The beauty and charm of this useful book is that it helps you discover the true dimensions of the real Catskill Mountains. Enjoying the Catskills is the only book about the region that reveals such a diversity of enchantments and attractions awaiting your enjoyment. Each page unlocks a storehouse of riches. Here is a wealth of information for everyone, whether you are a visitor or a resident of the area. The book is more than a guide. Intermingled with legend and glimpses of history and famous characters are vital facts on a wide range of subjects, all conveniently arranged for easy reading and reference. These include geology, wildlife, hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, motoring, wilderness areas, canoeing, ski touring, and many others.

The Catskills (“Cat Creek” in Dutch), America’s original frontier, northwest of New York City, with its seven hundred thousand acres of forest land preserve and its five counties—Delaware, Greene, Sullivan, Ulster, Schoharie; America’s first great vacationland; the subject of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School paintings that captured the almost godlike majesty of the mountains and landscapes, the skies, waterfalls, pastures, cliffs . . . refuge and home to poets and gangsters, tycoons and politicians, preachers and outlaws, musicians and spiritualists, outcasts and rebels . . . Stephen Silverman and Raphael Silver tell of the turning points that made the Catskills so vital to the development of America: Henry Hudson’s first spotting the distant blue mountains in 1609; the New York State constitutional convention, resulting in New York’s own Declaration of Independence from Great Britain and its own constitution, causing the ire of the invading British army . . . the Catskills as a popular attraction in the 1800s, with the construction of the Catskill Mountain House and its rugged imitators that offered WASP guests “one-hundred percent restricted” accommodations (“Hebrews will knock vainly for admission”), a policy that remained until the Catskills became the curative for tubercular patients, sending real-estate prices plummeting and the WASP enclave on to richer pastures . . . Here are the gangsters (Jack “Legs” Diamond and Dutch Schultz, among them) who sought refuge in the Catskill Mountains, and the resorts that after World War II catered to upwardly mobile Jewish families, giving rise to hundreds of hotels inspired by Grossinger’s, the original “Disneyland with knishes”—the Concord, Brown’s Hotel, Kutsher’s Hotel, and others—in what became known as the Borscht Belt and Sour Cream Alps, with their headliners from movies and radio (Phil Silvers, Eddie Cantor, Milton Berle, et al.), and others who learned their trade there, among them Moss Hart (who got his start organizing summer theatricals), Sid Caesar, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Joan Rivers. Here is a nineteenth-century America turning away from England for its literary and artistic inspiration, finding it instead in Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and his childhood recollections (set in the Catskills) . . . in James Fenimore Cooper’s adventure-romances, which provided a pastoral history, describing the shift from a colonial to a nationalist mentality . . . and in the canvases of Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederick Church, and others that caught the grandeur of the wilderness and that gave texture, color, and form to Irving’s and Cooper’s imaginings. Here are the entrepreneurs and financiers who saw the Catskills as a way to strike it rich, plundering the resources that had been likened to “creation,” the Catskills’ tanneries that supplied the boots and saddles for Union troops in the Civil War . . . and the bluestone quarries whose excavated rock became the curbs and streets of the fast-growing Eastern Seaboard. Here are the Catskills brought fully to life in all of their intensity, beauty, vastness, and lunacy.

For over two hundred years, the Catskill Mountains have been repeatedly and dramatically transformed by New York City. In Making Mountains, David Stradling shows the transformation of the Catskills landscape as a collaborative process, one in which local and urban hands, capital, and ideas have come together to reshape the mountains and the communities therein. This collaboration has had environmental, economic, and cultural consequences. Early on, the Catskills were an important source of natural resources. Later, when New York City needed to expand its water supply, engineers helped direct the city toward the Catskills, claiming that the mountains offered the purest and most cost-effective waters. By the 1960s, New York had created the great reservoir and aqueduct system in the mountains that now supplies the city with 90 percent of its water. The Catskills also served as a critical space in which the nation's ideas about nature evolved. Stradling describes the great influence writers and artists had upon urban residents - especially the painters of the Hudson River School, whose ideal landscapes created expectations about how rural America should appear. By the mid-1800s, urban residents had turned the Catskills into an important vacation ground, and by the late 1800s, the Catskills had become one of the premiere resort regions in the nation. In the mid-twentieth century, the older Catskill resort region was in steep decline, but the Jewish "Borscht Belt" in the southern Catskills was thriving. The automobile revitalized mountain tourism and residence, and increased the threat of suburbanization of the historic landscape. Throughout each of these significant incarnations, urban and rural residents worked in a rough collaboration, though not without conflict, to reshape the mountains and American ideas about rural landscapes and nature.

