Lives of the Hudson

Lives of the Hudson explores the long history of one of America's greatest rivers. Along with important nineteenth-century paintings by Hudson River School artists such as Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Cole, Thomas Doughty, and Sanford Gifford, Lives of the Hudson presents objects of material culture, science, and recent art by Bob Braine and Leslie Reed, Matthew Buckingham, Bradley Castellenos, Margaret Cogswell, Maxine Henryson, Peter Hutton, Yvonne Jacquette, Kysa Johnson, Michael Light, Annea Lockwood, Alan Michelson, Jason Middlebrook, An My-Le, and John Stoney

This unique book combines information about the river from physical descriptions to the human effects of tourism and industry, with provocative images by artists who ask us to reconsider our use of the river and our relationships with nature and history. Lives of the Hudson is an intersection of contrasting and varied stories---environmental, historical, and individual---which all lead back to the Hudson itself---a river that has flowed through millennia of geological and ecological history and centuries of civilization and culture.

Included in the book are over twenty new essays by writers Akiko Busch, Kathryn Davis, Terence Diggory, Carolyn Forche, Phillip Lopate, Rick Moody, Tom Sleigh, and John Stilgoe among many other scholars, poets, and journalists.