TheMill on Halfway Brookrecountsthe life and times of families who settled near Halfway Brook in the heavily forested original Town of Lumberland, Sullivan County, New York. It spansthe years from 1800 to 1880, and is the first in the series,Memoirsfrom Eldred, New York, 1800-1950. The principal families in the book (Eldred, Austin, Leavenworth, and Myers) built their homes in what became the hamlet of Eldred, in the Town of Highland. Some of their friends and kinsfolk (the Clarks, Gardners, Hallocks, Hickoks, Sergeants, Van Tuyls, and others)livedin nearby hamlets (Barryville, Pond Eddy, Glen Spey, Narrowsburg, Tusten, or Bethel). The story includes references to the neighboring Pennsylvania towns of Shohola, Lackawaxen, and Mast Hope. TheMill on Halfway Brookfollows the main occupations of the community, including lumbering, tanning, river rafting, working for the D&H Canal Company, and bluestone quarrying.The Civil War chapter mentions many of the men from the Town of Highland who fought in the war, and has major excerpts from 50 letters written by Corporal Sherman S. Leavenworth. Thenarrative weaves vignettes of townsfolk, preachers, Congregational and Methodist Churches, regional and national events with historical information, censuses, an 1875 biography, Church records, and familyland documents. The book has 300 photos and postcards, 17 old and new maps, and 200 letters (1845-1880). TheMillon Halfway Brookis fully indexed, with names of over 900 people, places, and events.

"Farewell to Eldred" concludes the story of the families who settled on either side of Halfway Brook, in the Town of Highland, New York, first read about in "The Mill on Halfway Brook," and continued in "Echo Hill and Mountain Grove." Through the eyes of her Austin and Leavenworth relatives, Louise Smith weaves an account of the daily lives of the descendants of early settlers (Austin, Leavenworth, Eldred, Myers, Bodine, Bradley, Bosch, Clark, Gardner, Hallock, Mills, Boyd, Horton, Parker, Greig, Stege, Sergeant, and Tether) who still lived in one of the the five hamlets: Eldred, Highland Lake, Yulan, Barryville, or Minisink Ford, in the Town of Highland (originally Lumberland). We meet newcomers (Frey, Hensel, Theuer, Pankow, Hainzl, Bertram, Lorphelin, and Mellan), often from New York City, who purchase and run established boarding houses still vital to the area's economy. The Erie Railway, Barryville Glass Factory (for a short while), and (later) Narrowsburg Lumber also offered employment. Some 50 first-person reminiscences tell of stills, baseball teams, radio KDKA, the arrival of electricity, boarding house life, flooding, the Depression, the search for employment, and World War II, in the years 1920 to 1950. Daily life-its joys and sorrows-is told through 1,100 photos, postcards, and documents, 150 letters, four diaries (shared by over 100 contributors) interwoven with World, National, and Local News; and Boarding House Ads. "Farewell to Eldred," the third and final book in the "Memoirs from Eldred, New York, 1800-1950" Series, includes original maps of boarding house locations, an extensive Appendix (with 1920, 1930, and 1940 Censuses), and an Index of some 2,550 people, places, and events.

Echo Hill and Mountain Grove continues the story started in The Mill on Halfway Brook, in the Town of Highland, Sullivan County, New York, from 1880 to 1920. It is an account of the change from lumbering, rafting, and bluestone quarrying, to that of running boarding houses in the picturesque hamlets of Barryville, Minisink Ford, Yulan, Eldred, and Venoge located near the Delaware River. It tells the history of the Town of Highland and its townsfolk (Austin, Leavenworth, Eldred, Myers, Bodine, Bradley, Bosch, Clark, Gardner, Hallock, Mills, Boyd, Horton, Parker, Greig, Stege, Sergeant, and Tether), many of whom own boarding houses. Echo Hill and Mountain Grove is bursting with anecdotes and first person accounts about people, boarding houses, occupations, and events. It includes visits to Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New York City, and France. The narrative also gives details on the Shohola Depot, Shohola Glen, Shohola House, the Pelton Soda Factory, the Roebling Bridge, the Congregational Church Centennial, Zane Grey, two presidential assassinations, and World War I. Echo Hill and Mountain Grove contains over 900 images (photos, postcards, documents), several first person accounts, an 1881 Diary, 446 letters (150 WWI letters, including some from Lone Scout readers in 1918), 9 original maps, and an index of 1500 people, places, and events. It is the second book in the series, Memoirs from Eldred, New York, 1800 1950.

