From its origins in northern Germany State’s Adirondack mountains to its majestic sweep alongside Manhattan’s busy streets, the Hudson River holds a unique place in the history of American art, architecture, and literature. This book explores the river’s complex history through a variety of thematic currents: the natural river, the imagined river, the human river, and the working river. Along with important works by famed Hudson River School painters, such as Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Cole, this volume features exciting new literary contributions by Rick Moody, Carolyn Forche, John Stilgoe, Philip Lopate, and others. Objects of material culture, tourism, and science provide a fascinating background of the rivers many lives while the works of contemporary artists, including Matthew Buckingham Peter Hutton, Yvonne Jacquette, and An-My La, ask us to reconsider our use of the river and our relationship with nature and history. This book presents an intersection of contrasting and varied stories environmental, historical, and individual whose journeys all lead back to the Hudson itself.