack history.”

In June 1976, Tupper Lake Free Press Editor Louis J. Simmons released the first comprehensive volume of Tupper Lake history in “Mostly Spruce and Hemlock” at a book release party at the Goff-Nelson Memorial Library. It was a fitting location- the research room – the Grace Simmons Memorial Room – was named in honor of Louis’ first wife, a longtime Tupper Lake librarian. Louis Simmons used a lot of photographs from the library’s collection for his book.

At 461 pages and more than 140 photos, “Mostly Spruce and Hemlock” was an instant best-seller in the Tip Top Town and was sold out in less than two years. People have been searching for copies of the book for more than 30 years. Only 2,000 copies of the original were printed.

Simmons used more than four decades of experience at the editorial helm of the Tupper Lake Free Press to write “Mostly Spruce and Hemlock.” A 1926 graduate of the Tupper Lake High School and 1930 graduate of Syracuse University, he was hired as the Tupper Lake Free Press editor in 1932. He retired as full-time editor in 1979 and continued writing and editing until his death on April 4, 1995. He was also the Tupper Lake historian for many years.

“Mostly Spruce and Hemlock” details the early days of life in the village of Tupper Lake and the town of Altamont (the name of the town was changed to Tupper Lake in 2004). Histories are offered on the logging industry, railroading, churches, schools, hotels, Sunmount DDSO and businesses such as the Oval Wood Dish Corporation.

The new “Mostly Spruce and Hemlock” includes all of the original text and photos, but there will be some major differences. It is a paperback book, instead of hardcover, and the cover was redesigned. The original book did not include an index- however, the 2009 version has an index, which was written by author and Tupper Lake native Carol Payment Poole. Tupper Lake Free Press Publisher Dan McClelland wrote a new foreword. And the book is dedicated to Simmons and “Tupper Lakers everywhere.”

The reprinting is a joint project between Hungry Bear Publishing and the Goff-Nelson Memorial Library, which received permission to reprint “Mostly Spruce and Hemlock” as a fund-raiser. The library will receive all the author’s royalties plus a retail percentage for copies it sells directly to the public.

Presale orders for “Mostly Spruce and Hemlock” were taken between March and October 2009- anyone who prepaid for a book may pick it up at the library at the book-release party on Nov. 19. Prepaid orders to be shipped will be sent out as soon as the books arrive. No more orders will be taken until Nov. 19- anyone may purchase a copy at the party or during library hours anytime afterward. The books will also be for sale at various locations throughout the Tri-Lakes beginning the week of Thanksgiving. A print run of 2,000 was ordered for the Second Edition.

Based in Saranac Lake, Hungry Bear Publishing is home of the five-volume “Adirondack Attic” book series (Adirondack history) and the Meet the Town Community guide series. The company is owned and operated by Tupper Lake native Andy Flynn, who personally produced and edited the Second Edition of “Mostly Spruce and Hemlock,” and his wife, Dawn, originally from Bloomingdale.

For more information about the new “Mostly Spruce and Hemlock,” call the Goff-Nelson Memorial Library at (518) 359-9421.

Books: The Bronxs Boulevard of Dreams

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Stretching over four miles through the center of the West Bronx, the Grand Boulevard and Concourse, known simply as the Grand Concourse, has served as a silent witness to the changing face of the Bronx, and New York City, for a century. To coincide with the Concourse’s centennial, New York Times editor Constance Rosenblum has written a book, Boulevard of Dreams: Heady Times, Heartbreak, and Hope along the Grand Concourse in the Bronx that brings to life this historic street.

Designed by a French engineer in the late nineteenth century to echo the elegance and grandeur of the Champs Elysees in Paris, the Concourse was nearly twenty years in the making (it celebrated its centennial in November). Over that century it has truly been a boulevard of dreams for various upwardly mobile immigrant and ethnic groups, yet it has also seen the darker side of the American dream.

Constance Rosenblum unearths the history of the street and its neighborhoods through a series of life stories and historical vignettes. The story of the creation and transformation of the Grand Concourse is the story of New York—and America—writ large, and Rosenblum examines the Grand Concourse from its earliest days to the blighted 1960s and 1970s right up to the current period of renewal. Illustrated with historical photographs, the vivid world of the Grand Concourse comes alive—from Yankee Stadium to the unparalleled collection of Art Deco apartments to the palatial Loew’s Paradise movie theater.

The publishers call it &#8220An enthralling story of the creation of an iconic street, an examination of the forces that transformed it, and a moving portrait of those who called it home, Boulevard of Dreams is a must read for anyone interested in the rich history of New York and the twentieth-century American city.&#8221

Books: Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville

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Cultural historian and journalist David Freeland has published his latest book,Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure, a rediscovery of the historic remnants of New York City’s leisure culture, including bier gartens in the Bowery, music publishers on Tin Pan Alley, jazz clubs in Harlem, and other locations throughout the city that remain partially intact, but obscured by the city’s development.

From the lights that never go out on Broadway to its 24-hour subway system, New York City isn’t called &#8220the city that never sleeps&#8221 for nothing. Both native New Yorkers and tourists have played hard in Gotham for centuries, lindy hopping in 1930s Harlem, voguing in 1980s Chelsea, and refueling at all-night diners and bars. The island is packed with places of leisure and entertainment, but Manhattan’s infamously fast pace of change means that many of these beautifully constructed and incredibly ornate buildings have disappeared, and with them a rich and ribald history.

David Freeland serves as a guide to uncover the skeletons of New York’s lost monuments to its nightlife. With an eye for architectural detail, Freeland opens doors, climbs onto rooftops, and gazes down alleyways to reveal several of the remaining hidden gems of Manhattan’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century entertainment industry.

