Massachusetts Books

I purchased this title as part of an effort to understand what happened to my family when my father was fired and was subsequently unable to replace his job. The book was almost unbearably sad to read, but it rang absolutely true to the way I remember this crisis and its effect on my father and our family, especially the overwhelming sense of shame we all lived with. Mr. Cottle lists his research and statistics in the first chapter, and then he simply tells stories of trauma experienced by the various men he interviewed. The stories haunt you long after you've put the book back on the shelf. They make you wonder how to really help these men and their families. And you're also left with a more compassionate view of the long-term unemployed. They aren't lazy, useless folks to be disposed of, but human beings with souls who have experienced what amounts to a life tragedy. They need our compassion, not our judgment.

This book gives the reader a vivid sense of life in another time and place--in this case the mid-nineteenth century in a rather special part of New England. You are told how Lenox, though hardly more than a village, became the center of an extraordinary convergence of money, art, and intellectual power.
The story is presented through histories of more than a dozen prominent families and of the houses they built--houses that, while less grand than those built in Lenox later in the century, were notable for taste and style.
Among memorable figures of this "Tanglewood Circle" were the novelist Catharine Maria Sedgwick, whose books drew admirers to Lenox from all over the world; the "boisterous and burly" Henry Ward Beecher, a minister famed nationally for his rousing sermons; and the legendary English actress Fanny Kemble who gave Shakespearian readings at the courthouse and was known for her daredevil riding exploits.
The lead actor on the Lenox scene was Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived for a year and a half in a little Red House on the Tappan family's Tanglewood property. During this time he wrote two of his classics, The House of Seven Gables and The Wonder Book, to which he would later add Tanglewood Tales. His stay was not long, but he left the permanent stamp of his strange, reclusive personality and fascinating imagination on the town's history.

Richard Jackson, Heartwall (University of Massachusetts Press, 2000)

I have a thing for difficult books. I have never been sure why this is, but the books that rank among my favorites every year are often those that I find well-night impossible to get through. Case in point: Heartwall, Richard Jackson's slim (sixty-eight pages) volume on which I spent a total of thirty-seven days.

The language here is clear, precise, and exceptionally thick. This is not a book for casual reading. But like the best difficult books, the reward for picking your way through the verbal forest is often immense, and wending your way through a Richard Jackson poem, especially in this volume, is never less than pleasurable:

...Occasionally, you can hear
the whispers of mollusks, the air in the hawk's wing.
How is it possible to describe any of this?
Fish dream of a moon that rests on the water
like a lily pad, and that moment is enough.
(--"Possibility")

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It will definitely be on my top ten reads of the year list for 2005. **** ½

This book was published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 2005 and complements nicely its issuance this year of an important annotated and corrected version of Henry Adams' "Education." The MHS hosted a conference on Adams in 2001 and the book consists of the published papers that originated at that conference. Like any collective effort, some papers are outstanding and others not so much so. Generally speaking, though, the caliber of essays is quite high, and students of Adams should rejoice in its publication. I enjoyed especially Ormond Seavey on HA and Henry Cabot Lodge; Richard Androne's examination of "John Randolph"; the late Charles Vandersee's discussion of HA's "Unwritten American Travels"; and J.C. Levinson's stimulating piece on HA, Grant, and "Practicing History in the Age of Darwin." But almost without exception, each essay is superbly done and written with clarity and insight into Adams. While it helps to have a solid grounding in HA and his activities, I think even those who are new to this fascinating character will find the book of interest and value. For those more deeply conversant with Adams, the book becomes a true intellectual feast.

The 22nd Massachusetts Infantry was raised through the efforts of Republican senator Henry Wilson. It met its first trial by fire at Yorktown. Later, the regiment suffered tremendous casualties at Gaines' Mill. The regiment, part of the Fifth Corps, was engaged at Malvern Hill, Shepherdstown, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. At Gettysburg, the 22nd Massachusetts and the 2nd Company Massachusetts Sharpshooters, which was attached to the regiment, were engaged in the wheatfield, near the Rose woods. In 1864, the regiment served in the Wilderness and Spotsylvania battles, losing a large portion of its rank and file. Due to its heavy losses throughout the war, the 22nd Massachusetts Infantry earned the distinction of being one of Fox's "Fighting 300" Union regiments. Included is information about the 2nd Company of Massachusetts Sharpshooters and the 3rd Light Battery, both of which were attached to the 22nd Massachusetts.

