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2024 Season Open Dates:
Friday, May 24, 2024 – Monday, October 14, 2024
10am – 5pm | Open 7 days a week, including holidays
ADKX Research Library is open year round by appointment only.
In the Adirondack Library
This is a virtual program.
Corinth, New York, once home to International Paper’s historic Hudson River Mill, forms the backdrop for this thoughtful and often amusing memoir set in the 1960s. Centered on the experiences of a hometown boy who worked at the Mill in the summer of 1969 before leaving for college, The Beater Room Boys casts an insightful eye on the pulp and paper industry’s outsized influence on the social, economic, and environmental history of the town.
Stephen Cernek was raised in Corinth, New York and worked five summers for International Paper at his hometown’s Hudson River Mill during college. After earning a Ph.D., he taught American history at several New England colleges. Since the closure of the Hudson River Mill in 2002, he has published several articles on the early history of the pulp and paper industry and the cultural history of the upper Hudson River. The Beater Room Boys: Growing Up in an Adirondack Mill Town, and Hudson River Reflections: The Peculiar History of an Adirondack Mill Town were published in 2024.