In this issue Gene Smith writes about a city that has long fascinated him: Hudson, New York. In Hudson’s Merchants and Whalers (Black Dome Press, 224 pages, $24.95), Margaret B. Schräm describes how Hudson once had wealth and influence far out of proportion to its size, as can be seen in an 1847 lament to its decline: “There is no bustle of seamen along its wharves, no song of the ropemaker upon its hills, no throng of wagons from the interior, no crowds of men in its streets. The shipyards are overgrown with grass, the wharves have moldered away…. And yet the surrounding scenery is as beautiful as ever.”