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''At all costs, this site needed to be preserved,'' Mr. [John G. Testa] said. ''To have 40 acres preserved in one deal is very significant for a city of our size.'' ''We are a city that likes to determine its own outcomes and not have anything dictated to us,'' Mr. Testa said. ''In particular, we are very sensitive to our preservation needs.'' ''We have to be very pragmatic about our city and choose developers who are willing to take an environmental approach,'' he explained. ''We are hoping other cities are inspired by us.''

Frank LaVardera, a principal with Clough Harbour & Associates, an engineering and consulting firm in Albany that has been hired by the developer, said the project was helped by the fact that the landfill is flat. ''It's not your classic characteristic large mound that you see in most landfills,'' he said. ''In this case, the topographic configuration lends itself to what we're planning.'' CB Richard Ellis, a global real estate services firm, has been hired to lure companies to the northern part of the county. Paul Hoffmann, a vice president for the CB Richard Ellis's offices in Stamford, described Peekskill as an ''untapped market,'' conveniently located near the Bear Mountain Bridge and Route 9, a major north-south road. There is also rail service to Grand Central Terminal on the Metro-North Hudson line. ''That deal will take another old problem from the middle of the last century off our hands,'' he said. ''It's a natural to think about more commercial development, and not just more housing, up here.''

For nearly 10 years, the all-Republican City Council here tried to spark a downtown renaissance by luring artists to settle in the large empty storefronts along its once busy main streets. In the spring, a few artists and activists stirred up trouble at City Council meetings. They videotaped their antics at the meetings and broadcast them on local public access television. The city retaliated, first by restricting their time to speak, then by having them arrested. On Tuesday, a group of renegade Republicans were swept into office in an election crowded with candidates. The dissident Republican candidate for mayor, John J. Kelly 3rd, won with 50 percent of the vote. Eileen R. Yajure, a Democrat, followed with 38 percent, a surprising showing for a party that couldn't even field a candidate in other years. Councilwoman Catherine E. Pisani, an incumbent who in a normal election season would have had an edge in her bid for mayor, trailed with only 9 percent.

Sixty years ago political divisions in the United States ran even deeper than today's name-calling showdowns between the left and right. Back then, to call someone a communist was to threaten that person's career, family, freedom, and, sometimes, life itself. Hysteria about the \"red menace\" mushroomed as the Soviet Union tightened its grip on Eastern Europe, Mao Zedong rose to power in China, and the atomic arms race accelerated. Spy scandals fanned the flames, and headlines warned of sleeper cells in the nation's midst--just as it does today with the \"War on Terror.\" In his new book,The Fear Within, Scott Martelle takes dramatic aim at one pivotal moment of that era. On the afternoon of July 20, 1948, FBI agents began rounding up twelve men in New York City, Chicago, and Detroit whom the U.S. government believed posed a grave threat to the nation--the leadership of the Communist Party-USA. After a series of delays, eleven of the twelve \"top Reds\" went on trial in Manhattan's Foley Square in January 1949. The proceedings captivated the nation, but the trial quickly dissolved into farce. The eleven defendants were charged under the 1940 Smith Act with conspiring to teach the necessity of overthrowing the U.S. government based on their roles as party leaders and their distribution of books and pamphlets. In essence, they were on trial for their libraries and political beliefs, not for overt acts threatening national security. Despite the clear conflict with the First Amendment, the men were convicted and their appeals denied by the U.S. Supreme Court in a decision that gave the green light to federal persecution of Communist Party leaders--a decision the court effectively reversed six years later. But by then, the damage was done. So rancorous was the trial the presiding judge sentenced the defense attorneys to prison terms, too, chilling future defendants' access to qualified counsel. Martelle's story is a compelling look at how American society, both general and political, reacts to stress and, incongruously, clamps down in times of crisis on the very beliefs it holds dear: the freedoms of speech and political belief. At different points in our history, the executive branch, Congress, and the courts have subtly or more drastically eroded a pillar of American society for the politics of the moment. It is not surprising, then, thatThe Fear Withintakes on added resonance in today's environment of suspicion and the decline of civil rights under the U.S. Patriot Act.