Like the book My wife and I like going to new places for a weekend .

This series stands out from other hiking books for its organization and informational approach. Best feature: for each hike there is an elevation graph which displays a line which represents a cross-section of the trail. The line rises and falls with the elevation of the hike. This feature alone is worth the price of the book, as you can tell at a glance how steep your hike will be. The book also has a generous helping of maps and photos, and generous informational sidebars (where to eat, schedule, fees, surface, who owns the land, what other trail users you can expect, and more more more).

One of the best books of poetry written. As entertaining and reflective as it gets.

If you're a native of this state, this book would be fantastic as a coffee table book, or as part of a library's reference collection. At more than 150 oversized pages, replete with full-color illustrations, it contains vastly more information than one might anticipate. But this doesn't mean the book is confusing -- far from it.

This atlas is organized into two primary sections. First, there is "The Historical Landscape," which focuses mainly upon more hard-nosed ways of viewing the human experience. By this I mean that it deals with political and economic power, and how they were manifested, both in the colonial period and as part of the United States. I hasten to add that this section starts out with a terrific set of maps about the native American presence in Massachusetts, prior to Verrazano, and prior to the Pilgrims. Maps show specifically where the most ancient native settlements were located, shortly after the Ice Age. Moving forward, they help us see how local tribal groups divided up the state territory; they show locations of native villages and footpaths; and detail interactions between tribes and early traders and explorers. The rest of this section breaks up the colonial period via a variety of helpful, cartographic means, such as the spread of towns across the state, and depictions of colonial Boston in various stages. Next, it deals with Massachusetts after the industrial and American revolutions. Demographic trends are helpfully depicted pictorially, such as Boston's burgeoning growth over the decades; the spread of railroads; and the growing number of wage-earners statewide.

The second section of this useful tome tends more toward the "soft sciences," although it is somewhat equivocally entitled "The Political and Social Landscape." This part of the atlas includes chapters giving cartographic presentations of "Women and Society," "Ethnicity and Race," "Health and the Social Order," and "Architecture and the Built Environment." Subsequent chapters in this section focus on technological developments, such as communications, transportation, and energy, and how these issues have affected Massachusetts demographics. The book ends with an interesting little chapter on the Quabbin Reservoir, and its environmental and social impact.

Don't miss the terrific bibliography, in the section near the end called "Sources." There is a helpful statistical appendix also, giving various figures for each town, going up to 1995. The 1995 figures were projected (this book came out in 1991).

One of my personal favorite maps in this book is on page 5, where the authors helpfully present a breakdown of the origins of Massachusetts town names. We see that most are named after English towns, while quite a few take their names from early Puritan or American settlers. Native American place names are fairly well represented in town names (Mattapoisett, Seekonk, Agawam, Scituate, etc.) as, of course, in the name of our state.

This book is not only useful, it's also fascinating and fun. I'd recommend it to anyone... I've reviewed a lot of books on Amazon.com, and because I usually review what I like, I tend to give a lot of stars. This one makes me wish I was more cautious in my awarding of stars, so my five star ranking of this great book would mean more.

Volumes III and IV are available from The Jewett Family of America, Box 254, Rowley MA 01969 Contact Ted Herrmann, Publisher, at 201 569-6611 or Ted Loranz, V.P. at 508 429-8750. Library of Congress No. 95-81192. Original Volumes I and II were published in 1908.

Description: Two volumes, hard-bound with title stamped in gold. 1,758 pages, hundreds of illustrations, Jewett genealogical data concentrating on period 1908-1995, with newly assigned JFA numbers of family members. The alphabetically arranged INDEX covers every name found in BOTH volumes. There is some detail on the Norman origins of the Jewett name and some history of the Jewett Coat-of-Arms, including derivation, French roots in Jouatte, Jouett, Jowitt, etc. Also contains a copy of the orignal Charter of the Jewett Family of America from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 1910.

Size 6-1/2 x 9-3/4" emulating the size and style of the first two volumes I and II by Dr. Frederick Clarke Jewett, printed in 1908. Endpaper illustrations include a map of the original Ezekiel Rogers plantation established at Rowley, MA in 1639; a Civil War political cartoon; pen and ink wash drawing by William Samuel Lyon Jewett of New York Harbor in 1871 entitled "Sail and Steam"; and a reproduction of original sheet music written for the first National JFA (Jewett Family of America) Reunion in 1855.