Rhode Island Books

This guidebook is divided into eight sections by geographic region, with a top-level map up front and detailed maps of each location by section. The entire book is black and white, but the maps and pictures are still crystal clear. The opening chapter is an index referencing any subject one could want to find in Rhode Island, from ballooning to antiques to quahogs to yachting. I was most impressed with the "Green Spaces" section for each region, listing dozens of outdoor parks and activities available in the Ocean State. While there are certainly other more detailed outdoor guidebooks to Rhode Island, they haven't been updated recently, and this is a great overview guide to the riches of "green space" available in Little Rhody. Also included are beaches with recommendations about what outdoor activities are appropriate at each. Plus, if you want to visit historic houses, historic churches, historic mansions, or general historic sites, this is the state and the guidebook for you.

For Activities, price information is noticeably missing. Perhaps detailed prices date a guidebook too much, but as a traveler, I'd like to get an idea whether this boat excursion or that historic house is within my general budget. Restaurants, on the other hand, are broken into price categories, and include terse yet informative descriptive information about the cuisine, location, and atmosphere. As a native, I'm well aware that hotels in Rhode Island are just plain more expensive than they are in other parts of the country. If you want to sleep in luxury, you can find some great direction from this guide. For a deal, I'd recommend utilizing Internet search engines. The low single-dollar-sign category in this book refers to hotels under a "mere" $95 (as of 2000).

There is something to be said for compact guidebooks, and this is not one. It is a generously oversized paperback with thick pages and both large fonts and margins. This isn't a book to tuck into your extra backpack pocket when trekking around. Then again, all that extra text left the authors room to inform me that Goddard Park was man-made by two generations of owners and is cited as one of the best man-made forestry projects of all time. Now, that's a new fact to try out on my parents!

This is a great book! Every time I am stumped on a local history question I can turn to this book and find the answer painlessly. As a guide to restaurants and attractions it just can't be beat. I recommend this book to locals and visitors as a great reference source.

A handy sized, informative guide to rivers in our area. We have used this to plan numerous trips on rivers and have found the guide to be (relatively) accurate and easy to use. Having said that, we discovered (duh!) that rivers change over time and that this guide is a great STARTING point for trip planning. Good scouting and maybe talking to people with experience on the river in question are valuable parts of good trip prep. There is a website for the book where people can submit changes or inaccuracies that they have discovered - this helps to keep the guide current. All in all one of the best we've looked at.

My whole family - my generation, plus my parents and grandparents - grew up sailing in Newport and had ties to the America's Cup races. I like having all of the historical photos in one book. Well worth the purchase price - it brings back so many fond memories.

I found the atlas to be very accurate, easy to read and most of all a great deal for the price. I used it extensively on my New England vacation and highly recommend it to anyone who plans to visit the New England states.

This is an enormous book in physical extent, too large for a standard book shelf if set in with spine out, probably 12 by 15 inches in landscape format. It is the equivalent of a Navy "cruise book",an Army basic training mug book, or an academic class year book.
I hav not seen this in some twenty years so bear with me. I first encountered it in the University of Texas-Austin library in 1975. Later I saw a copy on the loose but at that time I was broke.
For its genre this is an excellent production. The battery was part of a National Guard regiment raised from wel-to-do college men from New England. As is typical of such memory books, it contains many pictures of unit members at work and play, a chronology, some recounting of the soldiers' activities, and phtos of all the unit members.
This is not a must for one seeking history. One shourld rather seek out other books; detialed "Our National Military Problem" by Capt Irving Goff McCann recounting the encounters of a typical Guard officer along with politcal and social comments. Nor is it as derailed as the substantial memoir by Roger Batchelder of EM life in a machne gun company. These two books I have had for many, many years and have reread them several times over seeking details of aoldier life and the Guardsmens' experiences. To most of the Guardmen, from humid areas in the East and Midwest the arid border was as foreign as would have been a trip to Africa.
There would probably be as many of these memoirs and memory books as there were for the Phillipine War of 1899-1902, much less thsn those of the War with Spain, and buried by the thousands published on the War Between the States. But this was not to be for soon after the last Guard units went home in early 1917, they were remobilized for the Great War. During the course of the mobiization for modern warfare,the Organized Militia Units were combined or disbanded, and many of the "gentlemen rankers", the middle and upper class men who had been on the border as EM were promoted to officer ranks and moved on A few WW I unit histories include brief sections on their pre-war predecessors but very few. Thus the insitutional memory of the Border faded almost immediately. There was never the equivalent of the Order of the Caribou, organized from officers who served in the Phillipines, or the unit reunions ehich occrred for the Rought Riders.
Worth having if you are a completist but not vital as a historical work.

I give this cookbook as gifts all the time. I've had it myself for years and I enjoy cooking from it. It is truly "New England" cooking and the recipes are fantastic!

All criminal lawyers in Providence are in grave danger of demonic possession.

Find and make friends with someone proficient in Voodoo - their talents can come in handy.

You never know what you will find in an antique shop in Rhode Island

This is an excellent book. I highly recommend it for its honesty and depth. Thank you Arlene Violet for being an excellent role model for women as the first nun to earn a law degree from the state of Rhode Island -- and for using your education for a higher purpose. MORE POWER TO WOMEN!

I came across this book on a holiday in Crete. It looked like one of thousands of war stories. But it was not. It turned out to be one of the most absorbing books I ever read. The book is a completely true and accurate story about a Cretan dispatch runner in the British intelligence service seen from the Cretan side. As his translator and former superior intelligence officer, Patrick Leigh Fermor, put it:
"...like a Rualla beduin, by sudden miracle of literacy, had given us the Arab version of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom!"
By some terrible error the author and dispatch runner, Georgio Psychoundakis, was imprisoned as a deserter after the war. He spent 16 months in jail in spite of beeing honoured by the British with BEM. There, in jail, in desperation he wrote down everthing he could remember from his time in the British service.
The reading of this very well written book has painted a most fascinating picture of Crete, its people and their resistance to the blood soaked german occupation. All seen through the eyes of the dispatch runner.
Through this book he has given a face to all the anonymus and ordinary people of Crete who fought for their freedom of their country.
The book can also be used as a most magnetic travelling guide covering the sentral Crete.
In later years Georgio Psychoudakis translated the works of Homer to Cretan dialect. En impressive feat for a scholar. Not to speak of a shepherd with two or three years of occational education.
He is now (2005) 85 yars and living in Xania, Crete.

Just a simple 4 stars for Mr Schroder and Ms Emma for their book about the Seabees at Davisville, Rhode Island. Excellent photographic history of this unique military organization. The Navy Seabees continue to be an important part of our military.