Excelsior Editions

Writing Jazz presents interviews with fourteen distinguished jazz scholars: Whitney Balliett, Bob Blumenthal, Stanley Crouch, Linda Dahl, Maxine Gordon, Farah Jasmine Griffin, John Edward Hasse, Willard Jenkins, Hettie Jones, Robin D. G. Kelley, Laurie Pepper, Tom Piazza, Ricky Riccardi, and A. B. Spellman. This literary jam session explores the many challenges and thrills of writing about jazz in various prose forms, including liner notes, memoirs, biographies, and critical guides. The distinguished writers interviewed in this collection obviously share a passion for jazz, and each has produced a hefty amount of literature that illuminates both the music and its practitioners. A well-known writer on jazz, Sascha Feinstein has explored the relationship of jazz and literature throughout his career, making Writing Jazz an essential contribution to the field of jazz-related literature.

Decades into life on a Morgan horse farm in upstate New York, Almanac author Christine Gelineau focused on the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and one another, about the planet we all share, and on how these narratives shape our own identities, our communities, and our attitudes and actions toward the environment. Framed by the seasons, Gelineau speaks to these vital conversations about what it can mean to be human in ways that are lyrical, practical, spiritual, and life-affirming. Almanac combines observations of iced-in alligators and newborn foals with prose poems evoking the natural world, gardening techniques learned from the Haudenosaunee, personal resilience in the face of long COVID and brain surgery, and urban versus rural perspectives on water rights and wind-turbine siting. It charts one person's journey into the inner and external worlds that will resonate with all readers dealing with these life-changing times.

Food and history combine in this exploration of the Dutch influence on American holiday traditions. Includes more than one hundred easy-to-make holiday recipes. Delicious December mixes food and history in a celebration of Dutch and American Christmas traditions. In more than one hundred tried-and-true recipes, award-winning food historian Peter G. Rose draws on traditions that date back to the Middle Ages, as well as her own reminiscences of her native country, and suggests many ways to incorporate these true Dutch treats into American celebrations. The book not only talks about the history and recipes of St. Nicholas Day celebrations, but also about Dutch specialties for Christmas and New Year's. Rose includes recipes for savory cookies and party treats as well as menus and recipes for the parties that might happen between the feast days. Divided into two parts, part one discusses the history of St. Nicholas, how he was brought to America and became Santa, and the other changes that have taken place here as well as in the Netherlands. The second part consists of 111 recipes that are easy to make and easy to love. Delicious December is for anyone interested in food and history, and those of Dutch descent will find many old favorites here, together with new, fresh ideas based on long traditions. Peter G. Rose has published numerous articles and books on Dutch, Dutch American, and Hudson Valley cuisine, including Summer Pleasures, Winter Pleasures: A Hudson Valley Cookbook, also published by SUNY Press; Food, Drink and Celebrations of the Hudson Valley Dutch; The Sensible Cook: Dutch Foodways in the Old and the New World; and Foods of the Hudson: A Seasonal Sampling of the Region's Bounty. She is the coauthor (with Donna R. Barnes) of both Matters of Taste: Food and Drink in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life and Childhood Pleasures: Dutch Children in the Seventeenth Century. In 2002 she was the recipient of the Alice P. Kenney Award for research and writing on the food customs and diet of the Dutch settlers in New Netherland. She lives in South Salem, New York.

Uses the stories of two inventors who took different paths to examine the early industrial revolution in New York and New England. Ingenious Machinists recounts the early development of industrialization in New England and New York through the lives of two prominent innovators whose work advanced the transformation to factory work and corporations, the rise of the middle class, and other momentous changes in nineteenth-century America.

Hopewell Junction: A Railroader's Town tells the remarkable history of the east-west, short-line railroads that ran throughout Dutchess County, New York from 1869 to 1984, centering on the hamlet of Hopewell Junction. It explains how these lines transformed the rural countryside and supercharged the growth of the agricultural and small-mill communities of Dutchess County during the last half of the nineteenth century and throughout most of the twentieth century. The story includes a group of hardscrabble pioneers who struggled to establish their own rail networks. It relates the innovations in design and construction that made these lines possible and the challenges posed to their success by accidents, bad weather, and bad luck. After World War II, new modes of transportation and the growth of suburbia lead to the decline and eventual abandonment of many of these rail lines. However, a group of dedicated local historians and citizens banded together to make sure that this history was preserved, including the restoration of the historic depot at Hopewell Junction, listed as a historic and architectural resource on the New York State Register of Historical Places in 2020 and on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.

The Eight tells the story of Lemmon v. New York-or, as it's more popularly known, the Lemmon Slave Case. All but forgotten today, it was one of the most momentous civil rights cases in American history. There had been cases in which the enslaved had won their freedom after having resided in free states, but the Lemmon case was unique, posing the question of whether an enslaved person can win freedom by merely setting foot on New York soil-when brought there in the keep of an "owner." The case concerned the fates of eight enslaved people from Virginia, brought through New York in 1852 by their owners, Juliet and Jonathan Lemmon. The Eight were in court seeking, legally, to become people-to change their status under law from objects into human beings. The Eight encountered Louis Napoleon, the son of a slave, an abolitionist activist, and a "conductor" of the Underground Railroad, who took enormous risks to help others. He was part of an anti-slavery movement in which African-Americans played an integral role in the fight for freedom. The case was part of the broader judicial landscape at the time: If a law was morally repugnant but enshrined in the Constitution, what was the duty of the judge? Should there be, as some people advocated, a "higher law" that transcends the written law? These questions were at the heart of the Lemmon case. They were difficult and important ones in the 1850s-and, more than a century and a half later, we must still grapple with them today.

Theodore Roosevelt's New York, published in 1891, was one of forty titles he authored during his lifetime. Roosevelt sets out, as he declares in his preface, "to trace the causes which gradually changed a little Dutch trading-hamlet into a huge American city." New York admirably accomplishes this objective. Proceeding chronologically, Roosevelt maintains control of his concise narrative throughout, recounting events clearly while continually providing well-considered and enlightening analysis. In suitable places-without disrupting the narrative-Roosevelt offers the reader his perspectives on a variety of broader topics, including his admiration for leaders who combine boldness with wisdom and moderation and his perceptive outlook on the frequent lack of connection between wealth accumulation and good character and meaningful living. While Roosevelt's own time as an exemplary top-level "man in the arena" was still years away, in this revealing and engaging book about his native city by a historian then in his early thirties, there are glimpses of the mindset and temperament of the world-historical leader who was to preside over the government of the United States from 1901 to 1909-yet another reason why Roosevelt's classic book New York remains well worth reading.

