CONTACT: Mr. Michael Aikey, 518-581-5100

FOR RELEASE: Saturday, Jul 24, 2010

SARATOGA SPRINGS , NY (07/21/2010)-- The author of Bloody Mohawk, a history of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution in the Mohawk River Valley will speak at the New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center on Saturday July 24. Richard Berleth, a professor of communications at St. Francis College in New York City, will speak at 1 p.m. and be available to sign copies of his books afterwards. Berleth, who holds at doctorate in English Literature from Rutgers University, and has also worked in marking and advertising at Time/Life Books, McGrawhill, and Simon and Schuster, is also the author of several other books. Blood Mohawk: The French and Indian War & American Revolution on New York's Frontier examines the impact of the final clash between the English and French for the control of North America, and the American Revolution that followed on the settlers of the Mohawk Valley. During the French and Indian War that began in 1756, Mohawk Valley towns were raided, plundered, and sometimes, as with Schenectady, virtually wiped off the map. In the American Revolution, patriots wrenched the Mohawk Valley from British interests and the Iroquois nations at fearsome cost. When the fighting was over, the valley lay in ruins and as much as two-thirds of its population lay dead or had been displaced. New York State Historian Robert Weibel said that Berleth's book " creates an exceptional narrative here that is forever driven by the unique geography of the Mohawk Valley, as well as by the people who settled there from the powerful Iroquois, to avaricious European fur traders, to the colonials who fought in and ultimately won a series of devastating eighteenth-century wars." The New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center The New York State Military museum houses over 10,000 artifacts dating from the Revolutionary War to the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that relate to New York State's military forces, the state's military history and the contributions of New York's veterans. The artifacts include uniforms, weapons, artillery pieces, and art. A significant portion of the museum's collection is from the Civil War. The museum also owns the largest collection of state battle flags in the country and the largest collection of Civil War flags in the world. Of the over 2,000 flags in the collection, more than 60% are from the Civil War. The library and archive holdings in the Veterans Research Center include a 2000 volume library of military and New York State history, over 6,000 photographs, unit history files, broadsides, scrapbooks, letters and maps.