“A nostalgic pastiche of fiction, memoir, photography, art, postcards, menus, etc., celebrating Jewish resort life in the Catskills.”—Providence Journal With selections ranging from literature to song lyrics, this book highlights the Catskills experience over a century, and assesses its continuing impact on American music, comedy, food, culture, and religion. It features selections from such fiction writers as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Herman Wouk, Allegra Goodman and Vivian Gornick; and original contributions from historians, sociologists, and scholars of American and Jewish culture that trace the history of the region, the rise of hotels and bungalow colonies, the wonderful flavors of food and entertainment, and distinctive forms of Jewish religion found in the Mountains. What was life—the work, the play, the food, the romance—like at Catskills Mountains resorts? These very personal recollections capture the special sense of community and freedom that developed among Jewish families leaving the city behind for a summer vacation and enjoying a cultural space of their own. From “Bingo by the Bungalow” by Thane Rosenbaum to “Young Workers in the Hotels” by Phil Brown to “Shoot the Shtrudel to Me Yudel” by Henry Foner, this charming anthology captures an era that has had enormous impact on the Jewish experience and American culture as a whole. “A warm, charming, and valuable work. Much of the writing is simply gorgeous.”—Contemporary Sociology

At one time, according to the Catskill Institute, there were more than a thousand hotels spread across the mountains of Greene, Ulster, Delaware, and Sullivan Counties. The Catskills were an exciting world full of pleasures to be enjoyed, with summer and winter activities characterized by entertainment, food, sports, card playing, and food again. Catskill Hotels, with a collection of some two hundred images, tells the story of this world, which began with America's first resort hotel, the Catskill Mountain House, continued with places such as the world-famous Grossinger's, and can still be found today at Kutsher's Country Club, the Mountain House at Lake Mohonk, and a few other hardy resorts.

Few small towns in America have as colorful a history as that of Woodstock in Ulster County, New York. Set in a countryside of exceptional natural beauty, Woodstock from the first embodied the most enduring characteristics of the Catskills and the Hudson Valley. From the early days of Indians, trappers, farmers, and land barons, to the present day of rock musicians, craftspeople, and refugees from the urban scene, Alf Evers's extraordinary history tells the tale of a very special American place.Long before the Woodstock Festival put the name of Woodstock Village on the map and drew young people from all over the world, Woodstock had an earlier incarnation in which free-thinking ideas held sway. In 1902, inspired by the social philosophy of John Ruskin and William Morris, three men--Hervey White, Ralph Whitehead, and Bolton Coit Brown-- brought their Utopian vision to the Catskills, looking for a place to settle. With a number of requirements in mind, they came upon this small hamlet set in the mountains on a tract of land given to Robert Livingston. They decided unanimously that it was here that "man's mightiest creative energies might be released," and they would feel free to pursue their talents while living in a self-sufficient community. The "earthly paradise" they discovered was, of course, the cheerful, industrious, and well-kept town of Woodstock, and in it they built their historic new society.From the 1920s on, the town was known as a familiar art and cultural center, with two competing communities--Byrdcliffe and Maverick--working to develop a style of life that would integrate arts and crafts with advanced social ideas. Following these early American bohemians came the Yippies and Beat artists of the Fifties and the "Woodstock Generation" of the Sixties. The conflict between the more traditional town, the conservative agricultural community, and the exiles from Greenwich Village, the artisans of the craft colony, waxed and waned with each new generation, each side vigorously defending a way of life and inevitably benefitting from the continuing existence of the other.Woodstock: History of an American Town is the result of fifteen years of research by the distinguished local historian Alf Evers. His previous work, The Catskills, prepared the groundwork for the present and more detailed study of a village which became one of the most famous towns in America. It is, in many ways, the story of the birth, growth, and coming of age of the American way in its evocation of the early pioneer values of individualism and self-sufficiency with those of the community and commonweal. It is a captivating tale.

The Catskills is the favored new retreat for New Yorkers. Only ninety minutes from the city, it's closer than the Hamptons and much more affordable. As a consequence, this once thriving area is having a huge revival as a weekend-vacation place. Catskills Country Style, the first book of its kind on the Catskills and its new style--what might be called urban-country-folk design--showcases this new style in the cottages and cabins of the region. Intriguing historic houses are included as well as a collection of more contemporary homes. Among these is Olana, the 1860s Moorish-style country estate of Frederic Church, the great American landscape artist and leading figure of the Hudson River School of painting. Also included is Pennyroyal Cottage, the 1880s first American woman to have her own design firm. These historic houses are the forerunners of the retreats of many current New York City-based artists, bohemians, designers, and stylists. Current owners of Catskills country style houses are instrumental in shaping trends of today's look. These stylish innovators are creating an aesthetic with a new twist, recycling ideas as well as furniture with an individualistic philosophy that features an eclectic mix of flea market, yard sale, antique and handmade furniture, sometimes peppered with the latest international high-design avant-garde furnishings. This is a book in the tradition of Rizzoli's Charleston Style and Santa Barbara Style, and give us a glimpse into the homes and lifestyles of an influential and fascinating group of people.