Customer Reviews

Boats and Boating in the Adirondacks

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There could hardly be a more qualified author for this book's subject. Hallie Bond is an historian and Curator of Collections and Boats at the Adirondack Museum. For anyone who has watched in awe as an Adirondack Guideboat has glided out of the morning mist by a local getting her morning exercise or perhaps her daily groceries, this book will charm you. The book covers canoes, kayaks, sailing canoes, guide boats, launches, dories, and even runabouts. The author has included the copious endnotes which you'd expect of such a scholarly treatment, as well as a comprehensive catalog of the boat collection in the Adirondack Museum. And as likely as you are to purchase this book for its mesmerizing historic photographs of the long-gone Adirondack denizens at work and play in their boats, you are most likely to treasure it as the definitive history of Adirondack watercraft. For it is in writing history that Ms. Bond excels. You will learn about the "sports," the local term for visiting hunters and fishermen, and you will share the awe of the tourists admiring the region's natural beauty: "...we were spellbound, for a time, by a scene in which were blended so many natural harmonies." Of course you will also learn how each type of boat was made, and what characteristics each one offered. It is a compelling book, and will make you want to own a guideboat of your own, and will make you want to visit the Adirondack Museum. Savor it slowly, chapter by chapter, and when you return to the Adirondacks, you'll be a much wiser sport for having read Ms. Bond's masterpiece.

Hallie Bond has written a masterful account rich with history and funky details about one of America's
most unusual boating regions. Her grasp of boating, the North Country woods, the life of Adirondack
guides, and the evolution of boat designs provides an entertaining yet immensely informative tapestry.
Bond is a scholar and curator of boats at the Adirondack Museum, but she writes with a journalist's
ease. Her eye for detail, her control of narrative, her insights into countless eccentric characters, and
her love for the North woods all contribute to a compelling story about a changing, evolving culture.

This book is also about ingenuity in boat building and the special attributes of design that produced
world famous boats. The Adirondack Guideboat, the St. Lawrence River Skiff, and the vast
assortment of canoes designed by Henry Rushton not only filled special needs but also changed how
people perceived and enjoyed the Adirondacks. She traces the evolution of canoes, the co-mingling of
canoes and kayaks, the emergence of Guideboats and assorted craft, each used for pragmatic
purposes, then changed as people changed. In many ways this is a cultural history,as much about
people as about boats. Yet it includes innumerable photos and illustrations that suggest these builders
were also artists and surely supperb craftsmen.

She takes advantage of the Museum's remarkable collection of boats and boating art, and provides a
fun and engrossing pictorial narrative. Her book is as fun to browse as it is to read, and it's all
handsomely put together. I've read a lot of books about boats, but this may be the best I've ever read.

Reading this book started me on the search for others like it. Recently, I read Sailing Ships of New England by George Francis Dow, another book about the history of boats in a specific region of the US. If you're interested in this sort of thing, I highly recommend it. It's full of great illustrations and makes for a great follow-up to Boating in the Adirondacks.

Hallie Bond has written a masterful account rich with history and funky details about one of America's most unusual boating regions. Her grasp of boating, the North Country woods, the life of Adirondack guides, and the evolution of boat designs provides an entertaining yet immensely informative tapestry. Bond is a scholar and curator of boats at the Adirondack Museum, but she writes with a journalist's ease. Her eye for detail, her control of narrative, her insights into countless eccentric characters, and her love for the North woods all contribute to a compelling story about a changing, evolving culture.

This book is also about ingenuity in boat building and the special attributes of design that produced world famous boats. The Adirondack Guideboat, the St. Lawrence River Skiff, and the vast assortment of canoes designed by Henry Rushton not only filled special needs but also changed how people perceived and enjoyed the Adirondacks. She traces the evolution of canoes, the co-mingling of canoes and kayaks, the emergence of Guideboats and assorted craft, each used for pragmatic purposes, then changed as people changed. In many ways this is a cultural history,as much about people as about boats. Yet it includes innumerable photos and illustrations that suggest these builders were also artists and surely supperb craftsmen.

She takes advantage of the Museum's remarkable collection of boats and boating art, and provides a fun and engrossing pictorial narrative. Her book is as fun to browse as it is to read, and it's all handsomely put together. I've read a lot of books about boats, but this may be the best I've ever read.