In a riveting, groundbreaking narrative, Russell Shorto tells the story of New Netherland, the Dutch colony which pre-dated the Pilgrims and established ideals of tolerance and individual rights that shaped American history. "Astonishing . . . A book that will permanently alter the way we regard our collective past." --The New York Times When the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the truth about its thriving, polyglot society began to disappear into myths about an island purchased for 24 dollars and a cartoonish peg-legged governor. But the story of the Dutch colony of New Netherland was merely lost, not destroyed: 12,000 pages of its records–recently declared a national treasure–are now being translated. Russell Shorto draws on this remarkable archive in The Island at the Center of the World, which has been hailed by The New York Times as “a book that will permanently alter the way we regard our collective past.” The Dutch colony pre-dated the “original” thirteen colonies, yet it seems strikingly familiar. Its capital was cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic, and its citizens valued free trade, individual rights, and religious freedom. Their champion was a progressive, young lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck, who emerges in these pages as a forgotten American patriot and whose political vision brought him into conflict with Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony. The struggle between these two strong-willed men laid the foundation for New York City and helped shape American culture. The Island at the Center of the World uncovers a lost world and offers a surprising new perspective on our own.

The experience of modernization -- the dizzying social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world -- and modernism in art, literature and architecture are brilliantly integrated in this account.

A 75th anniversary e-book version of the most important and practical self-help book ever written, Alcoholics Anonymous. Here is a special deluxe edition of a book that has changed millions of lives and launched the modern recovery movement: Alcoholics Anonymous. This edition not only reproduces the original 1939 text of Alcoholics Anonymous, but as a special bonus features the complete 1941 Saturday Evening Post article “Alcoholics Anonymous” by journalist Jack Alexander, which, at the time, did as much as the book itself to introduce millions of seekers to AA’s program. Alcoholics Anonymous has touched and transformed myriad lives, and finally appears in a volume that honors its posterity and impact.

Its landscaped ground, chosen by Frederick Law Olmsted and dotted with Tudor mansions, could belong to a New England prep school. There are no fences, no guards, no locked gates. But McLean Hospital is a mental institution-one of the most famous, most elite, and once most luxurious in America. McLean "alumni" include Olmsted himself, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, James Taylor and Ray Charles, as well as (more secretly) other notables from among the rich and famous. In its "golden age," McLean provided as genteel an environment for the treatment of mental illness as one could imagine. But the golden age is over, and a downsized, downscale McLean-despite its affiliation with Harvard University-is struggling to stay afloat. Gracefully Insane, by Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam, is a fascinating and emotional biography of McLean Hospital from its founding in 1817 through today. It is filled with stories about patients and doctors: the Ralph Waldo Emerson prot'g' whose brilliance disappeared along with his madness; Anne Sexton's poetry seminar, and many more. The story of McLean is also the story of the hopes and failures of psychology and psychotherapy; of the evolution of attitudes about mental illness, of approaches to treatment, and of the economic pressures that are making McLean-and other institutions like it-relics of a bygone age. This is a compelling and often oddly poignant reading for fans of books like Plath's The Bell Jar and Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted (both inspired by their author's stays at McLean) and for anyone interested in the history of medicine or psychotherapy, or the social history of New England.

Joe is hooked from the moment he sees Candy. What is it that catches his eye? Is it her hair, her smile, or just the way she's standing? When they chat over coffee there's an instant attraction - but can love ever be this sweet?