Our Time At Foxhollow Farm

Our Time at Foxhollow Farm is a remarkable pictorial history of an eminent Hudson Valley family in the early decades of the twentieth century. Illustrated with the family's extensive collection of personal albums compiled during the nascent years of photography, it provides a fascinating insight into the regional, social, and architectural history of the era. In 1903 Tracy Dows, the son of a successful grain merchant from Manhattan, married Alice Townsend Olin, whose Livingston forebears had settled in the Rhinebeck, New York, area in the late 1600s. Dows purchased and combined several existing farms to establish his estate, Foxhollow Farm, next to Alice's ancestral home. He commissioned Harrie T. Lindeberg, a sought-after architect trained under Stanford White, to design the family home and other buildings on the property, and the Olmsted Brothers to landscape its rolling hills. The Dowses raised their three children on the estate, and led a busy social life of tennis tournaments, weddings, dinners, and dances with such friends and neighbors as the Roosevelts and the Astors. Tracy Dows devoted himself largely to the pursuit of agricultural and civic affairs at home and in the Rhinebeck community. Olin Dows, Tracy and Alice's son, became a notable painter active in President Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration. Our Time at Foxhollow Farm follows the Dows family from 1903 through the 1930s, documenting their life at home, social activities, and travels in America and Europe. An enthusiastic amateur photographer, Tracy Dows took many of this book's photographs himself, offering a vivid and warmly intimate perspective on privileged early twentieth-century American life.

Fox Hollow Farm, the infamous Indiana property where Herb Baumeister allegedly murdered at least eleven men, has a grim past and an unsettling present. This riveting book pieces together the story of the tragic case and explores the paranormal encounters that continue to this day, delving into the psyche of a suspected murderer and the terrifying supernatural activity that lingers in the aftermath of such unspeakable evil. The Horrors of Fox Hollow Farm provides detailed insights from the original criminal investigation as well as the perspectives of the man who survived Herb's attempt on his life. This chilling book also features actual supernatural evidence—from EVPs and psychic confirmations to first-hand accounts of the disembodied hands and voices that regularly manifest on the estate.

During the 1850s and '60s, by far the most prominent author in all of New York State was the writer, editor, and publisher Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–1867). Nearly as prominent as Willis himself was his Hudson Valley estate, Idlewild, where literary elites gathered and about which Willis himself wrote and published extensively. In 1846, Willis founded the Home Journal, which would go on to become Town and Country. In Out-Doors at Idlewild, first published in 1855, Willis chronicled the creation of his estate at Cornwall-on-Hudson (near West Point), as well as life amid its countryside. The land afforded brilliant views of the river and the mountains to the East. Calvert Vaux, the famed architect of both landscapes and houses, designed the elaborate and ornate Gothic Revival home, which Willis named Idlewood (whereas he called the estate Idlewild), and into which the Willis family moved in July of 1853. Here, Willis wrote a series of papers for the Home Journal documenting life at the seventy-acre estate. These papers were gathered together in Out-Doors at Idlewild, a celebration of Willis's home and estate.

One woman’s journey to uncover her family’s history and understand the ties that bind us to a particular place. Encompassing three centuries of manor lords and tenant farmers, Civil War heroes and renegade aunts, award-winning author Leila Philip tells the story of her ancestral Hudson Valley home, Talavera, and the mystery of her attachment to it. After her father’s death in 1992, Leila and her family struggled to find the means to keep their farm intact. This uphill battle led her to examine the forces that compel a family to sacrifice almost everything to hold onto a particular piece of land. Newly republished with a folio of historic photographs and an epilogue that updates the story of the farm and the family to the present, A Family Place addresses the tensions between memory and recorded fact, inviting readers to take a new look at their own sense of home. “Philip is an extremely gifted writer who doesn’t skirt somber emotional notes. She has created a brave, eloquent, and beautifully constructed memoir of a remarkable place and the remarkable family that belongs to it.” — Chronogram “Author Leila Philip presents a tribute to her family’s long and illustrious history, revealing a piece of Americana that is hard to replicate. A Family Place is recommended reading for anyone who wants to see the evolution of the American family first hand.” — Reviewer’s Bookwatch “Philip grafts history, natural history, and autobiography into a stunning performance.” — Maureen Howard, author of Big as Life “Mesmerizing Both narrative threads are profoundly personal. Braided together with insight, they pay homage to the ideals of home and family with a resonance that should extend beyond her home region.” — Publishers Weekly “ an unpretentious, subtly shaded story of the importance of understanding the ghosts and heroes that reside in every ancestral home.” — New York Times “An exquisite rendering of a Hudson Valley family farm, as detailed and colored as a Persian miniature. Philip’s family history is alarmingly transporting, and her sense of place so rich you can taste it.” — Kirkus Reviews(starred review) “Riveting one of the most finely written family histories available.” — Library Journal

"Follow along with Little Fox as he plans a surprise picnic for his friend Owl,"--

Explores the social and economic transformations of the mid-Hudson River Valley during the key expansionist period in American history.

This book explores how the recent restructuring of farming and industry has affected economic and social equality in the United States. The author explains how the farm sector has undergone a dramatic restructuring with profound effects. Moderate-size family farms, the mainstay of American agriculture, have declined during the postwar period and are now under severe financial stress. Large-scale industrialized farms -- "the factories in the field," often run by corporations -- continue to expand their share of agricultural sales while small farms operated on a part-time basis appear to be replacing traditional family farming. Lobao shows that public concern about farm restructuring is indeed warranted and that the nation now appears to be losing its most beneficial farms as well as industries. While local and regional social and economic forces and state policy can be brought to bear on these trends, Lobao particulary focuses on how community empowerment and broad-based political coalitions offer the most promise for fundamental change.

A haunting story of the disintegration of an American and Italian family caught in Europe during World War II. This gripping story of love and loss centers on Marco, an Italian diplomat; Alice, his American wife; and their young children. Stationed in Prague during World War II, Marco and Alice become enemies when the United States enters the war, forcing Alice and the children to move from Prague to Rome and finally to Cernobbio in a desperate attempt to flee to Switzerland. Through alternating passages narrated by Alice and daughter Susie, readers shuttle back and forth between war-torn Europe and 1950s Massachusetts to search for answers and unravel the mystery about what really happened to Alice during the war. “A searing narrative that keeps the reader alert, on the edge, at times almost unbearably so. I could not put the novel down. War inhabits the lives of all the characters of Seeking Alice; it pulses through the novel’s own memory. It’s the source of loss and the lethal circle the two narrators—and the reader—must penetrate and understand. The journey into which we are drawn may be defined by the broad strokes of history, but it is the fine precision of the intimate detail, the fierceness of love, the rawness of regret, the force of desire and compassion that pull us. A truly wonderful book!” — Edvige Giunta, author of Writing with an Accent and coeditor of Personal Effects “Like Elsa Morante’s History: A Novel and Alberto Moravia’s Two Women, Camilla Trinchieri’s Seeking Alice is that rare redemptive and all-too-often ignored story of what it’s like to be a woman living in a war zone trying to keep yourself and your children safe while trying to maintain your own integrity. It is a redemptive novel of witness about this courageous woman’s experience and her daughter’s unrelenting drive to recover her mother’s true history long after the war is over.” — Louise DeSalvo, author of Chasing Ghosts: A Memoir of a Father, Gone to War “This beautifully written novel is a cross between Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Martha Gellhorn’s A Stricken Field. It’s about the worst moments of the twentieth century as experienced by a family with no good options, and the love, sacrifice, regret—and triumph—they live with in the face of forces beyond their control.” — Kass Fleisher, author of Dead Woman Hollow