The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness

The vast Adirondack region of upstate New York is very much a wilderness, but one ringed by towns and close enough to major cities that it is heavily traveled. Long viewed as a natural playground, the Adirondacks were a favorite haunt of transcendentalist philosophers Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, of conservationists such as Franklin Burroughs and Theodore Roosevelt, of bohemians and hippies, and of back-to-the-land types. Still wild enough that wolf reintroduction has been proposed for the Adirondacks, the territory remains a powerfully inspiring place of refuge and recreation. Paul Schneider tells the story of this river-laced, forested land with imagination and a flair for just the right anecdote.