“Harold Taylor and Sarah Lawrence College” is the posthumous memoir of Harold Taylor (1914—1993) told through thoughtful and entertaining accounts of his many interactions with leading cultural and political figures of his time. Taylor distinguished himself as a spokesperson for progressive education and educational experimentation during the 1950s and would emerge in the 1960s as one of the country's leading public intellectuals and campus speakers, addressing issues related to student activism, peace education, and international studies. Written with insight and wit and carefully edited and reconstructed, “Harold Taylor and Sarah Lawrence College” will inspire college students, professors, and administrators to reconsider the most fundamental purposes of higher education and social and educational change.

The Motorcycle Industry in New York State is the first book to focus on the over 120-year history of motorcycle construction in the Empire State. Beginning with experimental motorized bicycles in the 1890s, New York's motorcycle industry experienced its golden years for innovation and production in the 1900s and 1910s. From that promising start, the state's motorcycle industry declined, when the public adopted automobiles for everyday transportation. However, since the late twentieth century, the rise of custom, one-of-a-kind motorcycles has brought a new focus toward the industry. Also, a new effort to reach mass production comes in the form of e-motorcycles and e-bicycles that are being designed in New York. The first edition, published in 2001, was the product of nine years of research by New York State Museum (NYSM) curator Geoffrey N. Stein. This second edition has been revised and updated by NYSM Senior Historian and Curator Brad L. Utter. For anyone who loves motorcycles or for those enthusiasts/collectors that wish to know more about these unique makers and the bikes that they created, The Motorcycle Industry in New York State is the ideal companion.

Tommy, Trauma, and Postwar Youth Culture traces the development of one of rock music's central masterpieces and its relation to the social-cultural history of the era. Composer and guitarist Pete Townshend was the creative force behind the Who, one of Britain's greatest rock bands. Townshend grew up in an England decimated by the loss of life and hope that was the initial legacy of World War II. The product of a troubled childhood, Townshend faced ongoing struggles with sexual and personal trauma that colored his later work as a performer. An ambitious composer who wanted to create both pop hits and lasting personal works, Townshend achieved his greatest success with the Who through their 1969 rock opera, Tommy. Townshend gave many accounts of the work's evolution and its significance to him and he participated in and encouraged its continued legacy. MacLeod recounts his own interactions with Townshend and Tommy to draw out the work's impact, its critical reception, its place both in postwar history and the rock era, and its continuing relevance. This book will appeal to all interested in the history of rock, the creative process, and the long shadow of the 1960s.

Perfect Pitch tells the compelling story of Nicolas Slonimsky. A boy prodigy as a pianist, Slonimsky fled pre-Communist Russia, reaching Paris at the height of another revolution-one in music and the arts. His early association with conductor Serge Koussevitzky brought him into contact with many of the era's greatest talents, including Igor Stravinsky and Serge Prokofiev. Emigrating to Boston in 1925, he embarked on a writing career, authoring key works still in print decades after their first publication, including Music Since 1900, a chronological history; Lexicon of Musical Invective, which proved definitively that new works are rarely understood in their time; and Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, which inspired generations of composers and performers, including jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. Known for his sharp wit, Slonimsky appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and was befriended by Frank Zappa. Perfect Pitch captures a life that was rich with discovery and invention and spanned a century of revolutions and explorations. This new edition is enhanced with several previously unpublished photographs, an extensive oral history, and several original essays, some reprinted for the first time.

In 1995, Lauren Lieberman was an assistant professor with a dream: to form an educational sports camp for children who are visually impaired. Beginning with a small grant, Lieberman built a local program that grew into a worldwide movement. The Camp Abilities model has now been replicated all over the United States and in ten other countries. The Camp Abilities Story relates Lieberman's journey-from her earliest experiences in sports, to her "aha moment" during college, to her Fulbright scholarship and starting Camp Abilities programs worldwide. With an inspirational yet honest view of how a dream to make a difference in the world was tempered by the reality of the hard work necessary to change lives, the lessons herein are applicable to anyone with a dream to make the world a better place.

Bush League, Big City tells the interwoven stories of two low-level minor league baseball teams brought to New York City in the late 1990s. It also illuminates the history of the New York-Penn League, America's oldest and longest-running minor league, from its inception in 1939 until its abrupt contraction by Major League Baseball in 2020. With an eye for details and firsthand accounts by many of the baseball people involved, Michael Sokolow tells the story of two franchises that went in very different directions, as the Cyclones achieved astronomical success while Staten Island's 'Baby Bombers' sank under the weight of debt and recriminations. Along the way, the book visits small communities in upstate New York, New England, and Canada, introduces the multimillionaires who came to dominate small-time baseball ownership, and tells the tale of two of the most expensive minor-league baseball stadiums ever built. It also sheds light on the complex, behind-the-scenes influence of New York City politics, as the indomitable will of Mayor Rudy Giuliani reshaped the geography of both the city and professional baseball. Bush League, Big City is a compelling examination of both the power and limits of nostalgia in a sport that is increasingly focused on the bottom line.

When singer Frank Sinatra famously crooned about New York, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere," he could have been talking about New York's great inventors whose works have travelled across the globe. New York has been a hotbed of innovation since its founding. Made in New York tells the stories behind the innovators and their inventions. Like many New Yorkers, some came from elsewhere to find success in their new home. Some became famous; others struggled for recognition. All were visionaries and risk-takers who were willing to put their lives on the line if necessary. From the first brassiere to the life-saving pacemaker, and from a solar lantern to the first mass-produced cameras, New York has been the seedbed of life-changing technologies that have altered how we live. Made in New York celebrates these compelling stories.

Downstate New York Rock Walks is both a hiking guidebook and a history book, calling attention to some of downstate New York's most spectacular and historic rocks: balanced rocks, perched rocks, rock shelters, talus caves, glacial potholes, split rocks, rock profiles, historic rocks, and massive, larger-than-life boulders. Many large glacial erratics have a history going back thousands of years to when they were moved to their present location by advancing glaciers. Many served as points of navigational reference at a time when the landscape was featureless and heavily forested, and still others were ceremonial sites for Native Americans. Rock shelters and talus caves have also been used for thousands of years by Native Americans and Europeans seeking refuge from the elements. It is important that these amazing natural wonders of stone be remembered and recorded before they are lost to collective memory or destroyed by the encroachment of civilization. Providing precise GPS location information along with length and degree of difficulty for each hike, Downstate New York Rock Walks will appeal to casual hikers, serious rock explorers, historians, geologists, and anyone wishing to explore some of nature's greatest wonders within the reach of the lower Hudson River valley.

