Massachusetts Books

I wanted to give a quick thumbs up to this book. If you are the type of person looking for nuggets of information about a city and her landmarks, this is the book for you.

There are now more than 13,00 miles of open rail-trails across the country. The Rails-to-Trails Conservancy is an organization of more than 100,000 members and a leading advocate for trail and greenway 'recycling' of obsolete railroad corridors and rights of way. The official guidebook of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, "Rail-Trails: New England" is a thoroughly 'user friendly' guide to railroad related trails in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Profusely illustrated with maps, as well as black-and-white photographs, "Rail-Trails: New England" is the perfect planning guide for biking or hiking along pathways created from unused railroad corridors that have been converted to recreational use by the public. some rail-trails are paved and run through scenic parts of New England townships, others are unpaved paths through scenic countrysides. Enhanced with detailed maps for every rail-trail (plus driving directions to trailheads), "Rail-Trails: New England" also features icons indicating each trail's use, along with succinct descriptions written by truly knowledgeable and articulate rail-trail experts. If you are planning to avail yourself of the recreational and exercise opportunities of rail-trails anywhere in the New England region, then begin with a careful browse through the pages of "Rail-Trails: New England"!

Detailed, usable, road atlas which covers everyplace out to I-495, ALL AT THE SAME SCALE! It's one continuous map, so you can orient yourself by following a road from page to page. You only have to know approximately where you are to find yourself on this map, and you never need to know what town you're in just to be able to look something up. There's an extensive list of street names in the back, arranged by towns. Streets are clearly marked and named. They indicate schools, libraries, shopping centers, parks, cemeteries, and many other points of interest.

If you are used to wrestling with those Arrow maps that put one town on each double page, you will find it much much easier to get around by using this map. And it doesn't have ads tucked in, like on that big red map.

The book is spiral bound softcover. A fold-out, laminated front cover has some overview maps and the key map so you can quickly find the page you want. My only beef is that I'd prefer that key map to be on the first foldout flap rather than tucked inside, since it's the one I use most often.

At last a map where the next page is the area east of the previous one. Each page is part of the grid inside the front cover and they are laid out sequentially. The map is clear and easy to read. Very satisfied. My only problem is that I can't find more of these in stores - now I want ones for Western and Southern MA. Shame they couldn't publish one book for the whole state.

Now if only Amazon could categorize their maps better, or Rand McNally would list all of their publications on their web site.

This thing is indispensable if you do any driving in and around Boston. Full, detailed maps all around the 95 loop and out on the pike to 495. Many of the 'City of Boston' maps don't go far enough south, west, or north to help you when you're driving into North Cambridge, Brookline, Newton and JP. And even if you manage to get to your destination with the aid of Google, Mapquest, or sheer force of will, unfortunately, in Boston, that is no guarantee that "going back the way you came" will be in any way possible. This thing is big, and spiral bound, but if you tab the pages you'll need, it's a life saver when you make a wrong turn.

I love the Easyfinder laminated maps from Rand McNally. They are extremely durable, meaning I won't have to repurchase a map that gets torn, spilled on, or just plain worn out. Even better, I can mark my routes & destinations on them with dry erase marker, then just wipe off when no longer needed. Map detail is top notch, as you would expect from Rand McNally. Great for local tag sale bargain hunting or longer trips. 5 stars, definitely my favorite maps. From the Big Dig to the Museum of Science, this is the one that goes in my pocket.

Raytheon's history begins in 1922, when the Cambridge company became a major innovator in the electronics industry and moved to become a major contributor of the war effort and beyond. Technology and business writer Earls has produced high-tech stories since the early 1980s, while co-author Edwards is a forty-three-year veteran of Raytheon: together they provide a vivid company history. It's the very local region histories of small cities in Massachusetts where Arcadia really shines.

Leigh Greenwood proves his mettle as a historical fiction writer by writing `Rebel Enchantress'. I had automatically assumed it was set in the Civil War. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to find that he had chosen a little talked about era in US History: reconstruction after the Revolutionary War, and Shay's Rebellion. The events outside of the world created by Delilah Stowbridge and Nathan Trent are based on the build up and reasons for Shay's Rebellion.

Shackled by high taxes, Delilah Stowbridge runs to one person who her family owes a great sum of money by post-Revolutionary War standards. She is nothing but a farmer's daughter living on her brother's farm with his small family and she offers her limited but proper services to Nathan Trent's family. Nathan Trent is British born and suffers the wrath of his aunt's and many other local townspeople's dislike simply because he is British. A secret he keeps even closer to his breast is that he is as poor as Delilah. When Delilah lets her brother Rueben know of her plan to help their family, Rueben presses Delilah into spying on Nathan Trent, certain that he is helping the British make their lives as members of a new country worse with uncontrolled taxes and a desire to once again quell the insurrection that had happened only a few short years before. Their relationship grows steadily, and does not instantly give into their slowly budding realization of attraction. The cast of support characters Serna Noys (Nathan's aunt), Lester (a black servant), Pricilla (Nathan's cousin and Serena's daughter), Mrs. Stebbins (the cook) all contribute adding support to Delilah's passage from the farmer's existence to that of the grander company Nathan's world of an early American land owner.

As an urban planning student (B.A. 2003), who is especially interested in public housing, I have read dozens of books and articles on the subject.

Reclaiming Public Housing is the best I have read yet. The stories of the three redeveloped public housing projects (one was a failure, one a widely-recognized success, and one a mixed-success) are beautifully written - rich with detail and imagery. This book is a far cry from the usual dull statistical tomes that tend to plaque the urban planning/sociology fields. Instead, it represents the perfect balance of statistics and anecdotal evidence, topped off with a wide selection of photos.

Anyone wishing to better understand the past, present, and future of public housing should definitely buy this book.

Description
(From the booklet)

The three chapters of this booklet reproduce the substance of three talks given at Boston a few months after the meetings of the World Council of Churches of Christ in Evanston, Ill., during August, 1954. At those meetings part of the discussion was over the hope of the Lord's Return. The discussion, it was recognized by all, was by no means concluded, and the talks here presented are an effort to present what the writer's church, The Church of the New Jerusalem, has to offer for discussion.
Contents

1. The Return of the Christ: The Scripture Promises
2. A Fulfillment: In Renewal of Christianity
3. A Fulfillment: In a World Redemption