Metropolitan Paradise: The Struggle for Nature in the City—Philadelphia's Wissahickon Valley, 1620–2020 by David R. Contosta and Carol Franklin

Abstract

Edgar Allan Poe wrote "the Wissahiccon is of so remarkable a loveliness that, were it flowing in England, it would be the theme of every bard, and the common topic of every tongue." (See Diana Royer, "Edgar Allan Poe's 'Morning on the Wissahiccon': An Elegy for His Penn Magazine Project," Pennsylvania History 61 (1994): 318–31, quotation on 326.) David Contosta and Carol Franklin have produced a book (I will call it that for convenience) as beautiful as the Wissahickon itself. Historians have written about oceans (the modern trend in Atlantic history), seas (Fernand Braudel's monumental three-volume history of the Mediterranean), and rivers (Susan Stranahan on the Susquehanna). But if there has ever been a four-volume scholarly (yet popular) 900-page history of a creek, with hundreds of illustrations, many in color, I have missed it.