The Adirondack Atlas: A Geographic Portrait of the Adirondack Park
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Book Overview
The Adirondack Atlas offers a detailed geographic portrait of the largest protected area in the contiguous United States and the largest region of protected temperate forests in the world. Generously illustrated-complete with 450 full-color maps and 250 figures, graphs, tables, charts, and scientific drawings-this volume covers 130 topics on the six-million-acre Adirondack Park. As the first book of its kind, it is both a work of art and an authoritative reference.
The Park has a complex history. It is one of the only parks in the world to combine large wilderness areas with extensive private lands and a substantial residential population. Jerry Jenkins explores this connection between the wild and human communities within a protected landscape. As he maps out the diverse and ever-changing environment--the recreational growth, conflicts between users, development, pollution, and climate change--he highlights elements that threaten to alter the Park and undo the protection it now enjoys. Jenkins includes old stories of fur routes and battles, log drives and Shea engines; new stories about school taxes and education, conservation easements and local economies, artistic ferment and social ills, about healthy towns, dying trees, and deer harvests. As a comprehensive and standard resource, the Atlas captures the full scope of the park's topographic, hydrographic, and ecological history for a wide audience of geographers, historians, and Adirondack enthusiasts.Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0815607571
ISBN13:9780815607571
Release Date:June 2004
Publisher:Syracuse University Press
Length:288 Pages
Weight:2.65 lbs.
Dimensions:0.7" x 11.9" x 9.0"
Customer Reviews
5 ratings
Beauty & Prose
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 18 years ago
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.
Adirondack Atlas great for Adirondack Attic research
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 18 years ago
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.
An Entire Library in One Volume
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 19 years ago
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.
A Miracle of a Book, Worth a Small Library
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
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.
Simply a Classic
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 20 years ago
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.
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