Description
Very Good dust jacket, illustrated, minor edge-wear and toning from age. A mylar dust jacket has been added. Very Good binding is tan cloth over boards, decorated with trees in green, toning to boards, spine soiled. Author’s signature on front free endpaper. Black-and-white illustrations by John O. Cosgrove, II. The binding is tight and pages are clean. The book measures 8.6″ tall x 5.9″ wide.
Stated “First Printing” Signed by the Author.
About the book (from the dust jacket)
They call New York the Empire State, and with good reason, From the days of Pierre Radisson and the first French voyageurs to this present moment its travelers and citizens have always felt that this is no ordinary ground. The dark, tree-clad ranges of the Adirondacks, the lordly Hudson, the great lakes, the vineyarded slopes and fertile valley lands the cities and the farms make an imperial pattern, and York Staters are proud of it. Here is a book like nothing else you have read for years-unless you happen to have been rereading LISTEN FOR A LONESOME DRUM. Carl Carmer weaves the pattern of his narrative out of people–people of an almost infinite variety and richness. Here are Lon Whiteman, America’s greatest embezzler with a knack of victimizing bank presidents; Major Noah, who tried to establish Israel on American soil a hundred years ago; a girl named Lavender from the Ramapo mountains frozen to death in a sequin evening dress and–perhaps returning to haunt the country twilight; the great Cayuga Indian who went to Geneva to get justice for his people; the incredible Fowlers, who designed octagonal houses and felt the bumps on people’s heads -and dozens more. Here, too, are the wonderful, dry, incisive stories that Yorkers tell each other, and in words and pictures, the flavor and color and people and scenery of an empire that is both a geography and a history: No more engrossing, heartwarming book has appeared on an) list of ours as publishers. We cannot imagine any kind of reader who will not revel in it. Most people, we suspect, will reread it many times,
About the author (from the dust jacket)
Carl Carmer is a York Stater by birth as well as inclination. He is a graduate of Hamilton College, and though he has lived in the South for a number of years (the period when he was writing his
first great success, STARS FELL ON ALABAMA) most of his life has been spent in the state about which he writes so lovingly in this volume. He lives at present in an octagonal house, constructed according to the best principles of the late great practical phrenologist, Orson Fowler, in Irvington-on-Hudson. The housee now contains, in addition to Carl and his artist wife Elizabeth Black Carmer, a notable collection of wooden eagles of the Federalist Period, which he has been accumulating for a number of years,
Mr. Carmer’s earlier books reflect his lifelong enthusiasm for the American past and present, and his special affection for his native state. They include THE HUDSON and LISTEN FOR A LONESOME DRUM, both York State nonfiction books, and GENESEE FEVER, a novel which was a Literary Guild selection. He has also published two books of poems, six children’s books including the famous HURRICANE’S CHILDREN, and many articles in dozens of magazines. In addition, he is a popular and wide-ranging
lecturer, has been active in writers’ organizations, and spends almost all his free time visiting `’round with people and talking to them. Many of his best stories have been discovered in just that way.
About the illustrator (from the dust jacket)
John O’Hara Cosgrave Il, who designed the jacket of this book and furnished its illustrations and decorations is a widely known American artist and currently lives on Colombia Heights, Brooklyn. His work in this book is based on an extensive tour of upstate New York which followed the geographic pattern of the book itself.