They all tried, but few singers and musicians from the 1950s became stars. Yet many of them had stories to tell that were far more interesting than the ones you already know. Author Hank Davis was bitten by the music bug as a teenager. By the time he entered college in 1959, he was no stranger to New York's recording studios and had a few 45s of his own on the market. Spanning a 45 year career in music journalism, Davis has spent time backstage, in motel rooms, and on tour buses to uncover stories that rarely made the official annals of pop music history. Based on hundreds of hours of interviews and new research, Ducktails, Drive-Ins, and Broken Hearts offers a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the winners and losers during rock 'n' roll's formative era. How did a decade as uptight and puritanical as the '50s produce so much cringe-worthy, politically incorrect music? What was it like to see a pale cover version of your latest record climb the charts while yours sat unplayed by mainstream radio stations? How did precious Elvis tapes end up in a Memphis landfill? And who was that thirteen-year-old girl who made a five-dollar vanity record at Sun just two years after Elvis had-and ended up singing backup on "Suspicious Minds" and "In the Ghetto?" This book is a must-read for all fans of '50s music. In the words of Jerry Phillips, son of Sun Records founder, Sam Phillips, "Hank Davis is one of the few guys who really gets it."

As Frank Costello looks back over his life as head of the most powerful crime family in America, he doesn't focus on the triumphs of his bootlegging empire, his nationwide gambling network, or his de facto control of Tammany Hall. Instead, Costello-the politically connected "Prime Minister of the Underworld"-remembers the lies he's told, the mistakes he's made, and his fateful decision to testify before the televised Kefauver hearings investigating organized crime in America. The novel reaches its climax as Costello-in a naïve attempt to preserve the patina of respectability he's spent his life creating-tries to defend himself before senators out to expose the full extent of the Mafia's reach. The result is a humiliating, very public lesson about who holds the real power in America. This is an historically accurate work of fiction told in Costello's imagined, bitter, street-wise voice.

Rocker Rod Stewart, Jackson says, had it wrong when he titled his breakthrough album Every Picture Tells a Story. Pictures don't tell stories-but many of them call to mind stories or have stories about their making. Throughout his sixty-year career as folklorist, ethnographer, criminologist, filmmaker, and journalist, Bruce Jackson has taken photographs of family, friends, people he worked with, people he studied, and people he encountered. Ways of the Hand includes 112 of his favorite portraits, portraits in which the hands are often as expressive as the faces. In six sections, Jackson shares photographs of notable musicians, political figures, activists, actors, artists, and writers. These portraits are accompanied by stories of how and where they were taken and the stories they invoke or reflect. The result is a stunning visual and narrative memoir of a lifetime of encounters.

When Lou Gehrig stepped to the plate on Independence Day 1939, he was not there to deliver a home run. For the first time in seventeen years, Gehrig was there to deliver his heart. In recent weeks he had lost his job as the Yankees' first baseman as well as the good health that had made him the team's respected Iron Horse and was facing a death sentence. Nervous and fidgety as he walked through a forest of microphones, Gehrig collected himself and delivered thirteen words that will live forever: "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." Bronx Epitaph, the first comprehensive look at the slugger's epic speech, is the story of Lou Gehrig's finest hour, a homily of so little consequence when first delivered that few newspapers published more than a sentence or two the following day. Over time, however, Gehrig's "Luckiest Man" speech has settled into a sphere so timeless and essential that it seems he delivered it only yesterday. It was, to be sure, his Bronx Epitaph.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the Ashcan School of Art blazed onto the art scene, introducing a revolutionary vision of New York City. In contrast to the elite artists who painted the upper class bedecked in finery, in front of magnificent structures, or the progressive reformers who photographed the city as a slum, hopeless and full of despair, the Ashcan School held the unique belief that the industrial working-class city was a fit subject for great art. In Beauty in the City, Robert A. Slayton illustrates how these artists portrayed the working classes with respect and gloried in the drama of the subways and excavation sites, the office towers, and immigrant housing. Their art captured the emerging metropolis in all its facets, with its potent machinery and its class, ethnic, and gender issues. By exposing the realities of this new, modern America through their art-expressed in what they chose to draw, not in how they drew it-they created one of the great American art forms.

An account of an ordinary young woman coming of age in the "Burned-Over District" of Western New York during the Second Great Awakening. In 1851, fourteen-year-old orphan Ann McMath was sent to live with her uncle and his family in their parsonage in Horseheads, New York. Lonely and full of self-doubt, anxious to establish female friendships in a new place, and questing for intellectual and moral perfection, she began keeping journal when she was seventeen and wrote in it regularly for the next five years, until she was married. A fascinating example of "biography from below," McMath's journal offers a rare glimpse of of life in the 1850s as it was lived by ordinary women, told in the authentic voice of a young woman coming of age in the Burned-Over District of Western New York. In addition to the journal itself, the book includes an introduction by editor C. Stewart Doty, as well as a geneaology, notes on the text, and a section entitled "People in the Life of Ann McMath," which gives brief biographies of everyone mentioned in the journal.

Expert advice on how any citizen can fight government fraud, waste, abuse, and corruption. In The Art of the Watchdog, Daniel L. Feldman and David R. Eichenthal show how to fight back. Based on their own work in federal, state, and local government over the last forty years, they will arm you with the tools and techniques needed to put the spotlight on those who cheat and steal from the public or who squander valuable taxpayer dollars through waste and inefficiency. At the same time, Feldman and Eichenthal outline what they see as the good and the bad of current oversight efforts based on case studies from across the nation. Ultimately, their goal is to ensure that the "art of the watchdog" does not become a lost one and to improve the quality and integrity of government and strengthen democracy.

