Mt. Holyoke, which overlooks the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, has been a tourist destination and an inspiration for artists and writers for almost two centuries. The view from its summit attracted the Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole among many others, including literary visitors such as Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In 1836, Cole created the most famous painting associated with the mountain, based on sketches he made during his visit to the site. The Oxbow, which is a centerpiece of this book and the accompanying exhibition, shows a...

The vivid story of a tightly knit group of travelers--connoisseurs, collectors, scientists--who dedicated themselves to exploring and preserving what they referred to as Old Japan and Old Japan's lasting influence on the culture of Gilded Age America. After the Civil War, the United States--as cultural historian and critic Christopher Benfey argues--lost its philosophical moorings and looked eastward, to Old Japan and its seemingly untouched indigenous culture, for balance and perspective. Japan, meanwhile, was trying to reinvent itself as a more cosmopolitan, modern state, transforming in...