Saranac: America's Magic Mountain - Softcover

What do Bartok, Emerson, Maugham, Einstein, Mark Twain, Sylvia Plath, Walker Percy, Christy Mathewson, Gerald and Sarah Murphy's son Patrick and gangster "Legs" Diamond have in common? All visited the Adirondack resort town of Saranac Lake or were patients in the tuberculosis sanatorium established there by Dr. Edward Trudeau. This popular social history of Saranac describes the many colorful characters who formed part of its sceneamong them, Harvard anatomist Jeffries Wyman, who invented the word gorilla; poet Adelaide Crapsey, whose single year spent at Saranac "secured her place in American letters"; chainsmoker Robert Louis Stevenson; library scientist Melvil Dewey, founder of the Lake Placid Club, which became infamous for excluding Jews from its membership; cereal heiress Marjorie Post, whose four husbands included financier E. F. Hutton and FDR's ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies (author of Mission to Moscow; and Norman Bethune, the Canadian doctor who became a hero of Communist China. Saranac was indeed a magic mountain, especially as recreated by Boston Globe book and art critic Taylor. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

What did Robert Louis Stevenson, Christy Mathewson, Norman Be thune, and Bela Bartok have in com mon? They all suffered from tubercu losis and sought relief at Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains, a haven for sufferers from tuberculosis for about 70 years. Dr. Edward L. Tru deau, himself a victim of TB, started a sanitarium there in 1885 after the cold, clear air helped him. Taylor depicts the history of Saranac Lake as a health resort and details the lives of some of its notable vistors in an inter esting, readable style. Though not a scholarly worksources are poorly attributed and too little attention is given to the main topicthis is a fas cinating piece of social history for public libraries. Pat Ensor, Indiana State Univ. Lib., Terre Haute
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.