New York Classics

Joe Weber and Lew Fields were the dominant musical comedy team at the turn of the last century. They created classic comedic characters and routines and formed their own theatrical troupe, running a theater in New York for many years where they produced successful revues that combined music, dance, and song. So famous were they in their time that they inspired a full-length biography by a major publisher. Weber and Fields follows the duo from their childhood on New York's rough-and-tumble Lower East Side to the creation of their best-known characters, the Dutch knockabout comedians Mike and Myer, and continues with the opening of their own theater in 1896 (with landmark productions through 1904) to their reunion in 1912. This new edition brings an out-of-print classic to a new generation of theater loves. A new introduction by Ken Bloom carries the story through the rest of their careers, showing how Weber and Fields set the stage for comic duos that followed, including “Mutt and Jeff” of comic book fame, “Laurel and Hardy”, “Abbott and Costello”, “Rowan and Martin”, and countless others.

William Henry Harrison Murray ("Adirondack Murray") is known as the father of the outdoor movement in America and the modern vacation. A passionate advocate for the wilderness and, specifically, the Adirondacks in New York State, Murray was the author of numerous books from the 1860s until his death in the early twentieth century. Many of his books and short stories focused on the Adirondacks and the importance of human interaction with nature. For the first time, The Best of the Adirondack Tales gathers his best and most beloved stories, drawn from many sources and selected by Murray's biographer and great-great grandson, Randall S. Beach. Among the favorites included: "The Freemasonry of Outdoor Life," "Jack Shooting in a Foggy Night," "The Story that the Keg Told Me," "Henry Herbert's Thanksgiving," and "How John Norton the Trapper Kept His Christmas."

The Livingstons of Livingston Manor provides a rich history of one of the most important families in the early history of New York State as well as the fledgling nation. Livingston Manor – granted to Robert Livingston the Elder (1654—1728) via royal charter from King George I of Britain in 1716 – embraced 160,000 acres, including nearly all of what is today Columbia County as well as much of Sullivan and Delaware Counties. The primary family estate in Germantown, NY, where the leaders of the clan lived for more than two hundred years starting in 1728, Clermont on the Hudson River, is now a New York State Historic Site. Succeeding generations included "Chancellor" Robert R. Livingston (1746—1813) who served on the famed "Committee of Five" charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence. Other members of the clan also played major roles in New York State as well as nationally. Philip Livingston (1716—1778, known in the family as "Philip the Signer") was a delegate to the Continental Congress from New York and signed the Declaration of Independence; William Livingston (1723—1798) was a Delegate to the Constitutional Convention and a signatory to the US Constitution. Descendants of the Livingstons include the Bush clan, Eleanor Roosevelt (through her mother), and former New Jersey Governor Thomas H. Kean. First privately published in 1910, this long-unavailable history illuminates several generations of the Livingston clan and their impact on the fledgling and growing United States.

Harold Donaldson Eberlein's The Manors and Historic Homes of the Hudson Valley has been considered an essential and elegant resource ever since its first publication by J.B. Lippincott in 1924. Profusely illustrated with drawings, classic prints, and photographs (many of the latter taken by the author himself), the book not only discusses the architecture and beauty of more than thirty-five historically relevant estates and homesteads, but also contextualizes their varied histories amid key social and political disruptions, ranging from the rise of the Dutch through to the American Revolution and the heyday of the patroonships overseen by such families as the Livingstons, the Van Rensselaers, and the Van Cortlandts. Eberlein saw the old manors and historic homes of the Hudson Valley as vital signposts to that history of the region-a history "inseparably bound up with the old houses that stand upon both banks of the river, and [a history which] without them... would lose its dramatic force and become a dull, dead abstraction." This new edition features an introduction by historian Ed Renehan who sets the work in the context of its time, and many new photographs. This book is an indispensable resource for those interested in New York state history and the stories behind some of its best-loved homes.