Hammondsport is the birth and resting place of Glenn Hammond Curtiss, pioneer of aviation.

The Jewett Car Company was born in the heyday of the electric railway boom in the 1890s. The company gained an excellent reputation for its elegant, well-built wooden cars for street railway companies, interurban lines, and rapid transit service. Cities large and small used Jewett cars, including New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco. Many Jewett cars found their way to Indiana and many of the interurban lines employed the graceful, arch-windowed wood interurban that Jewett was famous for.Automobile competition and the problems of competing with much larger car builders, such as J.G. Brill and the St. Louis Car Company, signaled the beginning of the end. The company was offered the opportunity to produce munitions for World War I, but refused. The reason: the major source of finance for Jewett was a German nationalist banker from Wheeling, West Virginia, who refused to have the company do anything to harm Germany. As a direct result of that action, the Jewett Car Company failed.

Winegrower and journalist Richard Figiel offers the first comprehensive history of New York wine, following its turbulent evolution across the state and emerging as a dynamic player in the world of fine wine. He begins by examining New York's distinctive viticultural roots and the geologic forces that shaped the state's terrain for winegrowing. Starting with early efforts to grow grapes for wine in the Hudson Valley, the story moves west to the Finger Lakes and Lake Erie, circles around the state from Long Island to the North Country, and, finally, to contemporary New York City. Through industry booms and busts, he explores the New York wine industry's continuing process of reinvention by resourceful immigrants, family dynasties, giant corporations, and back-to-the-land dreamers. Moving across centuries of winemaking, Figiel unfolds an extraordinary array of grape species, varieties, and wines.