The Rivers of America Series is a landmark series of books on American rivers, for the most part written by literary figures rather than historians. The series spanned three publishers and thirty-seven years. Known as the "Great River" to early colonists, The Housatonic etches a 115-mile-long valley from its headwaters near Pittsfield, Mass. to its harbor in Long Island Sound between Bridgeport and New Haven. A region "apart from the common restlessness...