Book excerpt: The Shenandoah Valley is widely renowned for its beauty and its idyllic landscape of farms, fields, historic towns, and Civil War battlefields. Framed to the east and west by the majestic Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains, the region is defined by the river made famous in the 1882 song "Oh, Shenandoah." The highly regarded painter Andrei Kushnir has spent years traveling throughout every corner of the Shenandoah Valley, capturing its myriad landscapes and architectural features with panache and an extraordinary appreciation for place. The paintings collected here highlight Kushnir's rare ability to paint any landscape before him--pastoral or industrial, recreational or social, rural or urban, riparian or agricultural--all the while working out in the elements, en plein air. By organizing Kushnir's paintings along highways US 11, US 340, and VA 42, enabling travelers to follow the paintings in geographical order, the book captures the Shenandoah Valley and its famous river in a uniquely comprehensive and intuitive way. In addition to the 263 plein-air paintings, Oh, Shenandoah presents in-depth historical and curatorial essays by Warren R. Hofstra, William M. S. Rasmussen, and Jeffrey C. Everett about the Valley and Kushnir's significant contribution to our understanding of it, adding a rich, textual component to complement Kushnir's artistry. Distributed for George F. Thompson Publishing