How a small family company in the Finger Lakes became one of the most important wine producers in the United States, only to be taken down by corporate greed and mismanagement. In 1880, Walter Stephen Taylor, a cooper's son, started a commercial grape juice company in New York's Finger Lakes region. Two years later, wine production was added, and by the 1920s, the Taylor Wine Company was firmly established. Walter Taylor's three sons carefully guided the company through Prohibition and beyond, making it the most important winery in the Northeast and profoundly affecting the people and community of Hammondsport, where the company was headquartered. In the 1960s, the Taylor family took the company public. Ranked sixth in domestic wine production and ripe for corporate takeover, the company was sold to Coca-Cola in 1977. Three more changes of corporate ownership followed until, in 1995, this once-dynamic and important wine producer was obliterated, tearing apart the local economy and changing a way of life that had lasted for nearly a century. Drawing on archival research as well as interviews with many of the principal players, Thomas Pellechia skillfully traces the economic dynamism of the Finger Lakes wine region, the passion and ingenuity of the Taylor family, and the shortsighted corporate takeover scenario that took down a once-proud American family company. In addition to providing important lessons for business innovators, Over a Barrel>/i> is a cautionary tale for a wine region that is repeating its formative history.

Recounts the true story of an entrepreneurial woman who succeeded in a male-dominated industry in the twentieth century. What would you do with your last sixty dollars? If you were Patricia Murphy you'd turn it into a fortune by buying a rundown Brooklyn diner. On the cusp of the Great Depression, the diner became an overnight sensation, the first of nine popular Patricia Murphy's Candlelight Restaurants that opened over the course of four decades in New York and Florida. Popovers and Candlelight recounts how Murphy bucked Mad Men—era sexism in a male-dominated field and created remarkable dining experiences with solid American fare, a talented staff, and eye-popping décor. Dripping in diamonds, she transcended ethnic prejudices to become a socialite and built a brand that sold fragrance as well as food. Mutinous siblings, a desperate manager, and a typhoid outbreak brought it all to an operatic end, but Marcia Biederman restores Murphy and her contributions to their proper place in women's and culinary history. This book will delight readers with its rags-to-riches story and fascinating view of class, gender, ethnicity, and food culture during much of the twentieth century. Marcia Biederman teaches English as a Second Language at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York, and has been a frequent contributor to the New York Times.

Veteran labor journalist Richard Steier explores the tensions between New York City's public employee unions, their critics, and city and state politicians. Since 1980 Richard Steier has had a unique vantage point to observe the gains, losses, and struggles of municipal labor unions in New York City. He has covered those unions and city government as a reporter and labor columnist for the New York Post and, since 1998, as editor and featured columnist of the Chief-Leader, a century-old independent newspaper that covers city and state government in greater detail than today's mainstream news organizations. Drawing from his column with the Chief-Leader, "Razzle Dazzle," Enough Blame to Go Around describes in vivid terms how the changed economy has drastically altered the city's labor landscape, and why it has been difficult for municipal unions to adapt. There can be no doubt, he writes, that public employee unions have contributed to the problems that confront them today, including corruption and failed leadership. But at the same time and for all their flaws, he believes unions represent the best chance for ordinary people to receive fair economic treatment. Veteran labor journalist Richard Steier is editor and columnist for the Chief-Leader and the coauthor (with Len Ragozin and Len Friedman) of The Odds Must Be Crazy: Beating the Races with the Man Who Revolutionized Handicapping and Created The Sheets. He lives in Bellerose, New York.

Treasury of letters written by African American women to Michelle Obama. "You are me. When I look at you, I see me. I see the young African American woman who, through good family values, strong roots, hard work, and perseverance, has come into her own ... Though your journey may not be easy in the coming days, weeks, months, or years, think of us to ease your burden and pain. Think of those who you inspire. Think of those who you have given hope to. Think of those whom you have filled with pride. Think of your sister ... Think of your favorite cousin. Think of your mother. Think of me. We are the same." "To you Michelle I take off my African woman hat from Cameroon, my motherland. You have given us African women the courage and the hope to move on and up. You keep your head high and hold your husband close to your heart. Keep praying my sister, you are the best. You have lived the dream of every ebony woman. Ride on sister, we are with you." "You are the song, you are the proverb, and you are the symbol of human dignity." "When you and your family go to the spot under the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, where Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, you will take with you our history of dreams deferred; however, you will also take with you our prayers and hopes for an America that is ready to build and dream anew." "Thank you for your courage to say yes, to step from behind your private veil into the public eye, to step forward with the grace of boldness, to carry a message that 'Hope is a wise decision' and also teaching the importance of learning to prepare oneself because with hope, things can change. I sat next to my daughter, praying that all women would tell this message to themselves, their daughters and sisters, nieces and neighbors, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, friends and sisterfriends, strangers and mates. But most of all, I thank you from the bottom of my heart to remind me to keep being hopeful so I can keep flapping my wings and not be afraid to fly." "What I really want to say is thank you for existing and remaining visually the kind of woman I've always wanted to be. I'd given up hope. I'd given up hope that Black men could affectionately and passionately adore a woman publicly the way that your old man adores you. I'd given up hope that I'd get to keep my booty and succeed in the commercial production world of NYC. I honestly didn't believe I'd be able to be intelligent and sexy at the same time and be taken seriously ... You two have revolutionized what I believe to be possible in Black life. Black, young, sexy, beautiful, brilliant, and powerful. How marvelous." "We are one woman, blessed to be born Black in America ... I rejoice for every little girl, every teenager, young adult and yes even every senior, who like me, can look at you and see herself. I rejoice for the mothers who loved their children as much as you and I do, yet could not protect them." "Thank you for making me reconsider bringing my Black babies into this world." Passionate, shattering, and tender, this astonishing book gathers together letters to Michelle Obama, written by African American and African women. Shortly after the election, the Uncrowned Queens Institute in Buffalo, New York, sent out a call across the country for African American women to share their hopes, fears, and advice with the new First Lady. Hundreds of letters and poems poured in, signaling both an unprecedented moment in our nation's history and a remarkable opportunity for African American women to look at the White House and see and speak to one of their own there. These very personal letters and poems, written by African American women from all ages and walks of life, celebrate a newfound hope for our world and children, speak to a strong sisterhood with the First Lady, confess often very private fears and dreams, and acknowledge and remember the generation.

