America Through Time: Abandoned Upstate New York (Paperback)

In order to obtain the material for this book, the author had to be very brave, not only to enter and explore long abandoned buildings, but to commit clear acts of trespassing. As the title implies, the author entered and explored buildings in upstate New York, homes and factories, that had long been abandoned. In doing this, it was necessary to navigate around roof cave-ins, damaged floors and walls and massive and dangerous amounts of mold. He openly talks about always being outfitted with a respirator. Long was also armed with a camera and the pictures that he took are interesting and saddening. It is unfortunate that so many structures that were once beautiful and useful have simply been abandoned to allow nature to slowly encroach in reclaiming the contents for recycling. Some of the buildings are massive former factories and much of the infrastructure, such as wiring, and equipment remain. This book is a quick and interesting read. In many ways the images show one of the inefficiencies of capitalism, where it is more cost effective to simply let buildings rot rather than repurposing them.