Reviews for A Family Place: A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family

The average rating for A Family Place: A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-06-23 00:00:00 Am Ne It is amazing how much history this family had packed away in its home! To be able to bring back the past lives of your family & to know them as people (even though you never met them) would be truly awesome.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-02-10 00:00:00 Mike Johnston Intriguing to compare this with The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home, in which the author tugs at your heartstrings with family connection to the place, its history and the possibility that they might lose it, that it leave the family or even be torn down as obsolete. In A Family Place, Philip is angered by and burdened by the weight of family history, of legacy. Her research (and the resulting book) is a means of coming to terms with her family's place in history and its connection to the land for the last three centuries. While she seems to come to terms with that in the end (marveling at how history repeats itself) she still makes clear that keeping up the place is a burden and highlights the challenges faced by those who try to make their living off the land in this post-industrial society of ours. A new edition includes photographs (one wonders why on earth they weren't included the first time around) and an update on the family and orchard venture. (BTW, while I own the first edition, the image on my cover is not what is pictured here -- it's similar, but actually a much better image with tree branches framing the shot perhaps representing the present and the orchard, and the land sloping away to the Hudson with the Hudson Highlands in the dsitance -- perhaps representing vast time and history. It's a cover I actually like a lot more than the new edition, which features the bright yellow house. The book isn't about the house, it's about connection to "place" especially the land and the work and responsibility that goes with it.