Patapsco: Life Along Maryland's Historic River Valley

The love of place shines through in this documentary effort about a historic valley that saw the birth of industry in Maryland, the nation's first railroad, and the nation's first cross-country highway. This compelling portrait of the region is viewed through the memories of its elders from all walks of life. Through their collective memory, we gain a true sense of the cultural legacy of Maryland's historic Patapsco River Valley.

About the Author :
Alison Kahn is the author of Listen While I Tell You and has written for National Geographic and Smithsonian. She is from Takoma Park, Maryland. Peggy Fox is a photographer from Cockeysville, Maryland, who has received two Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artists Awards for excellence and whose local and national exhibits include a one-person show at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Review :
"Patapsco is a portrait of a region as seen through the memories of its elders, the eyes of a photographer, and the sensibilities of a writer and oral historian. Through narrative and images, it reveals the connections between culture and place, between past and present. Also, cloaked in the regional nature of Patapsco is a larger issue: disappearing American places. This book documents only one region, but it speaks for all those disappearing places and their people whose lives and times have not been documented. Our culture must not let unique American spaces fade to dust. We must find ways to preserve them, if only doing so in the pages of a book." - W. Ralph Eubanks, Director of Publishing, Library of Congress "This book is yet another expression of the careful social observations Walker Evans and James Agee offered in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Patapsco Valley, Maryland, thereby has joined the lucky company of Hale County, Alabama - both places that become, in the hands of an alert photographer and an attentive writer, something quite else: social texts that keep helping us find ourselves.... A valley's portrait becomes an aspect of a nation's ongoing story.... To Alison Kahn and Peggy Fox, then, for giving us Patapsco, we owe gratitude for a splendid, observing effort exceedingly well done, but also for the compelling summons they tender us; through meeting these Marylanders, we get a boost toward ourselves - our similar journey through time and space in America." - From the introduction, by Robert Coles"