Extensively researched.(Watertown Daily Times) Whether you're interested in Adirondack, Black or antebellum history, Godine's The Black Woods will leave an undeniable impression on your understanding of Adirondack Park, and is required reading for those who want to ensure a more welcoming Adirondacks for everyone.(Adirondack Council) Amy Godine's The Black Woods stands among the best Adirondack histories ever written(Adirondack Enterprise) Through this expansive volume, Godine manages to artfully weave historic fact with the sort of 'historical detection' that has been urged by leading scholars of Black Adirondack history.(The Hudson River Valley Review) Amy Godine's The Black Woods is a portal for adventurous minds to pursue a fresh frontier long masked by ignorance or outright suppression.(The Adirondack Explorer) Whether you're interested in Adirondack, Black or antebellum history, Godine's The Black Woods will leave an undeniable impression on your understanding of Adirondack Park, and is required reading for those who want to ensure a more welcoming Adirondacks for everyone.(Adirondack Council blog) Perhaps the greatest contribution of this magnificent book is that the author unearthed a history of Black pioneers that was long buried and forgotten but now restored to a position of prominence across New York and, hopefully, the country.(The Adirondack Almanack) Throughout this expansive volume, Godine manages to artfully weave historic fact with the sort of "historical detection" that has been urged by leading scholars of Black American history.(Unfriendly to Liberty) A rich history... meticulously researched... Godine grasps the profound significance of [the Black settlement] to the region's history.- Nell Painter, The New York Review of Books (NYRB) The Black Woods contains a lot — a lot of names, a lot of facts and a lot of anecdotes — but all of it helps to tell the real story of the Black Woods and reveal the depth and variety of the lives of Black residents of the Northeast in the pre-Civil War era. The story doesn't sink under the weight of its detail, it rides on it, and it carries you along.(The Front Page)