Massachusetts Books

I've been toting Elizabeth L. Dugger's new Adventure Guide to Massachusetts & Western Connecticut around for about a month now, ever since I received it. I had all the best intentions of being the first reviewer to publish my commentary on the travel guide, but with one project after another eating up my hours, I'm not sure that I can claim that honor. I have, however, really bulked up my biceps by lugging the Adventure Guide around!

In a word, the book is "massive," and before I ever lifted the cover, I was perplexed as to how Dugger could possibly have found enough bungee jumping-, cliff diving-, and vine swinging-type adventures in the stately and somewhat subdued states of Massachusetts and Connecticut to fill 496 pages! When I opened to page 113 to find a section on "Antique Shopping on Cape Cod," I was surprised and delighted to realize that the range of adventures Dugger suggests includes those that pose great danger only to my credit card balance.

In the book's introduction, Dugger explains that adventure travel "doesn't have to mean hanging from a cliff by your fingernails. " Her enormous catalog of exciting escapes includes family-friendly ideas, outdoor fun for people of all ages and abilities, out-of-the-ordinary sightseeing suggestions, and, of course, the full complement of hiking, biking, fishing, boating, and other recreational opportunities in central New England. "Adventure travel makes you feel alive, wakes you up to yourself as well as to your surroundings," Dugger explains. "Just being in open lands or along the coast, most of the time, can give you that get-away feeling. ...Adventure travel gets the blood flowing, the heart pumping."

Also the author of the Adventure Guide to New Hampshire and the Adventure Guide to Vermont, Dugger quickly debunks the notion that Massachusetts is a tamer, less challenging playground than its mountainous northern neighbors. After a brief introductory section that includes a short history of Massachusetts, a map of and information on getting to the region, road rules, and safety information on such important topics as "avoiding bears," the book is broken up into six regional chapters: the Seacoast Region, Boston and Nearby Adventures, Central Massachusetts, the Pioneer Valley, the Berkshires, and the Litchfield Hills of Connecticut. Within each geographic section, adventures are organized in category groupings: On Foot, On Horseback, On Wheels, On Water, On Snow & Ice, and In the Air. Each chapter has information on Eco-Travel and where to Stay & Eat, as well.

While the emphasis of this guide is decidedly on the outdoors and on planning a Massachusetts vacation that takes you to the lesser known attractions that the state offers, it is actually one of the most comprehensive and delightful guides to the region available. While many travel guides contain the obligatory paragraph on each historic attraction and sightseeing venue, the Adventure Guide to Massachusetts & Western Connecticut artfully leads the traveler to those awe-inspiring, stimulating, and unique excursions that are likely to make for a most memorable trip. Detailed maps, black and white photos, cute graphics, and sidebars on special events, kid-friendly and accessible spots, recommended reading, and more break up the text and make it easier for the reader to find terrific tips, even when simply skimming.

In just a quick flip through the book, I uncovered a bed & breakfast just for women (Little River Farm in Worthington, MA, 413-238-4261), a cemetery famous for its art and sculpture (The Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston, 617-524-0703), and a horseback riding outfit on the beaches of Cape Cod (Nelson's, 508-487-1112).

Dugger's enthusiasm for sharing the region's best treasures percolates from every page, and as I've spent time reading her detailed descriptions of everything from trekking with llamas in Great Barrington to sea kayaking in Plymouth Harbor, I've been constantly compelled to ask myself what in the world I'm doing here on the couch with a book when all of these adventures lie just a short drive away!

If you live within easy driving distance of Massachusetts and Western Connecticut, Dugger's Adventure Guide for this region will provide an ever-flowing stream of inspiration and encourage you to explore the wonders we sometimes overlook. And, if you're planning only a short visit to this part of the world, the guide will ensure that your moments in Massachusetts are among your most exhilarating and enjoyable.

