When I started leafing through this one, I said, "This may be the greatest book ever published." Hyperbole, yes, but there's something incredibly compelling about The Old Leather Man. He was a mysterious and eccentric figure who spent thirty years of the late 19th century walking the same 365-mile circuit through the woods and small towns of New York and Connecticut, maintaining a clockwork-like schedule despite all weather and hardship. To this day, no one knows exactly who he was or what drove him, but Dan DeLuca's study balances all the truth and all the conjecture. He assembles contemporary accounts from local reporters and photographers and sprinkles in just a bit of 21st-century analysis, and in so doing, creates a remarkable account of a bygone age and community. It's a beautifully produced book as well, filled with illustrations and maps, and exactly as long as it should be. At 144 pages, it seems to contain all that's known about the Leather Man and not a stitch more; this minor figure isn't aggrandized unnecessarily, but he's fleshed out fully. In the end, the mystery isn't dispelled, it's enriched.

An obscure bit of history; an intriguing read about a mysterious character. ( )