Maryland Books

The book presents a complicated topic about as clearly as can possibly be done, without watering it down excessively. Quite a superb job, all in all. If you think you might be interested in the subject matter, you will probably be happy with this book.

As a Maryland resident, I've eaten at many of the restaurants included in the book. There are some great seafood dishes and for me, many memories as well.

As franchises, strip malls,highways, fast food and outlets become more prevelant in America, it is refreshing and enlightening to read John Sherwood's, "Maryland's Vanishing Lives." His colorful and poignant portraits of ways of life in Maryland (a one-room schoolhouse;Tool bridge operator etc.) are a reminder of how things have been, but are quickly giving way to the mass marketing approach in our nation. Sherwood preserves the varied ways of life that are quickly going by the wayside in our impersonal age, and does so with an exquisite human touch. Bravo!

If you lived in Maryland, but now live someplace else and sometimes pine for good old fashioned Maryland cooking, this is the book for you. The recipes run from "Mock Turtle" soup (made with a calf's head) to "Green Tomato Soy" sauce. But what you probably are looking for is seafood recipes. Of course there are crabcake recipes as well as baked rock fish and fried oysters. But do you have a recipe for "Oyster Pye"? If not, this is the place to get the recipe.
Just so you don't think all Marylanders eat is seafood, there is also many recipes for meat as well as poultry. There are also some awesome dessert recipes, such as strawberry rhubarb pie as well as lemon cookies.

If you've missed the taste of Maryland cooking, or maybe you just want to find out about this regional cusine, you should by the book.

I think it was a great book and it teaches you a lot about Maryland Its past and present.

Maryland is not a state many people think of when they consider a travel destination. That, of course, doesn't mean that Maryland isn't dense with cultural, historical, and natural treasures. This book covers all of them in fine detail, with an emphasis on the cultural and historical. It's not a travel guide per se, but more of an historical and cultural survey of the state's towns and institutions. That said, it covers them exhaustively. I lived in Maryland for almost 20 years, in Frederick County, and I've not found a better portrait of that beautiful part of the United States anywhere. Want to know this little, modest border state? Read this book.

Jane Sewell, who unfortunately died earlier this year (with a glowing obituary in THE SUN), was one of the best historians Maryland has ever had. Her ability to combine brevity with comprehensiveness shines nowhere better than in this volume on Maryland's 200 year history in American medicine.

Ms. Sewell touches on all aspects of the state's medical history, from the heyday of Baltimore medicine (which, thanks to Johns Hopkins and UM, continues to this day) to the impoverished conditions of the state's western and southern fringes. The grand scope of this book is executed with such mastery of content, voice, and detail that I would not hesitate to call this one the most outstanding histories of medicine ever written. I found the chapters both informative and inspiring, and advise any person studying or practicing medicine in the Free State to secure a copy for his or her library.

Jim Tigner and Schiffer Publishing have done another excellent Job on this Book on Chesapeake and North Beach Calvert County Post Cards...Many of the Cards featured,I had never found in all the years of collecting ...Great Photos of Seaside Park!!!..I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this Book for Folks that remember the Twin Beaches the way they used to be......Keep up the Good Work!!!..Jim Gscheidle

Bode's biography of Mencken changed my life, in that is was an introduction to the Baltimore critic Mencken's role in shaping libertarian thought and appreciation. Actually, I daydreamed back in college through a linguistics class that used Mencken's American Language textbook, but it took Bode's biography to teach me how important Mencken was to realism and the fight against puritans and Big Government pablum. While I ignored the classics in school, Bode's story of Mencken's critique of the great writers of the 20's and 30's gave me a list of books to read. As a libertarian Mencken's favorites -- Theodore Dreiser, Joseph Conrad, Sinclair Lewis, etc. -- have delighted me as much as Bode's biography. The lonely, creative individualist in Dreiser's "The Genius" and Conrad's "Victory" is the same character that Mencken is. For that matter, Ayn Rand seems to be in a similar class as Mencken. Thank God I stumbled upon Bode's book.

This handy 224 page compendium covers in a dozen articles the broad sweep of Maryland history from the Civil War to the mid-1960s. The Civil War section details, for example, local Confederate sentiment, bloody Antietam, failed rifle technology, and the nursing care that the Sisters of Charity gave the wounded. Additional entries discuss economic development, the Antietam Ironworks, black ironworkers, and the textile industry. Concluding chapters cover John Brown, philanthropist Margaret Williams, and the Antiwar Protest. Each article appears complete with illustrations, endnotes, and extensive bibliographies. A fine companion to the earlier Mid-Maryland: A Crossroads of History (2005). Both volumes, carefully written and skillfully edited, form rich resources for understanding some important legacies of the shared past.