Massachusetts Books

What other state can claim as many notable small towns as does the Empire State? Cooperstown, Lake Placid, Sleepy Hollow, Woodstock, Watkins Glen, Chautauqua, Corning, Saratoga Springs, West Point, Oyster Bay, several Hamptons, Ticonderoga, Seneca Falls-- Norman Rockwell (who lived a short walk across the state line) might just have been a tad jealous. Only the first and last make it into this book, and just as well. When Country Roads Press sends America's top small-town journalist through America's top small-town state, you don't want to waste him on places you already know.

Bill Kauffman (of Batavia and Elba) has milked a career out of keeping the leaders of the land's great Lost Causes from, as he puts it, "going down the memory hole", in books such as America First! and With Good Intentions, and in frequent pieces in The Wall Street Journal, American Enterprise, Chronicles, Liberty and other magazines. Here he applies the same special talent to a "second tier" of New York villages, and one wonders if he chose these particular communities for an unusual richness in odd stories and characters, or whether he'd have dug these up anywhere he went.

Kauffman's at his best at home in the western snout of the state, where he unlocks the somewhat feudal nature of Geneseo, LeRoy and Angelica. (The obscurer the town, the more fun he has with it.) The pump industry of Seneca Falls, a quarter of the world's total, gets as much of his attention as the distaff business there. And why not? Sanitation has saved more lives than medicine. Hundreds of millions owe their lives to this important town, celebrated for the all the wrong reasons.

His subjects have given us three presidents, Mormonism, women's suffrage and colored gelatin, but if there's something else of note in town, Bill'l let us know. (And if it's in the next town over, he'll cheat and go there.)

Further afield Kauffman's more the tourist, especially across the "soda/pop" line, which is not as close to the city as he imagines. Cooperstown is not quite as cute as he paints it-- indeed, one of its charms is the relative lack of the boutique pollution that has ruined many similar places. And couldn't he find a "country town" left on Long Island? That in itself is sad. However, his analysis of the Burned-Over District is so sharp it will inspire the reader to try his hand at the built-over districs as well.

Finally, some things to look for which aren't in the book (and may no longer exist):

Westfield-- the weird, wing-shaped Theatre Motel and Drive-In on the lake;

Bath (in the Hammondsport chapter)-- the Chat-a-Wyle Café and its grape pie;

Palmyra-- where Winston Churchill's grandparents married, perhaps not in one of the four churches at the intersection;

Oneonta (in the Cooperstown chapter)-- the book mentions the NY-P League team there, but check out their Depression-era ballpark in the Susquehanna valley, one of the handsomest settings in all the sport. (And in "Soccertown, USA", no less.)

This book is technical and contains a lot of detail. But if you are a descendant of Mill workers from the Lawrence/Lowell area and you want to know more about the actual decline and the abandonment of the area by the Industrialist of the era this is a good place to start. I found out what I wanted to know. I have also written a book about growing up in Lawrence in the 60's entitled "A Summer with Charlie" which is now also listed on Amazon. I'm getting a novel ready also about Lawrence "Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother". It has a lot to do with the mills closing down after the war and the difficulties that were placed on the workers and their families. So as you might imagine this subject and this book were of particular interest to me.

Some trips are worth taking. Cranberry Smoke is one of them. On a 13 year journey through the cities and towns of Massachusetts, poet Michael Hood explores questions about himself, and questions about the universe. With always an eye for the forgotten, the poor, and the lost, Hood's eloquence evokes emotions of compassion, joy, sorrow, humor, and wonder. It is a book that reminds us of our flaws and our potentials, and the poet's pain and gifts. This is a one-of-a-kind trip, an indepth look at ourselves, in which we emerge bruised but not broken, and infinitely better as people. - Joseph Gustafson

"David Cline has assembled an amazingly rich repository of testimonies. This work is a major contribution to the project of preserving and disseminating the histories of activism, feminism, and reproductive politics in the United States."

--Rickie Solinger, author of Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America (New York University Press, 2005) and other books

"In this rich collection of interviews, David Cline illuminates the courage, pain and determination of those who dared to break laws that banned abortions and chose instead to create communities that embraced choice."

--William H. Chafe, Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History, Duke University

"David Cline has written an extremely moving and fascinating account of one community's response to the reproductive health care needs of women in the era before Roe v Wade. Cline's book is most timely, as the hard won victories of the past-for access to birth control as well as to abortion care-are once again in jeopardy."

--Carole Joffe, author of Doctors of Conscience: The Struggle to Provide Abortion Before and After Roe v Wade (Beacon Press, 1995)

"A powerful document of the history of abortion Creating Choice is wonderfully accessible, an important collection for anybody trying to understand the history of women and sexuality."

