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The Pocket Guide to Woodstock 

by Will Nixon

This is the popular guide of 2012, fully revised—with a walking tour of the historic village, a directory of local hikes and nature preserves, and the story of the famed colony of the arts.

As co-author with Michael Perkins of Walking Woodstock: Journeys into the Wild Heart of America’s Most Famous Small Town, a local bestseller, Will Nixon offers here a tour of his favorite places, which tell a strange and wondrous story. First settled by farmers, glass blowers, tannery workers, and quarrymen, who made hard livings cutting forests and carving into mountainsides, the town later reinvented itself as a major artists’ colony that has given us a legacy of galleries and music venues. Not to mention the Concert That Didn’t Happen Here.

They’re all included—the early Dutch settlers and their witches, the Sixties rock ‘n’ rollers led by Bob Dylan and Levon Helm, the Bohemian artists of a century ago, the Buddhist monks of today, the free-spirited visionaries drawn to Woodstock’s scenic mixture of nature and the arts. Learn what has made this town so inspiring and so famous.

Dazzlepaint: A Romantic Mystery of the Hudson Valley 

by Erica Obey

Gavin Fellowes, a damaged WWI veteran turned cynical psychic investigator, arrives in Ker-Ys, a Utopian art colony in Woodstock, NY, to investigate a series of purported fairy kidnappings of Communist garment workers who have taken over the failed Overlook Mountain House above the village. He is rapidly confronted with the willful blind spots of the well-meaning artists and the burgeoning anti-Semitism of the Catskills. With the help of Kate Ames, an illustrator and dazzlepaint designer who once might have been kidnapped by the fairies herself, Gavin must dig beneath the myth and legend to uncover an all-too-real occult threat that looms over Europe in the aftermath of the Great War.

The Improbable Community: Camp Woodland and the Democratic Ideal 

by Bill Horne

In 1939, a group of idealists inspired by the spirit of New Deal reform put their vision of American democracy into practice by creating Camp Woodland, a racially and ethnically inclusive summer camp for city kids located in the remote and scenic mountains of upstate New York. The camp's innovative programs profoundly influenced campers for 24 summers from 1939 through 1962.

The founders of Camp Woodland were united by the progressive politics of the 1930s. Some were teachers influenced by educational reformers of the early 20th century. Some contributed administrative skills. And all were committed to racial and social justice well before the civil rights movement became a force in the 1950s and 1960s.

Camp Woodland quickly became a center (and later, a model) for the preservation of local traditions that attracted musicologists and musicians, like Pete Seeger, who supported and participated in its programs.

The Improbable Community tells the story of the people whose dreams created Camp Woodland and whose talents enabled it to succeed. It tells the story of the rural neighbors whom Woodlanders came to know and of the music, history, homespun skills, and folklore that they freely shared with their newfound friends. It tells the story of the musicians, performers, and musicologists who contributed creativity, zeal, and scholarship to Camp Woodland's summer programs as well as their legacy of collected traditional music.

Woodstock History and Hearsay 

by Anita M. Smith

“The story of this important arts community, one of the US's oldest, is told from the sensitive perspective of Smith, a painter, writer, and famed herbalist who arrived in Woodstock in 1912. Her approach blends shrewd scholarship, biography, and hearsay. In this beautiful new edition, the spirit of the original is painstakingly preserved. To make Smith's work more useful to scholars, the editors added endnotes and more illustrations. In short, a joy to read and a significant contribution to understanding the Woodstock community and American art and culture. Summing up: Recommended. All levels.” --Choice Magazine