Our 35th Year Updated June 26, 2009 In addition to selling our own books, we are the North American distributor for Carmania Press, London. |
Commemoration
1754-1763 * * * 250 Years * * * 2004-2013
Our Quadricentennial
Commemoration
1609 * * * 400 Years * * * 2009
Hudson • Fulton • Champlain
Two titles just added: History of Lake Champlain and The French Occupation of the Champlain Valley, 1609-1759
Ward Eastman is back in two new mystery novellas set in the Catskills: MURDER AT THE STREAMSIDE and MURDER AT THE RESERVOIR. Norman Van Valkenburg's surveyor-sleuth finds murder and mayhem at the sites of the Ashokan and Pepacton Reservoirs. See why Hudson Valley Magazine calls Norman J. Van Valkenburgh a "Master of Mystery."
MOUNTAIN RAILROADS OF NEW YORK STATE, VOLUME 3Where Did the Tracks Go in the Eastern Adirondacks?
by Michael Kudish
NEW: This volume covers the eastern portion of the Adirondacks, especially the Delaware & Hudson from Whitehall to the Canadian border. All its branches and connecting lines are described. The book includes a chapter on Amtrak and on non-connecting rail lines. The maps in the Mountain Railroads of New York State: Where Did the Tracks Go? series combine detail from multiple sources and will greatly assist the reader in the field to locate precisely sites of historic railroad activity. Volume I, published in 2005, and Volume II, published in 2007, respectively covered the western and central Adirondacks. Volume IV (2011) will cover the Catskills.
Where Did the Tracks Go in the Central Adirondacks?
Where Did the Tracks Go in the Western Adirondacks?
Buy three copies of Mountain Railroads of New York State: Where Did the Tracks Go?
(mix or match)and receive a free copy of the hardcover history of New York State's first two railroads ($25.00 value):
Pioneer American Railroads: The Mohawk and Hudson & The Saratoga and Schenectady.
HELL ON THE EAST RIVERBritish Prison Ships in the American Revolution
by Larry Lowenthal
NEW: Glorious names like Concord, Saratoga, Valley Forge and Yorktown still ring in American history and are universally recognized. Far fewer people have heard of Wallabout Bay on the Brooklyn shore of the East River or know the terrible story of American sailors who were imprisoned there on wretched hulks like the Jersey. Probably more Americans died there than in all the battles of the War for Independence. The author, Larry Lowenthal, uses prisoners' own accounts to describe the agony of imprisonment. He analyzes the number of deaths, examines the reasons for the tragedy, and describes the 100-year struggle to erect the present Prison Ship Martyrs' monument in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn.
RONDOUT: A HUDSON RIVER PORTby Bob Steuding
NEW: Bob Steuding (The Last of the Handmade Dams: The Story of the Ashokan Reservoir and The Heart of the Catskills) presents a history of the once thriving port of Rondout, now part of Kingston. It is a tale of floods, fires and plagues; of commercial enterprise and the acquisition of vast, untaxed fortunes as well as the expression of public spiritedness in both peace and war. From the early days of Dutch settlement to the boom years in the 19th century after the construction of the Delaware & Hudson canal to the final flowering of Rondout at Kingston Point, this book portrays the vibrant, often rambunctious, life of one of the great river ports and the characters who built it.
LISTEN TO THE WHISTLEAn Anecdotal History of the Wallkill Valley Railroad
in Ulster and Orange Counties, New York
by Carleton Mabee
In this first book ever to be published on the Wallkill Valley Railroad, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carleton Mabee tells the story of a gallant little railroad that connected Orange and Ulster Counties and aspired to be part of a major trunk line reaching from metropolitan New York all the way to Albany. A human, more than technological, story, it tells not only of hissing steam engines but also of trainmen high in their cabs, farmers shipping milk and fruit, children riding to school, and the weary hearing train whistles as hints of adventure in distant places.
Long out of print in hardcover, Listen to the Whistle, has just been released in paper.
166 pages, 8.5 x 11, illustrated, paperback, $22.50.
FROM THE COALFIELDS
TO THE HUDSON
A History of the Delaware & Hudson Canal
by Larry Lowenthal
In photographs and paintings the Delaware & Hudson Canal appears calm and unrufffled. The charming picture is not entirely false, but there is another dimension to the D&H Company, a corporation struggling to succeed in a hostile and risky business. Except in its final years the history of the canal was marked by a series of crises or conflicts, each of which threatened the survival of the company. Constant insecurity wore out the D&H managers, but as the company met its challenges in the formative years of American capitalism, it created a model for later enterprises. Now, more than a century after the last boatload of anthracite floated down the D&H Canal, this book gives a new and fuller perspective on this remarkable venture.
First published in 1997, and long out of print, this second printing contains a 16-page supplement.
PROMISED LAND
Father Divine's Interracial Communities in Ulster County, New York
by Carleton Mabee
NEW: At the time he established his communities in Ulster County, Father Divine, an African American, was based in Harlem, He was one of the best known Americans of his time. He was also highly controversial. Time Magazine called him "slick" and "inexplicable. When his followers were beginning to move into Ulster County, the New Paltz News reported that the county's people "resent the very thought" of their arrival.