A visionary journey into the crucible in which America was born, a tale of love and war and of a master shaman who folds time to seek the key to the survival of his people. A vivid narrative of the clash of cultures on the colonial New York frontier, The Interpreter tells the story of a master shaman and his twin apprentices-the Mohawk dreamer called Island Woman and the young immigrant Conrad Weiser-who become critical players in their two peoples' struggle for survival. Island Woman will grow to become mother of the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk nation and a revered atetshents (dream healer). Conrad, transported to North America with the Palatine German refugees from the wars in Europe, helps lead his people's rebellion against the abuses of colonial governors and magnates. Sent to live among the Mohawk, he learns their language and their dreamways, is able to build bridges between communities, and later rises to fame in Pennsylvania as an indispensable Indian interpreter. In the Mohawk language, the word for interpreter, sakowennakarahtats, speaks of a person who can transplant something from one soil to grow in another. The Interpreter is such a book. Through its pages, we are able to find ourselves in another time, and in other worlds. We accompany the Four Indian Kings on their 1710 visit to London to see the Queen; they were not kings in their own matriarchal society, but they included Hendrick, the redoubtable warrior who later instructed Ben Franklin that he must urge the colonists to unite in a confederacy on the Iroquois model. We travel with Vanishing Smoke, the Bear dreamer, on his journey into the afterlife. And we learn, with Island Woman and Conrad, how we can travel across time as well as space in shamanic lucid dreaming, and guide souls to where they belong. In his new preface, Robert Moss describes how his Cycle of the Iroquois-Fire Along the Sky, The Firekeeper, and The Interpreter-began with dreams and visions in which an ancient Iroquois arendiwanen (woman of power) insisted on teaching him in her own language, until he was obliged to learn it.

Explores the history and present-day reality of grain elevators on the Great Lakes. Grain Dust Dreams tells the story of terminal grain elevators-concrete colossi that stand in the middle of a deep river of grain that they lift, sort, and send on. From their invention in Buffalo, New York, through their present-day operation in Thunder Bay, Ontario, David W. Tarbet examines the difficulties and dangers of working in a grain elevator-showing how they operate and describing the effects that the grain trade has on the lives of individuals and cities. As Tarbet shows, the impact of these impressive concrete structures even extends beyond their working lives. Buildings that were created for a commercial purpose had a surprising and unintended cultural consequence. European modernist architects were taken by the size and elegance of American concrete elevators and used them as models for a revolution in architecture. When the St. Lawrence Seaway made it possible for large ships to bypass Buffalo, many Buffalo elevators were abandoned. Tarbet describes how these empty elevators are now being transformed into centers for artistic and athletic performance, and into a hub for technical innovation. Buffalo has found a way to incorporate its unused elevators into the life of the city long after the grain dust from them has ceased to fly. David W. Tarbet is a retired attorney who lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

An eloquent personal reflection on the fascination of family history and the desire to both discover and escape origins. In Forgetting Fathers, David Marshall weaves together the stories of his grandfather and great-grandfather with his own quest to solve the mystery of his family's past. Beginning as a search for his lost family name, Marshall attempts to understand the origins of his grandfather, who spent part of his childhood in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum of the City of New York. He also reconstructs the life and death of his great-grandfather, a Russian immigrant tailor who died at age thirty-six in a private sanitarium dedicated to the treatment of mental and nervous diseases. The narrative becomes a detective story that reflects on our ambivalence about origins, the relation between history and mourning, and the compulsion to search for life stories. Forgetting Fathers combines historical accounts based on records, reports, and public documents with autobiographical reflections and speculations. Included throughout are photographs, newspaper clippings, and facsimiles of original documents that provide a sense of both the texture of the times and the fabric of archival and genealogical research.

A comprehensive guidebook for dog owners that includes seventy-seven great hikes from the Adirondacks through the Catskills. Much more than a guidebook showing readers great places to hike with their canine companions in upstate New York, Doghiker is a dog owner's operating manual and tool kit. A lifelong dog owner, Alan Via makes a strong case for responsible ownership and offers guidance on selecting a canine hiking companion, training, safety, appropriate gear, canine first aid, and keeping your dog fit and healthy. Covering the Adirondacks through the Catskills, and areas in between, this unique guidebook includes seventy-seven beautiful hikes that are great for dogs. Each hike has a custom topographic map showing parking areas, trails, viewpoints, water sources, and other points of interest. Included are a peak-finder map and chart showing every hike and a summary of rating categories, as well as information on total mileage, elevation gain, ratings for views, difficulty level, dog safety and hazards, hiker traffic, trail conditions, and whether a leash is suggested or required. Detailed driving directions for each outing, including GPS coordinates for key intersections and trailheads, are also provided. By presenting all of this information, drawn from Via's forty-plus years of hike leadership, readers can easily evaluate which hike fits their needs and get outside and explore the great outdoors with their four-legged friends. Alan Via is an author and outdoor enthusiast who lives in New York's Capital Region. An experienced hiker, he has owned, trained, and hiked with dogs since childhood. He is the author of The Catskill 67: A Hiker's Guide to the Catskill 100 Highest Peaks under 3500′.

More encounters with sometimes rich, sometimes famous, but always quirky residents of the Hamptons, by the editor and publishers of Dan's Papers. Yes, Dan Rattiner is still in the Hamptons, and after fifty-plus years on the eastern end of Long Island, most of them as publisher of the region's free weekly newspaper, Dan's Papers, he still has a lot of stories to tell. Here, offered in his signature dry, observant, and self-deprecating wit, are Rattiner's further encounters with the billionaires and celebrities, the farmers and fishermen, the eccentric artists and ordinary folks, who together make the Hamptons one of the most fashionable, exclusive, and entertaining communities in the United States. As Tom Wolfe once noted, "If a guy says it happened in the Hamptons, and Dan Rattiner doesn't know about it, it didn't." The people he writes about are presented in chronological order from 1959 to today, just as Rattiner lived it and has remembered it. Still in the Hamptons will help you understand what the Hamptons used to be and what it has become, and will provide an entertaining read along the way.