I had heard a lot about the author's work from a friend of mine, but hadn't had an opppurtunity to read him. Finally I managed to secure this book, and I must say it is excellent. The book is primarily a collection of essays which the author writes from his own experiences. He is a countryman who has moved to the city and describes his dilemmas of living in a city as compared to the country, and the adventures he has, as he goes along making friends and understanding people in the city. There is nothing melodramatic in this work, however it is excellent literature. The author's style is superb and as you read the essays, you get a feel of the cosy atmosphere of the country and the warmth and simplicity of human relationships, which is what most of us crave for but somehow overlook. In his essays Grayson brings out simple but most profound truths about people and the process of living in general. After reading it one can't help but get the feeling that human relationships are so true, simple and beautiful. All that is required is an open, kind, friendly and fearless mind, so that we can understand (as Grayson says)and thus be at peace and in harmony with nature, ourselves, others and life in general. Overall an extremely charming, enjoyable and enlightening read.

The oft-difficult to find poetry of Robert Francis is included in this nice collection. Hopefully the publishing companies will realize that the poetry lovers out there will appreciate more Robert Francis.

From thousands of court cases in Essex, Middlesex, and Suffolk Counties, Massachusetts, dating from 1636 to 1700, Melinde Sanborn has extracted the names of all deponents and witnesses whose ages are given in the court records of those counties. Depositions provided in early court records are among the richest sources of personal information surviving from New England's first century, and Ms. Sanborn argues that "so many people in early New England were deponents for one reason or another that no biography or genealogy can be complete without a search through court records to see if a pertinent deposition exists."

For this early period, the single most useful bit of evidence included in the depositions is the age of the deponent. While most depositions vary in quality from being virtually useless to providing corroboration of marriages, wills, and deeds, ages alone provide incontrovertible value to the genealogist. Sometimes the age of a deponent was very important to a particular case. Men over sixty, for example, were often brought into court to support the claims of the ancient boundaries of litigants' property. Likewise, many older women who were experienced midwives were called upon to offer opinions on the timeliness of a birth in a fornication case.

Also, one of the most common errors in genealogical work is confusing two or more individuals of the same name. If senior or junior or tertius is not used, it is very difficult to assign events to the correct individual. Frequently, fathers and sons with the same given name came to court together, but with stated ages they are easily differentiated. Men with the same name and of the same generation can be another problem, but again a deposition with a specific age given can make all the difference.

With this index--which lists the names and ages of 11,000 deponents, and the year and source of the court records--researchers can quickly determine whether it is worthwhile to track down the original court record.

This book about Boston and Old Scollay Square was a wonderfully entertaining read. It is a well-organized and researched history of a section of Boston that from colonial times to the present has experienced change and upheaval mirroring on a smaller scale what has happened in our nation and around the world. From Revolutionary war heroes and Yankee blue-bloods to burlesque stars and government bureaucrats, Scollay Square has seen it all -- and this book captures all the sights and sounds

This research monograph utilizes narrative analysis to understand how race, class, and gender interact in the lives of women who have achieved elite positions as school superintendents. Chase shows how comfort and discomfort in telling parts of their stories of achievement and discrimination reflect the sometimes subtle constraints on these women in power positions. This book is many things: a cutting edge example of social science methodology, a work of scholarship on women who have achieved an uncommon degree of power and to whom researchers have not traditionally had access, and an analytical examination of the processes of power, constraint, empowerment and resistance. This book could be studied in gender courses, courses in qualitative methodology, and the field of educational administration. It is particularly useful in widening the horizons of ambition for women who have opted for teaching as a career. The examples of these superintendents show how how traditional feminine interests in nurturance and community welfare can be expanded to include more powerful roles, even as the challenges facing these women are daunting.

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.