From the lights that never go out on Broadway to its 24-hour subway system, New York City isn’t called &#8220the city that never sleeps&#8221 for nothing. Both native New Yorkers and tourists have played hard in Gotham for centuries, lindy hopping in 1930s Harlem, voguing in 1980s Chelsea, and refueling at all-night diners and bars. The slim island at the mouth of the Hudson River is packed with places of leisure and entertainment, but Manhattan’s infamously fast pace of change means that many of these beautifully constructed and incredibly ornate buildings have disappeared, and with them a rich and ribald history.

Yet with David Freeland as a guide, it’s possible to uncover skeletons of New York’s lost monuments to its nightlife. With a keen eye for architectural detail, Freeland opens doors, climbs onto rooftops, and gazes down alleyways to reveal several of the remaining hidden gems of Manhattan’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century entertainment industry.

From the Atlantic Garden German beer hall in present-day Chinatown to the city’s first motion picture studio—Union Square’s American Mutoscope and Biograph Company—to the Lincoln Theater in Harlem, Freeland situates each building within its historical and social context, bringing to life an old New York that took its diversions seriously.

Freeland reminds us that the buildings that serve as architectural guideposts to yesteryear’s recreations cannot be re-created—once destroyed they are gone forever. With condominiums and big box stores spreading over city blocks like wildfires, more and more of the Big Apple’s legendary houses of mirth are being lost.

The Colony of New Netherland by Jaap Jacobs

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Cornell University Press has announced the publication of The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America in which Jaap Jacobs offers a comprehensive history of Holland’s colony along the Hudson River, from the first trading voyages in the 1610s to 1674, when the Dutch ceded the colony to the English. The book is available in paperback here.

About The Colony of New Netherland

The Dutch involvement in North America started after Henry Hudson, sailing under a Dutch flag in 1609, traveled up the river that would later bear his name. The Dutch control of the region was short-lived, but had profound effects on the Hudson Valley region. In The Colony of New Netherland, Jaap Jacobs offers a comprehensive history of the Dutch colony on the Hudson from the first trading voyages in the 1610s to 1674, when the Dutch ceded the colony to the English.

As Jacobs shows, New Netherland offers a distinctive example of economic colonization and in its social and religious profile represents a noteworthy divergence from the English colonization in North America. Centered around New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan, the colony extended north to present-day Schenectady, New York, east to central Connecticut, and south to the border shared by Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, leaving an indelible imprint on the culture, political geography, and language of the early modern mid-Atlantic region. Dutch colonists’ vivid accounts of the land and people of the area shaped European perceptions of this bountiful land- their own activities had a lasting effect on land use and the flora and fauna of New York State, in particular, as well as on relations with the Native people with whom they traded.

Sure to become readers’ first reference to this crucial phase of American early colonial history, The Colony of New Netherland is a multifaceted and detailed depiction of life in the colony, from exploration and settlement through governance, trade, and agriculture. Jacobs gives a keen sense of the built environment and social relations of the Dutch colonists and closely examines the influence of the church and the social system adapted from that of the Dutch Republic. Although Jacobs focuses his narrative on the realities of quotidian existence in the colony, he considers that way of life in the broader context of the Dutch Atlantic and in comparison to other European settlements in North America.

About the Author

Jaap Jacobs (Ph.D. Leiden University), an independent scholar and writer, has been Visiting Professor of Early American History at Ohio University and Quinn Foundation Senior Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and Quinn Foundation Visiting Professor in the Department of History at Cornell University.

Praise for The Colony of New Netherland

&#8220Jaap Jacobs’s The Colony of New Netherland is rich, deep, layered, and authoritative. It puts its subject in its proper place both in American and in Dutch history. For anyone with an interest in the Dutch presence in North America, it is essential.&#8221&#8211Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World

&#8220The Colony of New Netherland is the definitive modern study of the early Dutch experience in North America. Jacobs offers many important new insights derived from scrupulous research in Dutch-language sources and situates the story of New Netherland in a truly Atlantic context. This book marks a crucial step in the process of diversifying our understanding of early North American history.&#8221&#8211Jon Parmenter, Cornell University, author of The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia, 1534-1701

&#8220Jaap Jacobs has read virtually everything about New Netherland, primary and secondary, in Dutch and English, and produced a model synthesis of social, political, and economic history for a colonial experience that has far too long been terra incognita. Jacobs is particularly strong in his ability to take a genuinely transatlantic perspective, detailing the many struggles within the Dutch West India Company over whether its North American interest was to be a colony of trade or a colony of settlement (or, indeed, a colony at all) as well as the efforts of the motley lot of a few thousand Europeans to recreate something resembling a society in New Amsterdam, Fort Orange, and points adjacent.&#8221&#8211Daniel K. Richter, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of History and the Richard S. Dunn Director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania, author of The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Coloni!
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&#8220The unique character of New Netherland has eluded many chroniclers of early America, but Jaap Jacob’s first-rate scholarship and thoughtful analysis demonstrate how well he understands the intricacies and intrigues that marked the Dutch settlement. His book is a captivating treasure hunt for lovers of New York history and an essential, illuminating guide to an oft-neglected corner of our shared American past.&#8221&#8211Elizabeth L. Bradley, author of Knickerbocker

&#8220The Colony of New Netherland will convince specialists and students alike of the pivotal role played by the Dutch West India Company colony in seventeenth-century America.&#8221&#8211Joyce D. Goodfriend, author of Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664-1730.