A folksy look at farm life in rugged Putnam Valley just as it was being transformed by industrialization and mechanization. Life on a Rocky Farm couples Lucas C. Barger's (1866—1939) eye for detail with a folksy, anecdotal style to give us a remarkable and memorable depiction of both the traditional ways of farm life, and the challenges the farmers faced as the times changed. Previously unpublished, Barger's first-hand account of farm life near New York City begins in the late nineteenth century. Little had changed for well over a century in the hilly and rugged terrain of Putnam Valley, where Lucas grew up as a member of the sixth generation of Barger farmers. But as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, industrialization and mechanization decreased the demand for farm labor and farmers had to come up with alternate ways to make money. For a long time, supplemental income came from varied means such as beekeeping and using the local forest resources to provide railroad ties, ship timber, and barrel hoops. Wealthy summer boarders from New York City also provided some extra income, but despite the short distance, transportation remained arduous, and population growth did not occur until high improvements were made in the 1930s. Peter A. Rogerson's transcription reflects the flavor of Barger's original writing, as Barger himself said when he was first attempting to publish back in 1939, "I read something along back, that a publisher wrote, and he said, 'Do not change your style.' He claimed the style was sometimes the best part. And I guess that is what you are getting at. If you can call my scribbling a style, and you think it 'odd' use it any way you like. For my main intentions were to write an odd book as I told you once before."

More stories of the outsized and the ordinary from the editor and publisher of Dan's Papers. This is Dan Rattiner's fourth collection of essays about the fishermen, farmers, celebrities, billionaires, and artists who live, work, and play in the Hamptons. As the founder and publisher of Dan's Papers, a weekly community newspaper, Rattiner knows the Hamptons backwards and forwards, and stories of his encounters on the South Fork of Long Island give readers a greater understanding of how this community has changed over the years and the major figures who have shepherded these changes along. In addition to well-known faces such as Dr. Oz and billionaires like Ira Rennert and his wife-who built the second-largest private home in America-you'll also read about motel owners, art gallery owners, an ad salesman for Dan's Papers, and a philanthropist who at one time had nearly a dozen historical buildings on her $100 million property in East Hampton. The book also provides some of the hoaxes and tall tales that the author has fabricated over the years to entertain the readers of Dan's Papers, including the moving radar tower at Montauk, the great Ecuadorian eel attack, and the Hamptons subway.

A lively and entertaining memoir of a life in public service to the city and state of New York. When he was twenty-five, Sam Aldrich danced with Queen Elizabeth II in London. By the time he was thirty-seven, he was marching with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. Recounting the journey between and beyond those two points, and musing over the irony of the contrast they represent, is the subject of this remarkable and entertaining memoir. After a cosseted childhood in New York's silk stocking district, including weekends on Long Island's Gold Coast and summers in Dark Harbor, Maine, Aldrich was expected to follow in his father's footsteps and pursue a career in high finance. "Dancing with the queen of England was just a small function of the privileged life and family into which I was born," he writes, "and events such as this would be a regular part of my upper-class, well-traveled social life." Instead, and to his parents' chagrin, he chose decades of hard work in the public sector, serving as deputy police commissioner in New York City, director of the New York State Division for Youth, executive assistant to Governor Nelson Rockefeller, president of the Brooklyn Center of Long Island University, and commissioner of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, before entering teaching full-time at midlife. Illustrated with photographs from Aldrich's personal collection, this lively memoir offers personal insights into New York State politics and history. Whether working to develop an effective system for rehabilitating juvenile offenders in New York City, trying to find an environmentally sound means for development in the Hudson River Valley, or teaching public policy at SUNY's Empire State College, Aldrich shows what it means to follow one's passions and interests, and to take the gifts one has been given and use them to try to make this world a better place.

Draws on the authors own experiences as a watershed planner, teacher, and activist to tell the story of the Great Lakes region's experiment in restoring a complicated natural system of flowing water.

Second volume of papers from a well respected annual seminar that showcase the latest research on Dutch colonial history in New York State. New Netherland's distinctive regional history as well as the colony's many relationships with Europe and the seventeenth-century Atlantic world are featured in the second collection of papers from the widely praised annual Rensselaerwijck Seminar. Leading scholars from both sides of the Atlantic critique and offer the latest research on a dynamic range of topics: the age of exploration, domestic life in New Netherland, the history and significance of the West India Company, the complex era of Jacob Leisler, the southern frontier lands of the colony, relations with New England, Dutch foodways in the Hudson Valley and their use of beer, the endurance of the Dutch legacy into 19th century New York, and contemporary genealogical research on colonial Dutch ancestors. Cogent and informative, these papers are an indispensable source for better understanding the lives and legacies of the long ago New Netherland colony. Elisabeth Paling Funk was born in Woerden, the Netherlands. She is an independent scholar, freelance editor and translator, and former adjunct assistant professor at Manhattanville College. Her articles on early American and Dutch-American literature have been published in the United States and the Netherlands. She is preparing her dissertation, "Washington Irving and His Dutch-American Heritage as Seen in A History of New York, The Sketch-Book, Bracebridge Hall, and Tales of a Traveller," for publication as a book. Martha Dickinson Shattuck is the editor and researcher with the New Netherland Research Center and the editor of Explorers, Fortunes, and Love Letters: A Window on New Netherland. She has published various articles on New Netherland, was the New Netherland and Colonial editor for The Encyclopedia of New York State, and is currently editing and annotating the New Netherland papers from the Bontemantel Collection in the New York Public Library.

A memoir about loss, restoration, and finding home on a lake in western New York. After a year of devastating personal and financial loss, Beth Peyton and her husband, Jeff, moved to the hamlet of Maple Springs, New York, on Chautauqua Lake to pick up the pieces of their lives, certain to be in a place that they loved and certain of nothing else. As they worked to restore a neglected old house, the community, the beauty of the lake, and the old-fashioned sensibility of the place comforted them. While Peyton's story traces the couple's progress toward recovery, it also includes tales of the silly, colorful, and warm characters who became their neighbors and friends. Whether it's the mystery of Emil and Betty's lost blue plate, dead bodies in the water, or memories of karaoke at the Village Casino, Clear Skies, Deep Water is a testament to the healing power of rituals, friendships, the beauty of the natural world, and the possibility of grace. Filled with nostalgia about an America that has slipped, or is slipping away, it will resonate with anyone who has searched for meaning and home.

A collection of plays by American Indian playwright William S. Yellow Robe Jr. Restless Spirits is a collection of previously unpublished plays by contemporary Assiniboine playwright William S. Yellow Robe Jr. Including one full-length and seven one-act plays, this book reflects one of the author's most creative and productive periods in his career. Selected by Yellow Robe, in consultation with editor Jace Weaver, the plays reveal the range of Yellow Robe's writing from tragedies to farce. They are unified by their supernatural themes or significant elements, including Wood Bones, his most recent and highly successful full-length play. Weaver's introduction says that the works in this collection clearly demonstrate that Yellow Robe is not just a great American Indian playwright, but a great American playwright in the company of David Mamet, Lynn Nottage, and Wallace Shawn. Renowned American Indian playwright Hanay L. Geiogamah provides a foreword and calls this volume "a real gift to the American Indian theater-and to theater, more generally."