In focusing on the writings of the mid-1900's women writers Dorothy Canfield, Jessie Fauset, Pearl Buck, and Josephine Herbst, Harker wants to establish a link between women writers of the pre-Civil War era, notably Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the women writers of the 1970s associated with the feminist movement. The women writers of the mid-1900s were for the most part disregarded or marginalized by critics and the public in the frenetic, masculine-charged contemporary modernist culture. Herbst discloses, however, that the four writers were in fact more in touch with the interests and values of the mainstream than the authors and artists who attracted the most attention at the time for their novel styles and in some cases, outlandish behavior. Harker is an assistant professor of English at the University of Mississippi.

The author sees in Dorothy Canfield an urge for reform. This writer also had a role in helping to put women's periodicals on a sound commercial footing so they could survive; and in surviving, unintentionally serve as examples for the greater number and variety of women's magazines to come in following decades. In contrast to the participants in urban phenomenon of the Harlem Renaissance, Jessie Fauset addressed the "authentic" black middle class largely invisible despite its size in being repressed by racism. Pearl Buck's most popular novels set in China with average Chinese persons as main characters promoted peaceable international relations and suggested a universal humanity bound with a liberal political spirit and principles. Rejecting the middle-class life style, Josephine Herbst nevertheless remained attached to it by her wicked satires of its moral failures, sham respectability, and tepid emotions.

Though none of the writers was celebrated (such as Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda), that they had some success at all as writers attests to the presence of a cohesive, vibrant middle-class society during a period when Promethean architectural projects, political mass movements, and avant-garde artists commanded the spotlight. Though Canfield and the others had to some degree colorful, contrarian lives which could hold lessons for other women, they did not write about themselves, but instead wrote in ways which illuminated the situations, prospects, outlooks, and hopes of their mostly middle-class readers disregarded by the modernists. With the four women writers and their subjects and their approaches to them, Harker throws light on the interlocking threads of the era's middle-class culture; and in so doing, brings out parts of modern culture which have generally been unrealized or ignored.

This book humanized history by relating the stories of Natalie Rothstein's emigrant ancestors, and her parents, to events in Europe and the U.S. over the past hundred years. The author has turned scholarly research into living, breathing stories. It was fascinating to me, a non-Jew, to see how the succeeding generations of American Jews yearn to know and appreciate those who have gone before. I have often observed something similar in Hawaii, where I live now. Like Rothstein, people who are three and four generations away from the Orient often return to their ancestral villages in China, Japan, the Philippines and Korea for visits at least once. I felt the same way when I finally got to England.

The book takes on a more immediate tone when we reach Rothstein's own era. Through her eyes, we experience the Thirties, Forties and Fifties. She reminds us of famous Jews in every walk of life.

Most interesting to me were the years she and her Army captain husband spent in rural Germany with their three children. He was a doctor at an Army base. What mixed emotions they felt as Americans and Jews in the country so recently dominated by Hitler and his Nazis! She's a wonderful writer, observant and thoughtful. We get the viewpoint of a well-rounded modern American woman, refreshing in these days of trashy ghost-written bimbo biographies.

An American Family reminded me somewhat of Barbara Tuchman's books (Guns of August and Night of the Generals) in that it fleshes out history and takes you there where and when it was happening.

Whether you are a casual reader or a serious garden historian, this book has something for you. It is the second of a trilogy of very fine books written on American gardening covering the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s.

While it is fascinating just to page through and you can start just about any place and enjoy yourself, it is truly indispensible if you are interested in historical gardens. This is THE bok for anyone trying to recreate a period garden to go with a house style and who wishes to know the proper design layout, plants, materials, colors and even what fruits vegetables were being grown.

It also contains nice, gossipy little tidbits of information about everyday life, when to plant, how to cultivate in the 18th century manner and lots of black and white illustrations from the period. Well footnoted, extensive glossary, lists of plants with latin names given to avoid confusion, just a top-notch piece of work.

All three books in this series are excellent. I found this one very helpful, as at the time it was reissued I was in charge of the [18th century] gardens at Fort Frederick State Park in Western Maryland.