Download or read book The Catskills written by Stephen M. Silverman and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Catskills (“Cat Creek” in Dutch), America’s original frontier, northwest of New York City, with its seven hundred thousand acres of forest land preserve and its five counties—Delaware, Greene, Sullivan, Ulster, Schoharie; America’s first great vacationland; the subject of the nineteenth-century Hudson River School paintings that captured the almost godlike majesty of the mountains and landscapes, the skies, waterfalls, pastures, cliffs . . . refuge and home to poets and gangsters, tycoons and politicians, preachers and outlaws, musicians and spiritualists, outcasts and rebels . . . Stephen Silverman and Raphael Silver tell of the turning points that made the Catskills so vital to the development of America: Henry Hudson’s first spotting the distant blue mountains in 1609; the New York State constitutional convention, resulting in New York’s own Declaration of Independence from Great Britain and its own constitution, causing the ire of the invading British army . . . the Catskills as a popular attraction in the 1800s, with the construction of the Catskill Mountain House and its rugged imitators that offered WASP guests “one-hundred percent restricted” accommodations (“Hebrews will knock vainly for admission”), a policy that remained until the Catskills became the curative for tubercular patients, sending real-estate prices plummeting and the WASP enclave on to richer pastures . . . Here are the gangsters (Jack “Legs” Diamond and Dutch Schultz, among them) who sought refuge in the Catskill Mountains, and the resorts that after World War II catered to upwardly mobile Jewish families, giving rise to hundreds of hotels inspired by Grossinger’s, the original “Disneyland with knishes”—the Concord, Brown’s Hotel, Kutsher’s Hotel, and others—in what became known as the Borscht Belt and Sour Cream Alps, with their headliners from movies and radio (Phil Silvers, Eddie Cantor, Milton Berle, et al.), and others who learned their trade there, among them Moss Hart (who got his start organizing summer theatricals), Sid Caesar, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Joan Rivers. Here is a nineteenth-century America turning away from England for its literary and artistic inspiration, finding it instead in Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and his childhood recollections (set in the Catskills) . . . in James Fenimore Cooper’s adventure-romances, which provided a pastoral history, describing the shift from a colonial to a nationalist mentality . . . and in the canvases of Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederick Church, and others that caught the grandeur of the wilderness and that gave texture, color, and form to Irving’s and Cooper’s imaginings. Here are the entrepreneurs and financiers who saw the Catskills as a way to strike it rich, plundering the resources that had been likened to “creation,” the Catskills’ tanneries that supplied the boots and saddles for Union troops in the Civil War . . . and the bluestone quarries whose excavated rock became the curbs and streets of the fast-growing Eastern Seaboard. Here are the Catskills brought fully to life in all of their intensity, beauty, vastness, and lunacy.
Download or read book Making Mountains written by David Stradling and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2009-11-23 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over two hundred years, the Catskill Mountains have been repeatedly and dramatically transformed by New York City. In Making Mountains, David Stradling shows the transformation of the Catskills landscape as a collaborative process, one in which local and urban hands, capital, and ideas have come together to reshape the mountains and the communities therein. This collaboration has had environmental, economic, and cultural consequences. Early on, the Catskills were an important source of natural resources. Later, when New York City needed to expand its water supply, engineers helped direct the city toward the Catskills, claiming that the mountains offered the purest and most cost-effective waters. By the 1960s, New York had created the great reservoir and aqueduct system in the mountains that now supplies the city with 90 percent of its water. The Catskills also served as a critical space in which the nation's ideas about nature evolved. Stradling describes the great influence writers and artists had upon urban residents - especially the painters of the Hudson River School, whose ideal landscapes created expectations about how rural America should appear. By the mid-1800s, urban residents had turned the Catskills into an important vacation ground, and by the late 1800s, the Catskills had become one of the premiere resort regions in the nation. In the mid-twentieth century, the older Catskill resort region was in steep decline, but the Jewish "Borscht Belt" in the southern Catskills was thriving. The automobile revitalized mountain tourism and residence, and increased the threat of suburbanization of the historic landscape. Throughout each of these significant incarnations, urban and rural residents worked in a rough collaboration, though not without conflict, to reshape the mountains and American ideas about rural landscapes and nature.
