Downtown, Up River

"In the mid-1800s, Thoreau said Bangor stood on the banks of the Penobscot 'like a star on the edge of the night.' The city, he said, still hewed at the forest of which it was built and overflowed with the refinements of Europe. But by the 1970s, the Queen City was a different place, a declining city struggling to remember its faded glory, grappling with an uncertain future, and shaking from the devastating consequences of urban renewal."--Back cover.