Reveals the development of Maurice Kenny's growing artistic consciousness, while attesting to both the beauty and brutality of the world in which he lived. Maurice Kenny's career as a writer, teacher, publisher, and storyteller spanned more than six decades, during which he published over thirty books and became one of the most prominent voices in American poetry. From the early 1970s onward, he was instrumental in the resurgence of Native American literature through both his celebrated volumes of poetry, such as I Am the Sun and the award-winning The Mama Poems, and his work as an editor and publisher. Angry Rain, his bittersweet memoir, reveals this rich literary life by recounting its tumultuous "first half...plus a bit," a time during which he moved through a series of worlds that all left their marks on him. Kenny begins with his early years spent among his family in the small northern New York city of Watertown and continues through an adolescence marked by both significant awakenings and grievous traumas. Determined, Kenny sets out to seek his fortunes and find his poetic voice, landing in the Jim Crow-era South, in St. Louis, in Indiana, and finally in New York City, where he becomes part of a motley creative group of performers and poets that offers both fascinating inspiration and disheartening rejection. These recollections end with Kenny's maturation into a poet whose reaffirmed indigenous heritage unified an artistic vision that remained in conversation with a wide range of other themes and traditions until his death in 2016. Maurice Kenny (1929—2016) was a Writer-in-Residence Emeritus at the State University of New York at Potsdam and the author of many books, including Tekonwatonti/Molly Brant: Poems of War. He was inducted into the New York State Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014.

A two-week canoe trip down the Hudson offers an opportunity to reflect on America's past, present, and uncertain future. This candid account of the author's two-week canoe trip down the Hudson River offers an introspective and humorous look at both the river and Recession-Era America. New to fatherhood and fresh from ten years in an Alaskan village, Mike Freeman sets out to relearn his country, and realizes it's in a far greater midlife crisis than he could ever be. With an eye on the Hudson's past, he addresses America's present anxieties-from race, gender, and marriage to energy, labor, and warfare-with empathy and honesty, acknowledging the difficulties surrounding each issue without succumbing to pessimism or ideology. From the river's headwaters in the Adirondacks, Freeman follows the Hudson south through America's first industrial ghost towns, where ruin begs for rebirth. Next is the Hudson Valley and the river's 153-mile estuary, with its once-teeming fisheries. Here, agriculture is redefining itself, while at West Point, officer candidates train for America's murky modern wars. The Hudson Highlands, too, are prominent, the place where Americans first wed God to nature, and where the mountains remain a potent place to mull that bond. From there it's on to Manhattan, with its skyline that symbolizes the world's financial might as well as its startling fragility. As controversial as it is comforting, Freeman's narrative makes us think in hard ways about America as the country itself drifts toward an uncertain future. But throughout, of course, is the magnificent Hudson, whose resilient beauty speaks well both to nature's toughness and America's greatest strength-the ability to redirect and change course when necessary. Mike Freeman is a freelance writer and editor. From 1998 to 2008 he was a fisheries assistant at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and has canoed thousands of miles in southeast Alaska. His essays have appeared in the Massachusetts Review; South Dakota Review; the LBJ: Avian Life, Literary Arts; Connecticut Review; and Gray's Sporting Journal. He lives in Newport, Rhode Island.

A river is a body of moving water. River water comes from sources that include glaciers, springs, and precipitation. Learn more in Rivers, part of the Aquatic Ecosystems series.

A groundbreaking study of ten difficult years in the life of America's most important newspaper. From false stories about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to growing competition from online and twenty-four-hour cable news, the first decade of the twenty-first century was not particularly kind to the New York Times. In this groundbreaking study of the recent life and times of America's most important newspaper, Daniel R. Schwarz describes the transformation of the Times as it has confronted not only its various scandals and embarrassments but also the rapid rise of the internet and blogosphere, the ensuing decline in circulation and print advertising, and the change in what contemporary readers want and how they want to get it. Drawing on more than forty one-on-one interviews with past and present editors (including every living executive editor), senior figures on the business and financial side, and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Schwarz discusses virtually every aspect of the contemporary Times, from columnists to cultural coverage. He explains how, in response to continuous online updating and twenty-four-hour all-news radio and television, the Times has become much more like a daily magazine than a traditional newspaper, with increased analysis (as opposed to reporting) of the news as well as value-added features on health, travel, investing, and food. After carefully tracing the rise of the Times's website, Schwarz asks whether the Times can survive as a print newspaper, whether it can find a business model to support its vast print and online newsgathering operation, and whether the Sulzberger family can survive as controlling owners. He also asks whether the Times, in its desperate effort to survive, has abandoned its quality standards by publishing what he calls "Timeslite" and "Timestrash." Writing as a skeptical outsider and devoted lifelong reader, Schwarz concludes that the Times is the worst newspaper in the world-except for all the others. End times? is a must-read for Times readers as well as anyone interested in the radical change in print and broadcast media in the rapidly evolving Internet Age.

Chronicles the story of the Erie Canal from its inception to today. One of the largest public works projects in American history, the Erie Canal inspired a nationwide transportation revolution and directed the course of New York and American history. When completed in 1825, the engineering marvel unlocked the Western interior for trade and settlement, boomtowns sprang up along the canal's path, and New York City grew to be the nation's most powerful center of international trade. Millions of people poured into New York (and some through it) to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities provided by the canal, influencing settlement and the social, political, and commercial landscapes of America. Produced in honor of the bicentennial of the beginning of construction of the canal, Enterprising Waters-a companion catalog to the New York State Museum's exhibition of the same name-includes reproductions of objects and images from the collections of more than thirty-five different institutions and individual lenders. It also contains reproductions of fifty-nine works of art used in the companion exhibition "Art of the Erie Canal." Themes of politics, engineering, commerce, life on the canal, and more are paired with full color images of artifacts, documents, and images to bring this unique American story to life, from its inception to today. At the New York State Museum, Brad L. Utter, Ashley Hopkins-Benton, and Karen E. Quinn are all Senior Historians and Curators. Hopkins-Benton is the coauthor (with Jennifer A. Lemak) of Votes for Women: Celebrating New York's Suffrage Centennial, also published by SUNY Press, and Quinn is a contributor to Mount Washington: The Crown of New England, by P. Andrew Spahr.

