Bøger i New York Classics serien

At midnight on the thirty-first of March, in the village of Saugersville, in upstate New York, young John Herbert is left in darkness when the electric power goes off. The next morning George, who drives the milk truck, turns a bewildered face to the little group in the village store and says, "the road ain't there no more." Search parties are sent out and return, days later, exhausted and afraid, having found no other towns, railroads, or people. This is the dramatic background for the narrative poem; it is a classic tale for the ages, a psychological fantasy and a poetic equivalent of Wilder's Our Town rolled into one.

A Vanished World is an elegant and exquisite portrait of a rural, turn-of-the-century childhood from a young girl's perspective. But Anne Sneller's 'vanished world' is not just the small world she knew as a child; it is the world of the rural America, a peaceful world of family farms, quiet country roads, and small towns, which stretched from New England to the West Coast, from Minnesota to Texas.

These stories of the American Civil War capture the pain and suffering experienced by those on both fronts. They describe not only the mixed feelings aroused by the conflict, but also focus on the civilian population waiting at home.

In simple, darkly faceted stories, Philander Deming writes as a person whose childhood knowledge of the Adirondacks has been honed to a fine sense for its potential human tragedy.In this, the first collection of his best work, a haunting vision of the Adirondacks comes through that is hard to forget. Deming's themes revolve around deception and self-deception, loneliness, and good intentions gone awry. Most of his stories occur just before or after the Civil War. In almost every story, however, Deming shows his characters looking back towards the mountains, from the Mohawk or St. Lawrence Valley or from lonely settlements on the edge of the forest, or across Lake Champlain.Few Adirondack writers have been so convincing in conveying the keen isolation of life in the northern forest and its peculiar effects on the human mind. The wilderness community is cruel, fostered by ignorance and isolation. In the end, the mountains, seemingly a neutral back drop against which individuals confront a collective morality, are the real source of his inspiration.

Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, Paulding wrote a number of Christmas tales, the best of which are brought together in this collection and which predate Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Paulding presents his stories as they have been translated from the original Dutch by a fictitious author. In them Saint Nicholas - a sixteenth-century Dutch Protestant baker - miraculously befriends those who uphold Dutch traditions and sets straight those who are either mean or given to "newfangled notions".

This book is really a "best of," as chosen by the author himself. These are Carmer's favorite pieces, drawn from three decades of work. He mixes leisurely reminiscences with folklore, verse, and portraits of Upstate's diverse population. Geographically, they range from Niagara Falls to Montauk Point, and include pieces on the fate of Native Americans, ghost stories, tall stories, character sketches, a piece on the erosion of New York State's natural beauty, as well as poems and works of wit and humor.

An account of the traitorous trio who almost toppled the American nation at its birth. Benedict Arnold offered to sell his soldiers, with the key fortress of West Point, and to deliver to the enemy, dead or alive, George Washington. The plot promised to destroy the American battle of freedom.

In this classic book, Carl Carmer describes the social life and customs of his native New York. Wandering from Buffalo to the Adirondacks across upstate New York, he heard folk tales, tall tales, stories of religious fervor and scandal. A born storyteller himself, Carmer writes about the beautiful Genesee, the Seneca and Tuscarora, the Cardiff Giant and the Loomis Gang, and the story of the Murdered Bride of Rensselaer County.

Edmund Wilson felt this collection of twenty-four stories, originally published in 1934, contains some of Walter Edmonds' best work. The AtlanticMonthly wrote thar "Upstate New York has provided Edmonds with an inexhaustible store of characters one would like co know." A number of the stories were award-winnrng and appeared in such collections as Best Stories of 1929 and The O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories."Black Wolf," The End of the Towpath," Death of Red Peril"-these and ochers faithfully depict an era and region for which Edmonds became chiefliterary spokesman. Episodic and anecdotal, chey catch in various ways something of the nuances of real life as it was in the days when the Erie Canaloffered a passage west for many travelers and settlers and a livelihood for many more.

Hislop writes living history. Father Jogues is there, as are Sir William Johnson and Molly Brant, Nicholas Herkimer, DeWitt Clinton, Eliphalet Nott, the Remingtons, Charles Steinmetz, and a host of others. Fur trading, land grabbing, Dutch, Palatines, Yankees, the Battle of Oriskany, the Erie Canal, the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, General Electric are all part of the story of The Mohawk. Hislop's presentation of this unique region is both informative and compelling.

Henry W. Clune lived his entire life in Rochester, New York along the Genesee River, much of which he spent chronicling the area in his weekly column Seen and Heard. His firsthand experience with the river and reporting in Rochester, meshed with local folklore and compelling historical fact, flourishes into a unique tale of the region in The Genesee.Clune brings to life the vibrant stories of the "Jersey Leaper" Sam Patch, the "White Woman of the Genesee" Mary Jemison, bare-knuckle fighter John L. Sullivan, fish hatchery inventor Seth Green, and the Letchworth and Wadsworth dynasties, all in the midst of valuable history and a knowledgeable geographic perspective.

This memoir celebrates the Sicilian life in America, while providing a sociological portrait of the immigrant experience in the US. The author reminisces about his experience as a fledgeling writer trying to escape from the restrictive Italian American culture in which he grew up.

In stories such as ""Six O'Clock"", ""The City Awakes"" and ""The Waterfront"", the author returns the reader to turn-of-the-century New York with his early memories of the city.