The Catskills
The Catskills

Author: Stephen M. Silverman

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2015-10-27

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 1101875887

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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.

The Hotel Neversink
The Hotel Neversink

Author: Adam O'Fallon Price

Publisher: Tin House Books

Published: 2019-08-06

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1947793357

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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.

The Catskills
The Catskills

Author: Adam Cornell

Publisher: Hudson Jade & Steele Publishing

Published: 2012-12-03

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 9780985316532

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Some come to escape the city life. Others come to escape their past. Sometimes there's no escaping it. The Northern Catskill Mountains have always held a certain mystique and draw for those who just want to leave it all behind. Those who call the Catskills home have grown accustomed to the peace and serenity. But every few decades the outside world finds its way in, with violent consequences. Chance encounters, family secrets, destructive relationships and the forces of nature all combine for an explosive ending that could only happen in The Catskills.

LEECH CLUB OR THE MYSTERIES OF
LEECH CLUB OR THE MYSTERIES OF

Author: George Washington D. 1916 Owen

Publisher: Wentworth Press

Published: 2016-08-28

Total Pages: 92

ISBN-13: 9781372892622

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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Journey to the Catskills
Journey to the Catskills

Author: Dan Pinckney

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2018-01-09

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1543469183

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Terrorists have developed a biological weapon that is unleashed in Mexico, with the hope of it spreading to the United States. The disease does as it was intended, spreading flu like symptoms throughout Mexico and from there it is carried to the United Sates and around the world. Within weeks, the disease has spread across the globe, and though most nations try to stop the spread, the virus is already out of control in most countries. In the United States the CDC has discovered a possible cure in the Catskill Mountains of New York State, but the combined efforts of the US Government are thwarted a bit when the terrorist forces, taking advantage of man power shortages due to the disease, manage to detonate nuclear weapons in Tel Aviv, Moscow and Washington D.C. With the disease rampant throughout North America, and as the infrastructure begins to collapse, people all across North America begin to head to New York's Catskill Mountains in the hope of attaining the 'cure' for themselves. A small group of Army National Guardsmen, led by Sergeant John Powers, are ordered to move from their host base in central Massachusetts to the Catskills, to assist the small detachment stationed there and maintain order. These men begin the move and enlist the support of people from small towns in their efforts to reach the Catskills. This combined unit soon arrives at the location and discovers the location of the CDC lab, and together with the help of the troops already there, begin to establish order and issue inoculations to the thousands of people arriving as well. In the meantime, convicts escaping from prisons in New York push to get the cure as well, though they have different intentions. Rather than help others, they plan to take the cure for themselves and establish a monarchy with Larry Andrews, one of their own, as King of the area. As the convicts approach the location, they encounter the troops there and soon both sides, the convicts led by Andrews, and the troops, now led by Powers, clash in a battle that will determine the fate of those who have survived. Andrews commands a hard core group of freed criminals, and with the assistance of Mafia elements, has created a well armed and increasingly dangerous force. Powers, supported by a small group of dedicated and hard working companions, have created a council to govern the land by creating a republic, and the discovery of a castle in the town of Liberty where they store the remnants of the CDC personnel and hope to protect the cure for anyone in need, while trying to maintain order and reestablish order. In the end, the convicts break through the territory controlled by Powers and the republic and in an all out effort, attempt to storm the castle, where they have learned the cure is being stored, to take it for themselves. Outnumbered and outgunned, Powers and the council do what they can to protect what they have built. With the stage set, both sides engage in an all out battle for control of the cure, with both sides desperate to control the cure. In the end, desperate people on both sides struggle to control the cure which will decide the fate of millions around the world.

Growing Up at Grossinger's
Growing Up at Grossinger's

Author: Tania Grossinger

Publisher: Skyhorse

Published: 2008-06-17

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1626369607

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"To be devoured in one non-stop gulp...fascinating reading."—The New York Post From 1919 to 1986, Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel provided a summer retreat from the city heat for New York's Jews, and entertained the great, the near-great, and the not so great, Jews and Gentiles alike. A melting pot of the Borscht Belt, sports, and show-biz worlds, loyal visitors included Red Buttons, Rocky Marciano, Eddie Fisher, and Jackie Robinson. Tania Grossinger grew up there. In her fascinating insider's account of life in the hospitality industry, she sheds light on how hotel children keep up with the frenetic pace of life, and how they come to grips with the outside world (which intrudes now and again), sex (happening in every room), and, occasionally, their intellectual interests. Growing Up at Grossinger's is both a wonderful coming-of-age story and a sentimental reading of a chapter of the Jewish experience in America that has now closed. 25 b/w photographs. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.