An inspiring narrative of a young Civil War soldier, as told though his letters from the battlefield. In 1862 twenty-one-year-old Morris Brown Jr. left his studies at Hamilton College to take up the Union cause. He quickly rose in rank from sergeant major to captain and acting regimental commander for the 126th New York Volunteers. In letters written to his family in Penn Yan, New York, Brown describes his experiences at war: the unseemly carping between fellow officers, the fear that gripped men facing battle, and the longing to return home. Brown's letters also reveal an ambitious young man who not only wanted recognition but also wanted to assure himself of a financial future. Above all, this is the story of a courageous young man, told mostly in his own words. Few Civil War soldiers were as articulate as Morris Brown Jr., fewer served in a regiment that saw so much combat, still fewer commanded a regiment at such a young age, and even fewer were recognized by the newly minted Medal of Honor. Wayne Mahood is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the School of Education at Geneseo—SUNY. His many books include Alexander "Fighting Elleck" Hays: The Life of a Civil War General, From West Point to the Wilderness, General Wadsworth: The Life and Times of Brevet General James S. Wadsworth, and Written in Blood: A History of the 126th New York Infantry in the Civil War.

A behind-the-scenes look at one of New York's most colorful and influential governors. A unique figure and an outsized personality, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was a man whose character, personal style, and (of course) wealth shaped both his goals and how he pursued them. Although many stories about Rockefeller have been published over the years, many more remain to be told, and in Oreos and Dubonnet, Rockefeller's former advance man and personal assistant Joseph H. Boyd Jr. and former political reporter Charles R. Holcomb bring together scores of behind-the-scenes anecdotes, accounts, and observations from a wide variety of people who worked with and for Rockefeller in various circumstances. Some of them (and even the title itself, which refers to the two things that Rockefeller asked to have in his hotel room at every campaign stop) add amusing or telling detail to the mosaic of this complex and creative man. Others illustrate the personal approaches or techniques he relied on to persuade, cajole, or otherwise get his way in the rough-and-tumble world of gubernatorial and presidential politics. And all of them add to our understanding of one of New York's most lively and influential governors.

Recounts the sensational 1896 murder trial of Mary Alice Livingston, who was accused of murdering her mother with an arsenic-laced pail of clam chowder and faced the possibility of becoming the first woman to be executed in New York's new-fangled electric chair. Arsenic and Clam Chowder recounts the sensational 1896 murder trial of Mary Alice Livingston, a member of one of the most prestigious families in New York, who was accused of murdering her own mother, Evelina Bliss. The bizarre instrument of death, an arsenic-laced pail of clam chowder, had been delivered to the victim by her ten-year-old granddaughter, and Livingston was arrested in her mourning clothes immediately after attending her mother's funeral. In addition to being the mother of four out-of-wedlock children, the last born in prison while she was awaiting trial, Livingston faced the possibility of being the first woman to be executed in New York's new-fangled electric chair, and all these lurid details made her arrest and trial the central focus of an all-out circulation war then underway between Joseph Pulitzer's World and Randolph Hearst's Journal. The story is set against the electric backdrop of Gilded Age Manhattan. The arrival of skyscrapers, automobiles, motion pictures, and other modern marvels in the 1890s was transforming urban life with breathtaking speed, just as the battles of reformers against vice, police corruption, and Tammany Hall were transforming the city's political life. The aspiring politician Teddy Roosevelt, the prolific inventor Thomas Edison, bon vivant Diamond Jim Brady, and his companion Lillian Russell were among Gotham's larger-than-life personalities, and they all played cameo roles in the dramatic story of Mary Alice Livingston and her arsenic-laced clam chowder. In addition to telling a ripping good story, the book addresses a number of social and legal issues, among them capital punishment, equal rights for women, societal sexual standards, inheritance laws in regard to murder, gender bias of juries, and the meaning of "beyond a reasonable doubt."

Three generations of Northern Appalachian women confront poverty, violence, and isolation. Dead Woman Hollow, a shady glade named for a rattlesnake-bit mother left to die in 1908, is a novel that testifies to the true grit that is a birthright of the women of Northern Appalachia's remote mountain areas-a beautiful and brutal land with a culture hostile to change. The novel spans three generations of women's lives connected by geography and history. It begins during World War I, when a Philadelphian pro-suffrage group attempts to bring their replica Liberty Bell to every one of the sixty-seven county seats in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, drawing the interest of a young woman with a mysterious past. Then during the Depression, a headstrong girl finds the means to feed her sisters, her cousin, and her stepfather, even as the latter scours the region looking for work to stave off starvation. And in the waning years of the Reagan Era, two lesbian hikers are stalked by a local mountain man. Propelled by prose that is as stylistically stark as the events it depicts, this novel is testament to the enduring mettle of women who find themselves at the crosshairs of history and circumstance. Kass Fleisher is Associate Professor of English at Illinois State University. She is the author of Talking Out of School: Memoir of an Educated Woman; The Adventurous; Accidental Species; and The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History, also published by SUNY Press.

In exploring her father's own gambling addiction, the author uncovers a hidden history of gambling in the Jewish community. Screening calls from her father's creditors, hiding his mail from her mother-being the child of a compulsive gambler wasn't easy, and Annette B. Dunlap thought for years that her experience was a singular one. In early adulthood, she was fortunate enough to learn that she was not unique, that other children had grown up with parents (usually fathers) addicted to gambling. But when she learned, shortly before her mother died, that her grandfather had also been involved in gambling, she realized the extent to which gambling was a part of her family history. As she delved further into the subject, she also discovered the extent to which gambling is, in her words, "a peculiarly Jewish addiction." Framing the issue of gambling in both historical and sociological terms, Dunlap examines the struggle between the "official" Jewish community-Jewish leaders have long either condemned or ignored the evils of gambling-and the significant number of everyday Jews who continue to gamble, many at a level that would be considered addictive. Gambling continues to be a serious problem within the Jewish community, Dunlap argues, regardless of whether the person is Orthodox or a Jew in name only. The Gambler's Daughter is both a personal story of a father's gambling addiction and a more general inquiry into the hidden history of gambling in the Jewish community. Readers who either live or have lived with an addictive family member will find the book useful, as will those students of Jewish social history interested in a long-ignored facet of American Jewish life.