Download or read book Trout Fishing in the Catskills written by Ed Van Put and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ed Van Put begins this important book with the history of native brook trout and offers little-known details about their sizes, range, and demise from over-fishing, the growth of streamside industries, and the introduction of competitive species. Sweeping in its scope, Trout Fishing in the Catskills tells a thorough tale of the often tumultuous history of fishing in the Catskills. With a scope of over a century, Van Put tells of the Catskill’s frontier fishing beginnings and tracks the rise, fall, and eventual revival of the fisheries. Throughout, this is a history of people and methods as well as rivers, and there are profiles of Theodore Gordon, Art Flick, Harry and Elsie Darbee, Sparse Grey Hackle, and more. No serious trout fisherman, in any part of the country, will want to miss this pioneering portrait of a seminal region in American angling history. Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for fishermen. Our books for anglers include titles that focus on fly fishing, bait fishing, fly-casting, spin casting, deep sea fishing, and surf fishing. Our books offer both practical advice on tackle, techniques, knots, and more, as well as lyrical prose on fishing for bass, trout, salmon, crappie, baitfish, catfish, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Download or read book Remember the Catskills written by Esterita Blumberg and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Best Hikes with Children in the Catskills and Hudson River Valley written by Cynthia Copeland Lewis and published by The Mountaineers Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * Guidebook to short, easy hikes and trails your children will be comfortable on* Includes ideas for keeping the kids engaged and having funNew York's Catskills have long been an outdoor playground for families escaping from the city. Here's a guidebook that shows you hikes that the whole family can do. Best Hikes with Children in the Catskills and Hudson River Valley, 2nd Ed. includes games that will keep the kids engaged and enjoying the trails. From Catskills State Park, Bear-Mountain-Harriman State Park, Hudson Highlands, Shawangunk Mountains, Southern Taconics, the Long Path, and the Appalachian Trail, there's something for everyone in this all-inclusive guidebook.Hikes detailed include shorter two- and four-mile hikes to six-plus miles and overnighters. Practical information on hiking with children - setting a realistic pace, playing games, and encouraging personal and environmental responsibility - make this a guidebook to recommend.
Download or read book The Catskill Forest written by Michael Kudish and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Catskill Culture written by Phil Brown and published by . This book was released on 2003-05-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich ethnographical study, drawing on the memories of guests, staff, and entertainers, chronicles the development of the Jewish Catskill resorts, discussing their impact on both American and immigrant Jewish culture and tracing their slow decline since the 1970s. UP.
Download or read book The Hotel Neversink written by Adam O'Fallon Price and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2020 Edgar Award Winner! "A gripping, atmospheric, heart-breaking, almost-ghost story. Not since Stephen King's Overlook has a hotel hiding a secret been brought to such vivid life." —Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State Thirty-one years after workers first broke ground, the magnificent Hotel Neversink in the Catskills finally opens to the public. Then a young boy disappears. This mysterious vanishing—and the ones that follow—will brand the lives of three generations. At the root of it all is Asher Sikorsky, the ambitious and ruthless patriarch whose purchase of the hotel in 1931 set a haunting legacy into motion. His daughter Jeanie sees the Hotel Neversink into its most lucrative era, but also its darkest. Decades later, Asher's grandchildren grapple with the family’s heritage in their own ways: Len fights to keep the failing, dilapidated hotel alive, and Alice sets out to finally uncover the murderer’s identity. Told by an unforgettable chorus of Sikorsky family members—a matriarch, a hotel maid, a traveling comedian, the hotel detective, and many others—The Hotel Neversink is the gripping portrait of a Jewish family in the Catskills over the course of a century. With an unerring eye and with prose both comic and tragic, Adam O’Fallon-Price details one man’s struggle for greatness, no matter the cost, and a long-held family secret that threatens to undo it all.
Download or read book Folk Songs of the Catskills written by Norman Cazden and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1982-01-01 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional songs from the Catskill area of New York State are accompanied by detailed discusssions of their roots, development, musical structure, and subject matter
Download or read book Waterfalls of the Adirondacks and Catskills written by Derek Doeffinger and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient and mythic, the mountainous Adirondack and Catskill regions of New York are rich with storied character and cultures. Focusing on the sparkling waterfalls and rugged cuts and cloves of these territories, accomplished photographers Derek Doeffinger and Keith Boas capture the intense appeal of each district as well as the wild, often elusive but always compelling drama of their beauty.
Download or read book The Catskill Mountain House written by Roland Van Zandt and published by Black Dome Press. This book was released on 1966 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In the Catskills written by Phil Brown and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2004-04-21 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With selections from Isaac Bashevis Singer, Allegra Goodman, Moss Hart, TaniaGrossinger, and many others, this volume is a tribute to the legendary Jewishresort area of the Catskills. 40 halftones. 26 figures.
