Bookshelf    Conversations on the Hudson

Conversations on the Hudson

By Nick Hard (Princeton Architectural Press, 2014) Buy It Now

Subtitled “An Englishman Bicycles 500 Miles Through the Hudson Valley, Meeting Artists and Craftspeople Along the Way,” this delightful paean to the handmade life features (among many others) an axemaker, a nanobrewer, a seed librarian, a mosaic artist, and Woody Guthrie’s granddaughter. “I’ve let them tell their own stories,” writes the aptly named Hand; these conversations have been distilled into personal essays about life and work. A designer as well as a bicyclist, Hand is an intrepid meanderer, an avid listener, and a grand observer of details; his eloquent photos add to the book’s artisanal appeal as a small, well-crafted object.