Massachusetts Books

THE LIVELY ART is an amazing collection. The names in the table of contents include many of the greatest artists today: Peter Sellars, Andrei Serban, Susan Sontag, Milan Kundera, Carlos Fuentes, Marsha Norman, Philip Glass, Robert Wilson, Heiner Muller, Dario Fo, JoAnne Akalaitis, Don de Lillo, Elliott Goldenthal, Liviu Ciulei, David Rabe, David Mamet, Paula Vogel, and Christopher Durang. Through interviews and articles written by the artists themselves, the pieces in this anthology provide an invaluable insight into the creative process and also an overview into contemporary theater practices. Some of the selections, like the acrimonious exchange of letters between Samuel Beckett and artistic director Robert Brustein, have great historical importance and raise important questions about the relation of any production to the text that inspired it.

In addition, distinguished scholars have contributed provocative essays: Robert Brustein, Harry Levin, Richard Gilman, Stephen Greenblatt, Jan Kott, and Harold Bloom. These articles provide interesting examples of current critical approaches from the new historicism (Greenblatt on King Lear) to production history (Kott on Hamlet). And in the symposium excerpt about The Taming of the Shrew sparks fly when a great theater director (Andrei Serban) confronts three formidable Harvard English professors: Greenblatt, Brustein, and Marjorie Garber. I particularly appreciated the remarks on Brecht by Harvard law professor Martha Minow as well as Arthur Holmberg's urbane essay "Machiavellis of the Bedroom--an Erotic Endgame." Also, the interviews with Janathan Miller, Philip Glass, and Robert Wilson are illuminating. The production photographs are a giant bonus.

This book is indispensable for anyone interested in contemporary drama. I can think of no other theater in the world that could have put together such a collection. Charles Gunnard Thomas, New York City.

The book, even though difficult to find, is worth a good look. There's LOTS of information and it doesn't seem as though the book leans one way or the other....innocent or guilty. What IS included are excerpts from the trial and inquest transcripts and clippings from newspapers of the day. If you can find it, GET THIS BOOK!

While academic in its approach, von Hoffman tells the colorful story of Boston's political landscape -- shifting away from the independent neighborhoods toward the centralized city government. Von Hoffman focuses on the growth of Jamaica Plain, a city neighborhood which began as a group of country estates on rural Jamaica Pond and transformed by the late 1800s into a dense, vibrant streetcar suburb surrounded by the lush parkland of Frederick Law Olmstead's Emerald Necklace. Most fascinating are the chapters on neighborhood society and the struggle over the construction of the Emerald Necklace. The author ends his analysis in the 1920s, leaving the abandonment of the neighborhood and its late-century revival into a dynamic, ethnicly diverse, family-friendly city neighborhood for a later book. This text is used by Von Hoffman in the class he teaches at Harvard University.

We would have never made it in Boston without this little book! The maps alone, especially the subway map, were worth well over the price of the book. We took the book everywhere we went and had a blast. It offers great advice about what to see, what not to see, places to shop, places to stay, places to eat, and anything else you can imagine. I also liked that it gave information on day trips to surrounding areas. I would recomend this book to anyone visiting Boston for the first time. We were there for two days and were able to see everything we wanted to see!!

I spotted this Lonely Planet guide for the Cape at the library. Using it during a long weekend at the Cape made me realize I needed to own it. It contains a wealth of useful, interesting information about what to see and do--and every restaurant evaluation from it was accurate. This guidebook is worth every penny for a family or a couple traveling alone.

This journey of Jewish song and identity draws the best of both to comprise an inspiring book that is both a good read and a good listen. It will leave the reader singing and praying.

My nine year old daughter virtually consumed this biography. This is the 3rd book she has read in this series, and she has asked for more. I have read them along with her--they are appropriate for 8-10 year olds, interesting, accessible, but never condescending or preachy. Based on my knowledge of the subjects, they are only marginally fictionalized. In a world of pop singers and barely literate actresses, it is a pleaseure to be able to provide real heroes and heroines that modern kids will enjoy and be inspired by.

Being an avid firefighter history fan, and memorabilia collecter I had to pick up this book. Lowell, Ma being a big fire city and one with some of the oldest industrial structure and biggest canal system in the US I thought it would mkae for an interesting read. Author Jason T. Strunk took great care in writing this book, and while all the photos are not his own he picked some of the best photos that I have ever seen to help describe old time Lowell firefighting. Absolutley amazing book, if you are a firefighting aficionado I highly recommend that you pick up this book and learn something.

What was it like for women in the early 1800s? Many in New England were finding farm and agricultural work to be scarce, and money even more scarce, so families sent their young women up to Massachutsetts to work in the mills. The Lowell Mills were unique in that they had boarding houses, a hospital and a dining hall. Eventually, women moved on, and the Mills became more and more mechanized, as well as laws were passed to limit workdays and ages.

The book is divided into several chapters, each focusing on a different aspect of being a Mill Girl, including types of jobs in the mills, education and boarding house life. The pages are filled with photos/drawings, documents and maps. The end of the book contains a timeline, important people list, a "want to know more?" section and an index. This is a well done book, filled with information, but not overwhelming. You can easily pair this with Lyddie (Paterson) or The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (Crewe).

One wonders if an author clever enough to come up with a title as witty and intelligent as Lulu Incognito could ever fail to produce a masterpiece. The answer so far? No.

Kennedy chooses his elegant yet familiar words so carefully, he might well be the Martha Stewart of literary writers. Kennedy, while clearly aspring to grand literary gestures, never truly manages to leave behind his pedestrain persona, and so manages to create works that read like collaborations between John Waters and Barbara Kingsolver.

Tacky? Yes. Faux-intellectual? Certainy. Camp? Oh, without a doubt.

Yet, somehow Kennedy's numerous and painful failings as a writer always seem to mesh, like the tuneless voices of talentless folk singers, into a flawed dissonance that amuses if not inspires.

Buy this book. It's a great laugh and a reliable cure for constipation.