The Adirondacks: Home

A Wild Idea shares the complete story of the difficult birth of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). The Adirondack region of New York's rural North Country forms the nation's largest State Park, with a territory as large as Vermont. Planning experts view the APA as a triumph of sustainability that balances human activity with the preservation of wild ecosystems. The truth isn't as pretty. The story of the APA, told here for the first time, is a complex, troubled tale of political dueling and communities pushed to the brink of violence. The North Country's environmental movement started among a small group of hunters and hikers, rose on a huge wave of public concern about pollution that crested in the early 1970s, and overcame multiple obstacles to "save" the Adirondacks. Edmondson shows how the movement's leaders persuaded a powerful Governor to recruit planners, naturalists, and advisors and assign a task that had never been attempted before. The team and the politicians who supported them worked around the clock to draft two visionary land-use plans and turn them into law. But they also made mistakes, and their strict regulations were met with determined opposition from local landowners who insisted that private property is private.

The most important source for Adirondack related statistical, geographical and demographic data. Contains a wealth of vital data which is often not available in other sources.

In The Adirondack Park McMartin has aptly likened the various wild forest, wilderness, recreation, and primitive areas to a patchwork quilt, with landscapes connecting to jagged boundaries following rivers and narrow valleys. Recommended "views and visits" give readers an insider's advantage to making the most of any Adirondack expedition. With a storyteller's ease, McMartin provides a brief history and description of each area. She chronicles the preserve's unusual origins, people, politics, and economics that created what is now one of the most important wilderness areas in the eastern United States.

Jeanne R. Foster was an Adirondack poet who was famous in the 19th century and traveled in such literary company as: Ezra Pound, William Butler Yates and Joseph Conrad.

A valuable new history of the Adirondacks.

The book that started it all! W. H. H. Murray's infamous travel guide that made the Adirondacks a world famous vacation destination.

Russell Banks was an important writer of fiction who made his home in the Adirondack Region. Cloudsplitter traces the story of abolitionist John Brown, as seen through the eyes of his son Owen, from his hard-scrabble farm in Lake Placid to his infamous raid at Harper's Ferry. Impressively researched for a work of fiction.

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.

The only biography of the fascinating life of the Adirondack poet, fashion model, journalist and social worker, Jeanne Robert Foster.

This history focuses of the forests and forestlands in the Park. Written by one of the foremost Adirondack wilderness writers, Barbara McMartin.

The classic history of the Adirondack Region

Russell Banks was an important writer of fiction who made his home in the Adirondack Region. Many of his novels deal with issues related to living in the Adirondacks. In The Sweet Hereafter, Banks explores the complex relationships of residents in a rural upstate New York community after a tragic bus accident kills a number of their children.