The early Dutch settlers in Albany called the hills to the west "Hellebergh," or "Clear Mountain." Little did they know of the rugged terrain that lay above the Helderberg Escarpment or of the hardy men and women who would one day tame that wilderness. Faced with thin soil and a harsh climate, the resourceful people of the Helderbergs established four towns: Berne, Knox, Rensselaerville, and Westerlo. The Hilltown farmers declared their independence from the feudal landlord system during the renowned anti-rent wars of the mid-1800s. As the agrarian economy faded, the enterprising Hilltowners used local resources in new ways to earn their livelihood. Landowners capitalized on the natural beauty of the region to attract tourists. Knox's cottage industry of wooden pillbox production brought it fame as the "Pillbox Capital of the World." Rensselaerville's Huyck Preserve created opportunities for the long-term study of biological systems. Helderberg Hilltowns takes the reader back to 1880 through 1950, a time of one-room schoolhouses, church socials, barn raisings, haying with draft horses, bobsledding parties, family reunions, and rocking chairs on the veranda.

The New York Capital Region Walk Book is a comprehensive overview of hiking trails two miles long or greater near Albany, Saratoga Springs, Schenectady, and Troy. You don’t have to drive to the Adirondacks, Catskills, or Berkshires to find scenic overlooks and waterfalls. The book covers popular places like Moreau Lake, Peebles Island, and Thatcher State Parks, as well as lesser known State Forests, Long Path segments, and conservation areas. The book includes: - 72 park and preserve summaries with parking information, difficulty rating, and estimated mileage - Full color trail maps for every hike - 25 Recommended Hikes selected for their interesting natural features and well maintained trails - 6 county overview maps to find the closest trails - Additional pictures in eBook edition

In this magnificent new book, Stephen G. Yanoff offers a fresh and compelling portrait of William Henry Seward, one of the most important Americans of the nineteenth century. Seward, best known for the purchase of Alaska, also served as governor of New York, United States senator, and Lincoln’s secretary of state during the Civil War. Exhaustively researched, drawing on hundreds of sources, TURBULENT TIMES sheds new light on this complex historical figure and the crucial role he played in shaping the fate of our nation. Most enlightening, the William Henry Seward who comes into focus in this superb narrative is a person of great intellect and curiosity, comfortable with ambiguity in his personal and private life.

Music: Is it a hobby? Is it a pastime? Is it an ego boost? Is it an obsession? Only if it is an all-consuming obsession should one consider music as a career. Someone once said ""If anything can discourage you from being a musician, let it "" Seduced by the Muse is the biography of a professional musician highlighting how life's experiences--death, injury, sickness, ridicule and praise--shaped a relatively successful career. Music is life to the musician and every incident, emotion and trial form the core of how that musician interprets his world and this interpretation is clearly apparent in every note played. The observations of classical guitarist Harry George Pellegrin. Contains detailed descriptions of paranormal events as well as experiences with a religious cult.]

From the Revolution to the eve of the Civil War, a new interpretation of populist political movements offers a chronological history, demonstrates the progression of ideas and movements, and identifies commonalities.

Born in the timber colony of New Brunswick, Maine, in 1848, Andrew Benoni Hammond got off to an inauspicious start as a teenage lumberjack. By his death in 1934, Hammond had built an empire of wood that stretched from Puget Sound to Arizona—and in the process had reshaped the American West and the nation’s way of doing business. When Money Grew on Trees follows Hammond from the rough-and-tumble world of mid-nineteenth-century New Brunswick to frontier Montana and the forests of Northern California—from lowly lumberjack to unrivaled timber baron. Although he began his career as a pioneer entrepreneur, Hammond, unlike many of his associates, successfully negotiated the transition to corporate businessman. Against the backdrop of western expansion and nation-building, his life dramatically demonstrates how individuals—more than the impersonal forces of political economy—shaped capitalism in this country, and in doing so, transformed the forests of the West from functioning natural ecosystems into industrial landscapes. In revealing Hammond’s instrumental role in converting the nation’s public domain into private wealth, historian Greg Gordon also shows how the struggle over natural resources gave rise to the two most pervasive forces in modern American life: the federal government and the modern corporation. Combining environmental, labor, and business history with biography, When Money Grew on Trees challenges the conventional view that the development and exploitation of the western United States was dictated from the East Coast. The West, Gordon suggests, was perfectly capable of exploiting itself, and in his book we see how Hammond and other regional entrepreneurs dammed rivers, logged forests, and leveled mountains in just a few decades. Hammond and his like also built cities, towns, and a vast transportation network of steamships and railroads to export natural resources and import manufactured goods. In short, they established much of the modern American state and economy.

What is our definition of "modernismif we imagine it stretching from 1865 to 1965 instead of 1890 to 1945? How does the captivity narrative change when we consider it as a contemporary, not just a "colonial,genre? What does the course of American literature look like set against the backdrop of federal denials of Native sovereignty or housing policies that exacerbated segregation? Filled with challenges to scholars, inspirations for teachers (anchored by an appendix of syllabi), and entry points for students, Timelines of American Literature gathers some of the most exciting new work in the field to showcase the revelatory potential of fresh thinking about how we organize the literary past.

Local, diverse and resilient – the new culture of food Long embraced by corporations who are driven only by the desire for profit, industrial agriculture wastes precious resources and spews millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year, exacerbating climate change and threatening the very earth and water on which we depend. However, this dominant system, from which Americans obtain most of their food, is being slowly supplanted by a new paradigm. The Emergent Agriculture is a collection of fourteen thematic essays on sustainability viewed through the lens of farming. Arguing that industrial food production is incompatible with the realities of nature, science, and ethics, this lyrical narrative makes the case for a locally based food system which is: Stable in the face of economic uncertainty Resilient in the face of environmental variability Grounded in stewardship of the land, on attaching value to food and the craft involved in producing it, and on respecting the dignity of farmers, consumer,s and livestock A revolution in food production is underway. Written from the vantage point of an ecologist who is also a farmer, The Emergent Agriculture is essential reading for anyone interested in food security and the potential for growing local economies. Food for thought about the future of food. Gary Kleppel is a professor of biology at the SUNY Albany, where he focuses on sustainable agriculture, conservation-based grazing, and the ecology of human-dominated landscapes. He and his wife Pam are owners of Longfield Farm, where they produce grass-fed lamb, wool, free range chickens and eggs, and artisanal breads