--Johanna Schoen, University of Iowa, author of Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare (University of North Carolina Press, 2005)

"An urgent and moving account of the multiple sources of change that brought about the spectacular-and now imperiled-expansion of women's reproductive rights. Through an exemplary use of oral history interviews, David Cline has uncovered the "amazing web" of ministers, doctors, and feminists who provided support for women seeking access to birth control and abortion in the years before Roe v Wade. Until now, such local stories have been repressed and forgotten, distorting history and severing the struggle for women's rights from the larger project of human progress and freedom.

--Jacquelyn Hall, Spruill Professor of History and Director of the Southern Oral History Program, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

This book is a meticulously-researched look at the forces that shaped religious thought in early America. Dr. Field traces the political infighting and economic pressures on church leaders that led to the separation of religious and secular cultures, a condition evident in our present-day factionalism. This is not a book for the faint of heart. It is detailed, precise, and reads like a mystery novel as we follow the threads of intellectual, cultural, and religious thoughts from the Puritans and Calvinists to the Unitarians and beyond. Field's book brings us to Emerson and the brink of the Industrial Revolution, another turning point in American culture. This book is a "must" for understanding the intricacy of our religious expression.

Hugh Callaghan was convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings in 1975, along with 5 other men, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was also completely innocent of every charge brought against him. This is his story, from his upbringing in Belfast and later life in Birmingham to the night that changed his life forever. It tells about the fitup, the kangaroo court trials, the police brutality, the life in prison, the refusal for many years by anyone bar a few people to believe in the innocence of the Birmingham Six. It is a damning indictment of a "justice" system which would rather a quick result than the truth and does not care about the people it destroys in the process. It is also a story of hope and of how the world can be changed when there are enough people doing it. This book is a must read for anyone who cares about true justice.

Lewis, in the Second Edition of the Culture of Inequality, makes the reader uncomfortable: can I, a well intentioned person, help ease the consequences of persistent, harmful inequalities in the US? A careful reading of this rich, deep description of "our town" will most likely generate a sense of futility -- the type that makes it even more important to look for all the ways that policy makers, teachers, parents, or anyone with influence can work to avoid contributing to the reproduction of inequality. No town, no city, no social institution, and no geographic area is immuned to the "culture" of inquality. Moreover, individuals and groups engage in everyday behaviors, and even everyday thinking, that help to maintain the culture of inequality.

Charles Tilly(1998)in Durable Inequality gives the reader a detailed and complex theory to explain persistent social inequalities across time, nations, and cultures. Michael Lewis puts Tilly's theory into action. He brings it to real life, using examples we all recognize. In a study of one ordinary place, Professor Lewis makes us wish that his study is, or could be dated. It is such a shame to realize that it isn't.

JoAnn Miller Associate Professor of Sociology Purdue University

The best daguerreotype portraits are some of the most striking photographic likenesses you'll ever see. Talk about verisimilitude: Those who posed for daguerreotypes in the last century seem about to start speaking, or to step right out of the image. The pictures are practically holographic in their three-dimensionality, and you feel you could almost reach out and touch the faces captured therein so long ago. The generally small size of the images doesn't detract from the experience; in fact, like the finest Mughal miniatures, the reverse is true. As you draw close to the frame, you find yourself entering the daguerreotype's exquisite little world. The experience is enhanced by the thought that, since daguerreotypes are positive images, the photograph before you is the only one in existence.

A daguerreotype's power is greatest when you're seeing the actual image before your eyes, of course, but the reproductions in this beautifully designed coffee-table book, many of which are reproduced in actual size, are so stunning that you're truly getting the next best thing. Here you'll find likenesses of some of the most famous figures to traipse through the 19th century -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jenny Lind, Tom Thumb, James Whistler, Dorothea Dix.

The author, Melissa Banta, a kind of curator-at-large at Harvard, was not content simply to ferret out all daguerreotypes then existing at Harvard (over 450 images, some of which are seeing the light of day for the first time here). She delved into the often compelling stories behind each image's creation, life history, and curation. In lyrically written short essays, we learn how the first daguerreotypes of the moon came into being in 1851, why Louis Agassiz had daguerreotypes taken of slaves forced to disrobe, what Harriet Beecher Stowe was thinking at the time her likeness was taken, why Asa Gray collected daguerreotypes of his fellow botanists (all images that appear here).

In short, this is a coffee-table book with substance and personality. It will serve as an excellent introduction to daguerreotypy for the layman, and a must-have compendium for the avid daguerreian. Highly recommended.

This book is well-written and an interesting mix of first-hand experience and clinical research. The voices of the two authors complement eachother nicely. I am a fan of Berman and I think his choice to co-author with Hatch Wallace was wise. Highly recommeded for cutters or those interested in cutting from a psychological or educational perspective.

rick boyer is w/out a doubt an amazing author-but this book stands out from all his other books, it is truly a do not put down book!!!!!!!!!