Today’s Hudson River is a very special river, one that most people think of as a highway of commerce, flowing from factories and cities to the sea. But it once was a wild river, a river that from its earliest days was beautiful, sacred to the first Americans, and one of our country’s natural wonders. The lyrical paintings of Thomas Locker capture the majesty of a river whose passage through time mirrors that of its sister rivers, the Mississippi, the Columbia, and the Rio Grande, to name only a few. Author Robert Baron weaves a fascinating history of the Hudson, a history witnessed by everyone from prehistoric Storm King Mountain to the native tribes of New York, to farms, factories, and development, and on to today’s conservationists, who have fought to preserve both the mountain and the river.