The Catskills: Its History and How it Changed America

The Catskills were America’s original frontier, northwest of New York City, with its seven hundred thousand acres of forest land preserve.  The authors tell of the turning points that made the Catskills so vital to the development of America.

Eventually there are the gangsters (Jack “Legs” Diamond and Dutch Schultz, among them) who sought refuge in the Catskill Mountains, and the resorts that after World War II catered to upwardly mobile Jewish families, giving rise to hundreds of hotels inspired by Grossinger’s, the original “Disneyland with knishes”—the Concord, Brown’s Hotel, Kutsher’s Hotel, and others—in what became known as the Borscht Belt and Sour Cream Alps.

Here are the Catskills brought fully to life in all of their intensity, beauty, vastness, and lunacy.

Written by Stephen M. Silverman and Raphael D. Silver

 Hardcover, 464 Pages, Published 2015