In honor of Black History Month, the PMP title in the spotlight for February is: Promised Land: Father Divine’s Interracial Communities in Ulster County, New York by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Carleton Mabee. During the 1930s and 40s, the spiritual leader known as Father Divine created thirty experimental, interracial, utopian communities in Ulster County, which he hoped would serve as models for the world. Mabee’s book concentrates on Divine’s movement from 1935, when the first Ulster County community was established in New Paltz, until 1985 when the last one, in Kingston, was sold.
Author and historian Carleton Mabee won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for The American Leonardo: A Life of Samuel F. B. Morse. Among his other books are Listen to the Whistle: An Anecdotal History of the Wallkill Valley Railroad in Ulster and Orange Counties, New York and Bridging the Hudson: The Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge and Its Connecting Rail Lines.
Other Selected Sale Titles This Month: 25% Off
Lost Arrowheads and Broken Pottery: A History of Native Americans in Bear Mountain State Park, New York by Edward J. Lenik. The history of Native American presence within Bear Mountain State Park as evidenced in specific places and archaeological finds that readers can visit and view there today.
The Catskills: From Wilderness to Woodstock by Alf Evers. The cornerstone book of any collection of books on the Catskills, Evers’ definitive history of the region is once again available.
Hell on the East River: British Prison Ships in the American Revolution by Larry Lowenthal. The little-known terrible story of the sailors during the American Revolution who were imprisoned in wretched conditions on British prison ships, as many as 1,100 on board one ship, off the Brooklyn shore of the East River.
Last of the Handmade Dams: the Story of the Ashokan Reservoir by Bob Steuding. A history of the creation of the Ashokan Reservoir from 1905 inception to 1917 completion and what it involved: the emptying, damming and inundation of the inhabited valley to bring pure water to New York City.
Chronicles of Lake Champlain: Journeys in War and Peace. Author Russell Bellico captures the texture of each period in Lake Champlain’s history through firsthand accounts by witnesses and diarists, both illustrious and unknown.