Father Divine lifted the despairing from the gutter to self respect, but his methods troubled many observers. He commanded much wealth, but he mystified many critics as to where it came from. In the 1930s and 1940s, his movement was one of the most completely interracial movements in the US, but large numbers of Americans found this to be offensive.
During the Great Depression, when Divine's movement was feeding thousands of the hungry, he established his first community in Ulster County, in New Paltz, in 1935. His communities survived in the county until 1985 when the last one, in Kingston, was sold off.
Divine's communities were idealistic, nondenominational, unconventional. They were communities which Divine followers called collectively the Promised Land. After his death in 1965, the political scientist Leo Rosten called him "adorable," and claimed he taught a "sweet and beneficent faith," but added that he was also a fraud, a "mountebank." This is the story of Divine's communities in the "Promised Land," Ulster County.
CATSKILL MOUNTAIN BLUESTONEby Alf Evers, Robert Titus, and Tim Weidner
NEW: "By 1870, cutting the slabs out of mountain ledges became such big business that William M. Tweed, the political boss, finagled a partnership out of the New York and Pennsylvania Bluestone Company. He profited greatly by then arranging for the company to supply bluestone for city sidewalks. By the end of the 19th century, an estimated 10,000 men worked bluestone in New York. The Catskills were riddled with quarries. As concrete sidewalks replaced bluestone, the industry declined [until recently]. . . . Scores of new mines have been opened in the last six years, and many old ones have been reactivated. Bluestone, which had shrunk to little more than memories-is now a $100 million-a-year industry, located mostly in economically depressed Delaware and Broome Counties in the Catskills." --The New York Times, May 13, 2008
"The growing bluestone industry is important to construction and architecture nationwide." --New York State Conservationist, August 2008
Important regional titles for readers 9 to 12:
AMERICA'S FIRST WILDERNESS: NEW YORK STATE'S FOREST PRESERVES by Norm Van Valkenburgh (44 pages, 6.50)
THE MOHICANS by Aileen Weintraub and Shirley Dunn with paintings by L. F. Tantillo (39 pages, 6.50)
SYBIL LUDINGTON: DISCOVERING THE LIFE OF A REVOLUTIONARY WAR HERO by V. T. Dacquino (37 pages, 6.50)
SEEKING THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE: THE EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES OF CHAMPLAIN AND HUDSON
by Don and Carol Thompson (88 pages, 8.50)
THE HEART OF THE CATSKILLSby Bob Steuding
NEW: The Heart of the Catskills by Bob Steuding, author of the popular and highly acclaimed The Last of the Handmade Dams: The Story of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steuding describes the early settlement of the area, its exploitation by the tanning industry, and the building of the Grand Hotel near Belleayre. He presents the stories of colorful personalities, such as Jim Dutcher, the mountain man; John Burroughs, the writer and naturalist; and others, who once peopled this wild and beautiful place.
"ALWAYS ON STATION"THE STORY OF THE SANDY HOOK SHIP PILOTS
by Francis J. Duffy
There are few organizations in this country that can trace their founding to more than three hundred years ago as the Sandy Hook Pilots can. Their logo carries the date 1694. They served under two national flags: British and American. Over the centuries, the pilots have weathered many changes,but the United New York and New Jersey Sandy Hook Pilots Benevolent Association is still safely guiding ships across the bar as they enter and leave the Port of New York and New Jersey. This book follows the pilots' organization from its founding. Every change in the maritime industry has had repercussions for the pilots, from the changing of sailing ships to steamships to the present-day containerization of cargoes. The pilots have taken the basic tenets of an ancient trade guild and adapted it for today's world, working together to provide a highly skilled service needed in the twenty-first century.
BRIDGING THE HUDSON, third printing, and LIFE ON A CANAL BOAT, second printing with index added.
THE BATTLE OF FORT MONTGOMERY, second printing.
Announcing a revised edition of MOHONK: It's People and Spirit, our illustrated history of the famous Shawangunk Mountain resort. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, it has been owned and operated by the Smiley family for one hundred and forty years and is still growing. It is an extraordinary story. More than 12,000 copies were sold of our first three editions. The author is historian and archivist Larry E. Burgess, Director of the A. K. Smiley Public Library, Redlands, California. He is also the author of our Daniel Smiley of Mohonk: A Naturalist's Life.
We are pleased to offer our North American customers the fine maritime books
published by CARMANIA PRESS of London. All are definitive works by authorities in ocean liner and shipping history and feature superb reproductions of historic and
modern photographs on heavily coated stock in sewn bindings.
R.M.S. QUEEN ELIZABETH - THE ULTIMATE SHIP
This is an extremely authoritative, lavishly illustrated history by Clive Harvey of Cunard's original Queen Elizabeth, running mate of the great Queen Mary and, for years after her completion in 1940, the largest liner in the World.
THE FRED. OLSEN LINE AND ITS PASSENGER SHIPS
A Pictorial Record of Passenger Ships in the 1930s
SOUTHAMPTON SHIPPING with Portsmouth, Poole and Weymouth
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