Massachusetts Books

After reading through this technical note, I feel that I now know more about the use of deterministic and random signals for impulse response determination than I know about my own soul.

I'm a tour guide for the Boston area, and I frequently use this book for reference. I love this book. I've had to buy it twice because I ruined my first copy by reading it so much and taking it everywhere. It's small, light and totally portable, so if your here walking the trail it's the perfect companion. If your not here walking the trail, you should be! This book will take you step by step through the Freedom Trail, give you really good suggestions and directions, and bombard you with useful and interesting historical information. It also provides the times, and admission fees for sites. Basically, it is your very own tour guide minus the crowd and rush of the tour (not to mention the over enthusiastic, babbling, yet good natured guide). Take your time, learn and enjoy!

This proceedings includes papers that were presented at the 10th International Conference on Cold Fusion held in Cambridge, MA, in August 2003. Following the initial announcements by Martin Fleischmann and Stan Pons in 1989 of an excess heat effect in electrolysis experiments with PdD, both theoretical and experimental work has been pursued by scientists seeking to understand the excess heat and related phenomena. Similarly, following the announcement of Steve Jones of low-level nuclear emissions from TiD, scientists have continued to explore the effect. Recent results in these areas and other areas were reported in more than 90 proceedings papers included in this proceedings. Topics reported on include: [1] experiments on excess heat, calorimetry, correlation of excess heat and helium, laser-induced excess heat; [2] tritium production; [3] transmutation, including elemental and isotopic anomalies, the Iwamura experiment, and other observations; [4] nuclear emissions from metal deuterides; [5] theory.

The conference was very strong technically. Because of the success of this conference, DoE conducted a review of cold fusion in 2004.

A personal account of Professor Derrick Bell's protest of Harvard Law School's refusal to offer tenure to a woman of color. Bell, the first Black tenured Professor at Harvard Law, made it clear from the beginning that he did not wish to be a token member of the faculty. Professor Bell took a leave of absence in protest after years of waiting for the Harvard faculty hiring committee to offer tenure to a women of color. An insightful, retrospective look at each decision Bell made, the effects his choices had on many of the players, and the invaluable lessons he learned from the experience. This book is a must for anyone who desires to continue the struggle for equality and social justice. Essential for activists and organizers.

This is another masterpiece by the literary genius Ishmael Reed. His poetry is as delighting as his famous prose and points to a deep appreciation of African-American heritage and culture that we should all aspire to. Unlike many who try and deny the presence of a continuous traditional african religion, Reed here celebrates and illuminates his readers.

This is a wonderfully readable book about the history of the Connecticut River published in 1947, before the river got cleaned up at all. Mr. Hard covers everything from an overview of the geology of the River to its discovery by Europeans and its settlement, first by the Dutch and then by the British. He writes of crossings (ferries and bridges) to some degree, of the first steam boats (before Fulton!), and quite a bit about the decline of the fishery. This is largely a history book about the Connecticut River Valley, and I highly recommend it for those interested in this topic.

Bell builds on his previous work "The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition"; whose content is alluded to in the subtitle for this work. Chapters two thru five of this book are revisions and summaries of parts of the previous work. What is new to this book are its introductory memoir "On Becoming an African American Scholar," its Introduction, chapters one and six thru eight, and the conclusion. A professor of English at Pennsylvania State U., Bell both expansively and acutely deals with the body of African American literature. His knowledge of this field is encyclopedic. While sharing in the common origin of the folk literature, African American literature nonetheless reflects broader literary movements such as neorealism, modernism, and postmodernism. Such authors have also had the outstanding talent and creativity to develop distinctive styles and voices. This voluminous, comprehensive study also ranges to what Bell terms "paraliterature," which might also be called popular literature. This includes pulp fiction, formulaic adventure stories, supernatural tales, romances, science fiction, mystery and crime, and gay literature. Bell does not force these greatly diversified genres ranging from the enduring literary works of Richard Wright and Toni Morrison to the science fiction of Ray Delany and the mysteries of Walter Mosby into a procrustean bed of the folk tale sources of all. Rather, his ingenious linking of them together while doing justice to their uniqueness creates a constellation of African American literature which is both a guide to it and inducement for exploration of it.

I loved this book--it's chock full of images and great info for historical research I needed for the area. Jim Gould definately ~knows~ the area. Highly recommend for anyone interested in lower Cape research or anyone who just likes to learn about days by-gone.

I read this a long time ago as a high-school student and liked it very much. I look forward to reading it again soon.

What other state can claim as many notable small towns as does the Empire State? Cooperstown, Lake Placid, Sleepy Hollow, Woodstock, Watkins Glen, Chautauqua, Corning, Saratoga Springs, West Point, Oyster Bay, several Hamptons, Ticonderoga, Seneca Falls-- Norman Rockwell (who lived a short walk across the state line) might just have been a tad jealous. Only the first and last make it into this book, and just as well. When Country Roads Press sends America's top small-town journalist through America's top small-town state, you don't want to waste him on places you already know.

Bill Kauffman (of Batavia and Elba) has milked a career out of keeping the leaders of the land's great Lost Causes from, as he puts it, "going down the memory hole", in books such as America First! and With Good Intentions, and in frequent pieces in The Wall Street Journal, American Enterprise, Chronicles, Liberty and other magazines. Here he applies the same special talent to a "second tier" of New York villages, and one wonders if he chose these particular communities for an unusual richness in odd stories and characters, or whether he'd have dug these up anywhere he went.

Kauffman's at his best at home in the western snout of the state, where he unlocks the somewhat feudal nature of Geneseo, LeRoy and Angelica. (The obscurer the town, the more fun he has with it.) The pump industry of Seneca Falls, a quarter of the world's total, gets as much of his attention as the distaff business there. And why not? Sanitation has saved more lives than medicine. Hundreds of millions owe their lives to this important town, celebrated for the all the wrong reasons.

His subjects have given us three presidents, Mormonism, women's suffrage and colored gelatin, but if there's something else of note in town, Bill'l let us know. (And if it's in the next town over, he'll cheat and go there.)

Further afield Kauffman's more the tourist, especially across the "soda/pop" line, which is not as close to the city as he imagines. Cooperstown is not quite as cute as he paints it-- indeed, one of its charms is the relative lack of the boutique pollution that has ruined many similar places. And couldn't he find a "country town" left on Long Island? That in itself is sad. However, his analysis of the Burned-Over District is so sharp it will inspire the reader to try his hand at the built-over districs as well.

Finally, some things to look for which aren't in the book (and may no longer exist):

Westfield-- the weird, wing-shaped Theatre Motel and Drive-In on the lake;

Bath (in the Hammondsport chapter)-- the Chat-a-Wyle Café and its grape pie;

Palmyra-- where Winston Churchill's grandparents married, perhaps not in one of the four churches at the intersection;

Oneonta (in the Cooperstown chapter)-- the book mentions the NY-P League team there, but check out their Depression-era ballpark in the Susquehanna valley, one of the handsomest settings in all the sport. (And in "Soccertown, USA", no less.)