Rhode Island Books

This book is for anyone interested in the sea and the maritime history of Rhode Island, New England or the United States for that matter. It is a must-have for serious scholars of the age of sail and for armchair sailors alike as it examines the exciting and sometimes scandalous past. As Donald D. Breed wrote in the Providence Journal 2/13), "Do not look for this book on the coffee tables of many of Rhode Island's first families. On the one hand it is a scholarly almost dry history of a great many extended voyages by Rhode Island mariners. But it is also an expose of the nefarious activities of those seagoing men: piracy, the slave trade, running opium. To read it is to gain a new appreciation of why the colony was known as 'Rogue's Island.'... This is a hard book to put down, the subject matter is so gripping."

I bought this for my parents as they had recently moved from California to Conn. They love this book as it has allowed them to find some great bedroom communities nearby.
A true review would be from someone who knows the area, but for outsiders this was a great purchase.

This is a good book, broken up by geographic region, to some of the popular and the less-well-known Rhode Island haunts. Most of this stuff stands the test of time, so it doesn't get outdated too fast. While some quirky stores and restaurants are mentioned, the focus is really on attractions like bridges, parks, forts, museums, gardens, and other attractions.

Murphy recounts the Newport, R.I. "scandal" of World War I. The real scandal, of course, is not the fact that gay sailors were having sex but that the U.S. Navy entrapped military personnel and civilians with a series of investigatory abuses. Then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt played a key role in this witchunt - - one of the earliest documented examples of organized Navy homophobia.

It is a truly extraordinary transformation. Thirty years ago if you were brave enough to walk around downtown Providence, Rhode Island after dark it was quite concievable that you would not encounter another human being. It was really a dreary place. And if you did happen to run into someone there was a pretty fair chance that the person was up to no good and your own personal safety may have been in jeopardy. It was not a pretty picture. So just what happened in those intervening three decades to transform Providence into one of the hottest and most admired cities in the nation? "Providence: The Renaissance City" attempts to tell that story.
Author Francis J. Leazes Jr. is a professor of Political Science and Public Administration at Rhode Island College. His co-author Mark Motte is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Geography at the same school. The authors have attempted to piece together the remarkable story that is the Providence renaissance. It is a complicated story revolving around a number of key players from varied backgrounds. The truth is that the transformation of Providence could never have taken place without the commitment of powerful political leaders at all levels of government, determined civil servants, a tireless and engaged elite who truly loved their city and entrepreneurs who became convinced that investing in Providence at that moment was the wise thing to do. The story of Providence is also about vision and being willing to make adjustments and seize opportunities as they became available. You will come to understand why certain projects like the Providence Place Mall, Waterplace Park and the relocation of the railroad tracks came to fruition while other projects seemed to stall or fail altogether. There is certainly a lot to be learned from the experiences in Providence.
While I certainly enjoyed reading "Providence: The Renaissance City" I would probably not recommend it for general audiences.
The book is more a case study and as such would be appropriate reading for anyone involved in urban planning or certainly for students interested in the future of our cities. Readers who live in the area and who are familiar with many of the places and the players would also find this to be a worthwhile read. I particularly enjoyed the "before" and "after" photos of the city. Again, the changes that have been made are stunning. All in all, a very worthwhile project and I congratulate the authors for a book that will be a fixture in local libraries for decades to come.

I did a report on Rhode Island and this book gave me tons of facts

I thought this book was very interesting. It showed pictures and a small map of the state. It talked about its attractions, history,where its people work, protecting its environment, and interesting facts.The Hello U.S.A. series is interesting to read.So is the One Nation series.

Scott Molloy is Rhode Island's foremost labor historian. Now a history professor and the University of Rhode Island, Molloy worked his way through graduate school working as a bus driver for the state's bus company. It was there that he began researching and studying the history of Rhode Island public transportation and the people who worked there.

In preparing this work, Molloy interviewed retired street car workers, poured through yellowed newspapers and dug through boxes of records sitting in the dusty corners of the bus driver's union.

His efforts have paid off. Trolley Wars tells the story of the rise of public transportation from the experiences of the people who made it work -- the workers.

This little book, almost a monograph, is a well-researched account of the 19th century beliefs that connected consumption (tuberculosis) with vampirism in the minds of many New England residents. To summarize briefly, when a relative died of consumption, s/he usually coughed up blood in the days before death occurred. Very often, other members of the household would contract the disease, which is highly contagious. Some people believed that the deceased, though buried, would return at night, longing for the company of their family, and if they could, they would see to it that they joined them in death. The custom of digging up the victim and....well, read the book if you'd like to discover what was done to prevent the dead from stealing away the living.

I was lucky enough to be given a copy of this book for review. It is wonderful. In RI, students in 4th grade study the state of Rhode Island. This book is an exceptional supplement for traditional school classroom but even more wonderful for homeschoolers. Day trip planned around each area presented in the book are a wonderful way to bring geography, history and so much more to life. I wish Amazon had this book in stock because I would buy several copies as gift for all mt daughter's homeschooling friends.