The letters collected here offer useful and charming insights into the social history of upstate New York, from economic and industrial developments to local politics and religious controversies, as well as human interest and considerable local color.

"This is an important contribution to our knowledge of seventeenth-century New York, both in terms of its Dutch and English settlers and of its Algonquian and Iroquian Indian inhabitants, written with care and precision."—New England Quarterly

The Dutch involvement in North America started after Henry Hudson, sailing under a Dutch flag in 1609, traveled up the river that would later bear his name. The Dutch control of the region was short-lived, but had profound effects on the Hudson Valley...

The real story of gangsters, politicians, longshoremen, union leaders, and Catholic priests that informed the classic 1954 film, On the Waterfront.

"The site is the result of a careful study of the river-banks, and commands so many views of varied beauty, that all the glories of the Hudson may be said to circle it."—H. W. French, Art and Artists in Connecticut, 1879 In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed...

When Charles Evans Hughes defeated William Randolph Hearst for the governorship of New York in 1906, the New York State Republican Party was split between the remnants of the rural, conservative Platt political machine in Albany and the forces loyal...

Chapters of Erie is a classic account of ruthless business practices in nineteenth-century America—in particular, Jay Gould and James Fisk's successful effort to gain control of the Erie Railroad in 1868 and subsequent attempt to corner the American...

Both an indispensable scientific work and a beautiful collection of art, The Second Atlas of Breeding Birds in New York State documents and illustrates the current distribution of breeding birds within the state and the significant change in bird...

The question of why New Yorkers were such reluctant revolutionaries has long bedeviled historians. In an innovative study of New York City between 1763 and 1776, Joseph S. Tiedemann explains how conscientiously residents labored to build a consensus...

"Mathew, as a member of the Organizing Committee of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, has a unique perspective on the plight of immigrant taxi drivers. . . . Mathew explores the history of New York's taxicab industry, which has been in a cycle of...