Adirondack Portraits: A Piece of Time is a moving poetic statement about the Adirondack wilderness and the people who fought the mountains’ relentless environment to settle there at the end of the nineteenth century. The book is also about the remarkable Jeanne Robert Foster (1879–1970). Born in poverty in the Adirondacks, as a young woman she emerged in the center of the literary and artistic circles of her day, an associate of Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and the Yeatses, father and son. Adirondack Portraits gives us a glimpse into the early life of Jeanne and some of the influences that helped her step from a harsh physical existence into the unforgettable world of New York, Paris, and London in the 1920s. Above all, her poems and prose pieces are, in the words of Alfred Kazin, “an attempt to recover a vanished time, to record with love and admiration and enduring wonder a life of hardship, endless exertion, and perhaps above all, the kind of isolation that used to dominate country life in America.”

This is a collection of 53 portraits of inhabitants of the Adirondack landscape, one of the largest and last wilderness areas in the United States to be discovered. The pictures are accompanied by the subjects' own words, capturing the essence of life in this region.

"Portrait of Healing chronicles the life and passions of the gifted and visionary physican, Edward L. Trudeau. Hope, courage, and unselfish devotion to others most certainly describes this man who founded the Adirondack Cottage Sanitorium, later to be renamed the Trudeau Sanitorium, in Saranac Lake, New York. This sanitorium was the first of its kind in America and became the model for the cure and treatment of tuberculosis throughout the United States. Trudeau, who was also suffering from tuberculosis, spent countless hours learning to correctly identify the tubercle bacillus. He created the first laboratory in the country to be exclusively devoted to the study of tuberculosis and developed unprecedented scientific evidence of the interaction between environment and disease."--Dust jacket flap.

Just as the new technology of photography was emerging throughout the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, it caught hold in the scenic Adirondack region of upstate New York. Young men and a few women began to experiment with cameras as a way to earn their livings with local portrait work. From photographing individuals, some expanded their subject matter to include families and groups, homes, streetscapes, landmarks, workplaces, and important events—from town celebrations to presidential visits, train wrecks, floods, and fires. These photographers from within and just beyond the park’s borders, as well as those based in the urban areas from which tourists came to the Adirondacks, have been central in defining the region. Adirondack Photographers, 1850–1950 is a comprehensive look at the first one hundred years of photography through the lives of those who captured this unique rural region of New York State. Svenson’s fascinating biographical dictionary of more than two hundred photographers is enriched with over seventy illustrations. While the popularity of some of these photographers is reflected in the number of their images held in the collections of the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, and the Getty Museum, little is known about the diverse backgrounds of the individuals behind their work. A compilation of captivating stories, Adirondack Photographers provides a vivid, intimate account of the evolution of photography, as well as an unusual perspective on Adirondack history.

Contested Terrain explores the competing understandings of how best to manage this spectacular natural resource. Terrie introduces the key players and events that have shaped the region and its use, from early settlers and loggers to preservationists, year-round residents, and developers. This new edition includes a comprehensive account of the Pataki years, an era of stunning conservation triumphs combined with unprecedented pressures on the region’s ecological integrity.

Collection of essays written by Paul Schaefer between 1921 and 1932, reflecting his growing awareness of the mountain culture.

Henry M. Beach was a prolific and accomplished upstate New York photographer who documented the North Country during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Although much less known and celebrated, Beach's work is as important to the twentieth-century Adirondacks as Seneca Ray Stoddard's is to the nineteenth century. Illustrated with over 250 examples of his work including ten panoramic foldouts, this book covers the range of Beach's subject matter. Robert Bogdan's lively and accessible approach to the photographer's work encourages the reader to explore the North Country's people and places through Beach's photography and life. Although Beach's postcard pictures and other photographs were taken to sell in bulk to hotel managers, tourist shop owners, and other retail merchants, they are not just mass-produced, stylized, pretty pictures. Beside the bubbling brooks and shady woodland paths are factory boomtowns and paper mills belching pollution. As the rails brought increasing numbers of middle-class tourists to the Adirondacks, the wealthy created their own exclusive wilderness playground. Beach photographed dandy visitors at play as well as manual laborers sweating in the forest, logging camps, factories, mines, and construction sites. Images of "great camps" sit next to modest abodes, small stores, and family-owned resorts. Pictures of trains in scenic surroundings give way to mangled wrecks after tragic railroad accidents. In addition to standard view cards, he produced montages and advertisement postcards serious visual commentary as well as lighthearted picture play. Beach's best works stir the heart and provoke the imagination, and his whimsical, down-to-earth approach to photography produced images that are a treat to the eye.