We grew up alongside the railroad tracks in Central Bridge and well remember running outside when we heard the train whistle blow, to wave at the man in the caboose. Cabooses are long gone and trains have become impersonal strings of engines and cars, roaring through the valley and rarely stopping. We risk forgetting the impact that the railroad had on the lives of the people who lived here, and Tri Valley reduces that risk.

Author Dufresne is Worcester town historian, vice president of the Worcester Historical Society, a past editor of the Tri Valley News, president of the Worcester Free Library board and a 25-year collector of post cards.

Tri Valley is a fascinating collection of photos and postcards dating from about 1865, when the Delaware & Hudson railroad was completed, through to the 1940s. This covers an interesting period of history for this area. The end of the Civil War brought an influx of settlers, the railroad brought prosperity as farmers sent goods to market, and in turn the farmers spent money on the luxuries that the trains brought.

The book’s focus is the area along the railroad from Colliersville, just east of Oneonta in Otsego County, to Cobleskill. Stations and surrounding buildings are well represented but the bulk of the pictures show the towns themselves. Text is limited to a short introduction and that which accompanies the postcards. The print quality is excellent and we find no notable writing or historical weaknesses.

In the front of the book is a picture of the author and her grandfather, who was struck and killed by a train in 1937. Perhaps this influenced her interest in the railroad history of the tri-valley area.

Tri Valley is divided into seven chapters, each about a town along the railroad starting with Cobleskill and heading southwest to Colliersville. A small map on the copyright page shows the area covered by the book. Brief bibliography and resources sections are included after the introduction.

About one third of the book relates to Schoharie County. The remainder is devoted to the Worcester area and a short section at the end which has interesting pictures of trains and a little about Oneonta.

Tri Valley is part of the publisher’s Images of America series in which each title focuses on pictures of an individual town or region.

Empire State is a major revision of the standard one-volume history of New York State. It succeeds the 1967 A History of New York State, also a Cornell-NYSHA production.

We have not yet finished this tome and probably won’t. Nearly half is devoted to the twentieth century. There is little for aficionados of the colonial, revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods. One may perhaps justify the imbalance on the basis that, comparatively, much history has been written about earlier periods. But isn’t history the story of times long ago?

The book contains far too little about the discovery and settlement of the state, and the Revolution, which may be the most important periods in state history. The contributions of patriot leader Col. Marinus Willett are ignored, a reduction of the predecessor work’s treatment of an important contributor in an important era, and Willett appears only as a post-war land grabber. Worse is Empire State’s treatment of the events of 1778 and 1779:

Iroquois and loyalist raiders destroyed Cobleskill, Andrustown, German Flats, Unadilla, and Cherry Valley. What they did was not mindless savagery. The Indians were defending their way of life. The loyalists were defending their vision of white and perhaps Indian society. In the summer of 1779 Generals John Sullivan and James Clinton led a major American expedition westward. Meeting almost no resistance, they ruined Iroquois towns and crops as far west as the Genesee River. (Page 238).

The author of the section could just as accurately have written:

Iroquois and loyalists raided Cobleskill, Andrustown, German Flats, Unadilla, and Cherry Valley. Meeting almost no resistance, they destroyed the towns and crops. The following summer, Generals John Sullivan and James Clinton led a major American expedition westward and ruined Iroquois towns and crops as far west as the Genesee River. What was done was not mindless savagery. The soldiers were defending their way of life and vision of society.

Admirably, Empire State casts a brighter light on oft-overlooked history including New York’s resistance to the abolition of slavery. This and other additions are well in order.

Even though the work ignores the brutality of war and savage destruction of people (not just towns) in the raids of 1778 and 1779, don’t miss the opportunity to add an important new work to your collection. Just don’t throw out its predecessor, and recognize that Empire State is trendily skewed.