Download or read book Catskill Resorts written by Ross Padluck and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once the most famed resort destination of the world, the Catskills, New York's bygone Borscht Belt district, helped shape American culture and history. Through 363 images, take a trip back in time to relive the stories behind the theaters and nightclubs, the lavish lobbies where bellhops welcomed celebrities, and the vacuous dining rooms that served thousands of rich kosher meals each day.
Download or read book The Borscht Belt written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Borscht Belt, which features essays by Stefan Kanfer and Jenna Weissman Joselit, presents Marisa Scheinfeld's photographs of abandoned sites where resorts, hotels, and bungalow colonies once boomed in the Catskill Mountain region of upstate New York.
Download or read book Easy Weekend Getaways in the Hudson Valley Catskills Short Breaks from New York City Easy Weekend Getaways written by Carly Fisher and published by The Countryman Press. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monday can wait! Take a break from the chaos with a perfectly planned upstate getaway The Hudson Valley and Catskills are destinations New Yorkers can’t get enough of. Unlike typical travel guides, Easy Weekend Getaways in the Hudson Valley & Catskills ditches the well-worn antiquing, golfing, and family-friendly activities for a focus on what’s really drawing creative and trend-forward travelers up north—experimental art, incredible agriculture, action-packed outdoor adventures, artisanal producers and makers, bizarre and fascinating historical attractions, rustic-chic bed and breakfasts, holistic retreats, and more, all hidden within a stunning landscape that delights year-round. While these regions continue to gain popularity with city-dwellers, trying to make a break for it has always been a complicated DIY process. This guide takes the work out of piecing together an itinerary so that overworked travel-obsessives can get the most out of their precious time off with these curated upstate getaways.
Download or read book 50 Hikes in the Catskills First Edition Explorer s 50 Hikes written by Derek Dellinger and published by The Countryman Press. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essential guide to hiking the majestic Catskill Mountains With soaring mountain tops and wide-ranging trails, the Catskills offer a truly special hiking experience to travelers of all kinds. Catskill veterans Derek Dellinger and Matthew Cathcart explore trails for every level of hiker, from the gentle but breathtaking slog up Slide Mountain, the tallest in the region, to the more challenging Cornell Mountain, a favorite of those more experienced. No matter your hiking goals, this guide will help you find the perfect trail for you among the Catskills’ 700,000 acres of natural treasure. In this beautiful first edition of 50 Hikes in the Catskills, as with all the books in the 50 Hikes series, you’ll find clear and concise directions, easy-to-follow maps, and expert tips for enjoying every moment of your hike—whether you’re looking for sublime mountaintop views, peaceful walks through nature, or your next great challenge—all in a gorgeous, full-color design.
Download or read book Moon Hudson Valley the Catskills written by Nikki Goth Itoi and published by Moon Travel. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hudson Valley is a breath of fresh air: explore historic estates, hike wild mountain terrain, and bask in small-town charm with Moon Hudson Valley & the Catskills. Inside you'll find: Strategic, flexible itineraries, from day trips from New York City to week-long road trips and a 6-day bike tour, designed for outdoor adventurers, history buffs, art-lovers, foodies, and more Must-see highlights and unique experiences: Bike along rolling hills and quiet country roads, hike to rushing waterfalls, hit the slopes in the winter, or discover the best spots to see the striking fall foliage. Take a tour of Washington Irving's romantic home, admire the historic Rockefeller Estate, go antiquing in Cold Spring Village, or stroll through Sleepy Hollow. Take a cooking class at the Culinary Institute of America, browse the produce at a farmers market, sip your way along a Hudson Valley wine trail, or savor local cuisine at a farm-to-table restaurant The best hikes in the Hudson Valley and the Catskills, with detailed maps, mileage and difficulty ratings Honest advice from Catskills native Nikki Goth Itoi on when to go, where to eat, and where to stay, from full-service resorts and historic inns to secluded cabins and campsites Full-color photos and detailed maps throughout Thorough background on the culture, weather, wildlife, and history, plus how to get there and get around With Moon's practical tips and local know-how, you can experience the Hudson Valley and the Catskills your way. Exploring more of the Northeast? Check out Moon New England. Headed to the Big Apple? Try Moon New York City or Moon New York Walks.
