The Madison, the Gallatin, the Firehole, Henry’s Fork of the Snake, the Gibbon, Slough Creek, the Yellowstone—these and a score of other rivers (more than 2,000 miles of them) within a hundred-mile radius make West Yellowstone, Montana, the “trout mecca” of the world. Charlie Brooks, a long-time resident of the area, has pooled his incisive knowledge of fishing and rivers with superb photographer Dan Callaghan to produce the first major fisherman’s guide to the region. In Fishing Yellowstone Waters you will learn the fabled pools on these famous rivers, the insect hatches, the best files to use (and when), the most effective methods of fishing each river and the most fruitful times. There are some especially helpful appendixes that list the most popular flies, based on a poll of local tackle dealers made by the authors. Too many people travel long distances to this area but lack the specific knowledge needed to make their trip as productive as it might be. This book can help. But it is also for all fishermen who dream of someday fishing these marvelous, productive waters.

Land development in western New York contributed to some of the most dramatic and convulsive changes in nineteenth-century America. In Frontier Settlement and Market Revolution, Charles E. Brooks explains how the Holland Land Purchase in which the Holland Land Company purchased 3.3 million acres of land in western New York State contributed to the development of a frontier region. Powerful cultural and religious changes flowing from evangelical Protestantism, together with settlement and the intensification of market relations, put western New York in the vanguard of capitalist transformation in rural areas. Brooks also describes the ecological impact of frontier settlement and the evolution of private land development based on the decision either to clear land for farming or to harvest forest products for potash, lumber, maple sugar, fuel wood, and scrub pasture."

Land development in western New York contributed to some of the most dramatic and convulsive changes in nineteenth-century America. Charles E. Brooks studies the Holland Land Purchase to explain the market revolution in the New England and New York countryside by tracing the actual development of a frontier region. Brooks argues that historians have been too quick to view ordinary people as the pawns of various elites; the frontier farmers and small producers of the Holland Land Purchase, he maintains, cannot easily be placed along a continuum stretching from republican virtue to liberal self-interest. They simply wanted access to the land and resources necessary for a modest, comfortable life. Frontier Settlement and Market Revolution also explores the ecological impact of frontier settlement and the evolution of private land development based on the decision either to clear land for farming or to harvest timber resources for potash, lumber, maple sugar, fuel wood, and scrub pasture. When slumping land values and rising indebtedness generated a crisis for both landlords and settlers in the 1820s, conflict between the self-interest of small producers and the Holland Land Company's urge to control the region's economic growth was inevitable.