New York's Finger Lakes region is filled with compelling characters, tragic disasters and fascinating mysteries. Famed daredevil Sam Patch, known as the "Yankee Leaper," thrilled audiences at Niagara Falls but took his last jump into the Genesee River with his pet black bear, plummeting to his death. The first ever Memorial Day was celebrated in Waterloo in 1866 and inspired a nation to adopt the holiday. Seneca Lake claims its fair share of ships, including the Onondaga, which was blown up with dynamite as part of a spectacle to commemorate the sinking of the USS Maine. Author Patti Unvericht reveals the forgotten history of the Finger Lakes region.

From spooky state parks to real-life haunted houses, Ghosts and Hauntings of the Finger Lakes tells the stories behind the most supernatural sites around the shores of New York's famous Finger Lakes. Local paranormal investigator Patti Unvericht takes you on a journey to places such as the Elmira Civil War POW Camp, thought to be inhabited by the restless spirits of casualties of the war, to the State Theatre in Ithaca and even the tourist-friendly Geneva on the Lake, rumored to be haunted by past guests who have expired while staying at the historic hotel.

The Finger Lakes area of New York State is on the cutting edge of the regional food movement. It is home to award-winning restaurants, more than 100 wineries, and farms that produce organically grown vegetables, meats, and dairy products. This cookbook presents 110 amazing recipes that are delicious examples of how an area can produce food near where it is consumed. Many of the recipes are adaptations for family cooking of the finest creations by the area's best chefs. Featuring recipes such as the famous Dinosaur BBQ's sauce and the intriguing Tomato Pie, local flavor abounds in this niche and unique cookbook.

New Yorks Finger Lakes is home to the countrys fastest-growing wine region, and each year millions of tourists spill into the tasting rooms of its wineries. Filled with fun and likable characters, Summer in a Glass brings this burgeoning area to life and captures its exciting diversity--from its immigrant German winemakers to its young, technically trained connoisseurs, from classic Rieslings to up-and-coming Cabernet Francs.

A journey through upstate New York’s Finger Lakes: “One of those rare nature books that mix a perfect combination of personal insight and historical depth” (USA Today). “The Finger Lakes region of western New York is remote from much of the state, and, unlike the Hamptons, the Catskills, and the Adirondacks, was never really settled by summer people. It is nevertheless a beautiful and somewhat mysterious part of America—with long, clean lakes, hidden valleys, and towns bearing Greek names like Hector and Ithaca—and was the birthplace of Mormonism, spiritualism, and the American women’s-suffrage movement. Morrow grew up in Geneva, at the north end of Seneca Lake (where F. Scott Fitzgerald’s doomed Dick Diver ended up). Her short, affecting book is partly a memoir recalling the habits of bees, the return of wolves, and ‘a life spun together through layers of sense impressions,’ and also a meditation on the outdoors that evokes ‘the smell of damp earth, the sweetness of maples and pines . . . as though it were freedom itself.’” —The New Yorker “Her ruminations are loosely based on her memories of two men—one a trapper, the other a beekeeper—whose ability to connect with nature had a profound influence on the way she views the world. In a poetic narrative, she contemplates the natural history of the area and tells of the people who have inhabited it—the Seneca, spiritualists, fur traders, artists, scholars, scientists and nurserymen . . . Morrow’s language is rich and sensuous.” —Publishers Weekly “A riveting compendium of observations from a very curious, very interesting mind.” —The Boston Globe

"The pristine waters of the Finger Lakes inspire tranquility, but the region has not been spared a history of high-profile murders. ...Author R. Marcin explores the gruesome history of homicide in the Finger Lakes."--Back cover.

For more than 150 years, Finger Lakes Wine Country has played a major role in American wine history. At its heart are the four deepest Finger Lakes, part of a group of 11 long, narrow lakes in central New York. There, nestled among Canandaigua, Keuka, Seneca, and Cayuga Lakes, farmers began planting vineyards in the 1830s. In 1860, the Pleasant Valley Wine Company became America's first bonded winery, turning Keuka Lake into a busy shipping hub for fresh grapes and award-winning champagnes. Other wineries soon followed, as did railroads and basket factories. Early 20th century business was good until Prohibition forced wineries to reinvent themselves. In the 1950s and 1960s, innovators like Charles Fournier, Dr. Konstantin Frank, and Walter S. Taylor experimented with hybrid and European vinifera grape varieties. But by the 1970s, local grape growers faced extinction; it would take a grassroots movement and landmark legislation in 1976 to bring about a Finger Lakes wine renaissance.

A guide to the forgotten waterways hidden throughout the five boroughs Beneath the asphalt streets of Manhattan, creeks and streams once flowed freely. The remnants of these once-pristine waterways are all over the Big Apple, hidden in plain sight. Hidden Waters of New York City offers a glimpse at the big city’s forgotten past and ever-changing present, including: Minetta Brook, which ran through today's Greenwich Village Collect Pond in the Financial District, the city's first water source Newtown Creek, separating Brooklyn and Queens Bronx River, still a hotspot for urban canoeing and hiking Filled with eye-opening historical anecdotes and walking tours of all five boroughs, this is a side of New York City you’ve never seen.

The New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 Named one of Vanity Fair's “Best Books of 2022” “Not since Robert Caro’s Years of Lyndon Johnson have I been so riveted by a work of history. Secret City is not gay history. It is American history.” —George Stephanopoulos Washington, D.C., has always been a city of secrets. Few have been more dramatic than the ones revealed in James Kirchick’s Secret City. For decades, the specter of homosexuality haunted Washington. The mere suggestion that a person might be gay destroyed reputations, ended careers, and ruined lives. At the height of the Cold War, fear of homosexuality became intertwined with the growing threat of international communism, leading to a purge of gay men and lesbians from the federal government. In the fevered atmosphere of political Washington, the secret “too loathsome to mention” held enormous, terrifying power. Utilizing thousands of pages of declassified documents, interviews with over one hundred people, and material unearthed from presidential libraries and archives around the country, Secret City is a chronicle of American politics like no other. Beginning with the tragic story of Sumner Welles, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s brilliant diplomatic advisor and the man at the center of “the greatest national scandal since the existence of the United States,” James Kirchick illuminates how homosexuality shaped each successive presidential administration through the end of the twentieth century. Cultural and political anxiety over gay people sparked a decades-long witch hunt, impacting everything from the rivalry between the CIA and the FBI to the ascent of Joseph McCarthy, the struggle for Black civil rights, and the rise of the conservative movement. Among other revelations, Kirchick tells of the World War II–era gay spymaster who pioneered seduction as a tool of American espionage, the devoted aide whom Lyndon Johnson treated as a son yet abandoned once his homosexuality was discovered, and how allegations of a “homosexual ring” controlling Ronald Reagan nearly derailed his 1980 election victory. Magisterial in scope and intimate in detail, Secret City will forever transform our understanding of American history.