The Adirondack Atlas: A Geographic Portrait of the Adirondack Park

Geologically, the Adirondacks owe more to the Canadian Shield from which it arises as it passes under the St. Lawrence River. This remarkable coffee table book contains some of the most majestic and intimately beautiful photographs of the East's greatest wilderness. Far from simply showing the natural landscape, this volume delves into the Adirondack Park's culture, history and economics. The book also explores through photographs and narrative, the complex mixture of people and wilderness and it's fragile coexistence. This is a grand mixture of prose and photography that will please anyone, fan of the Adirondack Mountains or one about to be.

Jerry Jenkins and Andy Keal do a great job covering the entire spectrum of the Adirondack Park, which I find helpful when doing research for my books, "New York State's Mountain Heritage: Adirondack Attic" volumes 1-3. Their compilation of material is astounding and historic in itself, a marvel of Adirondack publishing. It tires me to think of the countless hours of research that went into writing this book. This is a must-read for those who love New York State's Adirondack Mountains.

Great graphics, tremendous research, a treasure trove for "data miners" from all spectrums of science - ecology, climatology, sociology, forestry, geology, etc. Once you read this book you will understand the Adirondacks far better than most life-long residents of the region.

Because a good picture can be worth a thousand words, or quite possibly ten thousand, as demonstrated by the detailed, high quality graphics packing every page of Jenkins' book, his "Adirondack Atlas" (which is ever so much more than an "atlas") truly can be said to contain volumes of fascinating, up-to-date, accurate and pertinent information on our incomparable six-million acre "forever wild" forest park. Indeed, this one model reference book captures in its 267 pages an amount of information equivalent to that found in a small library of the best available books on Adirondack history, politics, geography, geology, ecology and natural history, and then adds considerable information and highly readable interpretation that can be found in no other published work. It is a miracle of a book, the work of a stunning and accomplished intellect.

The United States warrants a series of environmental atlases that provide the geographical, historical, cultural, and ecological information necessary to understand, appreciate, and conserve our natural hertitage. Unfortuantely, we lack these for almost every region. However, in this simply outstanding volume on the Adirondacks Jerry Jenkins has set the standard for any and all future work. An unrivaled natural historian with an unusual quantitative and technical ability, Jerry has produced a volume that will inspire, inform, and motivate everyone into deeper understanding, contemplation, and action. Bill McKibben's foreword suggests that this will become a "most-thumbed book on one's shelf": mine is well on its way.