Maine Books

Enhanced with "spicy commentary" by Kenneth Roberts, Marjorie Mosser's Good Maine Food is a superb regional cookbook that emphasizes good, wholesome, filling food for appetites that are sound and sturdy. From Curried Oysters, Ham and Veal Loaf, Baked Winter Squash, and Fish Hash, to Broiled Honeycomb Tripe, Sour Cream Gingerbread, Molasses Icebox Cookies, and Maple Syrup Pie, Good Maine Food is a 424 page compendium of culinary delights that are dependable appetite pleasers for any meal or occasion.

Our copy of Good Maine Food shows it's wear and tear of 10 years of good use. The first printing was in the same decade as the first "Joy of Cooking". But unlike "The Joy..." it hasn't been ruined by a recent re-editing, Good Maine Food still makes no reference to microwave ovens or any problem with butter or lard. Hooray for them. It gives the best pancake recipe, wild duck recipe and home corned beef.

As Maine goes so goes the Country...this is a downright great cookbook.

This is one of the many Goodnight books my daughter loves us to read to her. Even though she has only been to a few places in Maine she loves to hear about the others and loves all the animals mentioned. This book also made her say she wanted to kayak! As with the other books in this series it is easy to make this book nice and short (just stick to the words) or extend it out by asking about what's on the pictures, do you see the birds, where's the boat, etc

A beautiful picture book for our two grandaughters. We live on an inland lake in woodsy, central Maine and this gives them a realistic memory stimulator for both their lake visits and their trips to the coast.

If you love american history by a great writer, PICK THiS BOOK UP! It is amazing, and he is a true american writer! Great pictures, great stories, you will never put the book down. Dont mind that I am his nephew, im really not that biased!

I've read Peter Genovese's other two books and have to say this is by far the best. Great stories, great photos, excellent writing. I grew up in a town right on Route 1 in New Jersey, and have traveled some of the sections in a few other states. This book makes you see the road in a whole new light. My husband and I have driven Route 66 all the way and we were looking for another "road trip" to take. I think this book will be the "travel guide" for that trip. I loved it! I can't wait for his next book!

This is a great introductory field guide for tidepoolers and beachcombers. I grew up on the west coast but was still able to use this reference on Pacific sea life. Perhaps my favorite aspect of the book is the author's willingness to eat just about everything he finds, evoking a marine Euell Gibbons. (If you plan to do this yourself, please research local regulations for collection permits!)

If you love strolling on the beaches of the Atlantic Coast but want to make some sense of where you are & what you are seeing, seek out a copy of this book. You won't be disappointed. Zinn shows how the world of the beach, from the water to the dunes, is packed with life seen & unseen. & he shows us where to look.

When was the last time you read a good relationship book? This one is unique. All the descriptions of nature made me want to go there, and provided wonderful visual pictures for the story to unfold. I've never been to Maine and this book gave me a hunger for lobsters and the blueberries of summer. The storyline covers all aspects of relationships extramarital affairs, to gay men being in the closet, to finding and sustaining true love. I didn't want to stop once I started reading.

If you've never been to Maine, you can go this summer via the pages of "Hatchet Harbor" by Jane E. Hartman. It's an old fashioned love story and it includes vivid descriptions of nature, wild life and the ecology -- with a plea for saving the environment. As you read about each character's history and involvement, you'll begin to understand the mistrust that is brewing in this tiny fishing village. Here's where love of nature collides with human greed and the locals and *summer people* take sides in a brewing environmental conflict.

The author captures the true essence of the craggy Maine coastline as well as its sometimes, just as craggy, Maine characters. Even if you read this book in your backyard in Kansas -- you'll be able to smell the salt air.

As a former English major, I have learned to be wary of "confessional" poets. After reading a few of their pieces, I rather feel like telling them to get over themselves and get out the house more often. "Heading Home" has the opposite effect, however. After reading all of the poems, I was sorry that there were not more. And I wanted to get out of the house more often; to experience the world that this brilliant poet sees and describes so perfectly.

Donna Doyle*s impressive first collection, Heading Home, takes a journey to reclaim and reconcile a world lived, a world lost. *The fairytales are wrong,* Doyle writes, *Death finds us / by taking what we love.* As she mines the heart*s darkness, Doyle*s narratives rend richer and deeper for their humor and subtle telling. And through story, loss is often transformed * *What begins as emptiness fills us,* Doyle writes, *until we can fill ourselves, each other.* Poignant with epiphany and surprising language, Doyle*s poems head home to a place that might not be your home, but it will be when you read her book.

*****Bill Brown


Donna Doyle's Heading Home is rare in its unaffected diction, its honesty and wild spirit, its combination of humor and sorrow. This work * a constant source of discovery * is laced with surprises. Poetry at its best and most original.

*****Marilyn Kallet


With a heart both aching and overfull from the world*s many sorrows and joyful noises, Donna Doyle*s poems are *a daring act of love* where she faces how absence transforms us, joins hands with the dead and the living who sustain her life and work. In Doyle*s debut collection, we are lifted beyond grief of inevitable losses into the ripe readiness of childhood blackberries and shadowy fears, the ghost muses of her dog, Sydney, and her father scarecrowed by cancer, and her native east Tennessee landscape equally haunted and holy ground. Through it all, the poet*s *chanting tongue held hostage by memory* reminds us that *true love and grief are like a marriage* and that the weight of these precious, passing lives added to our own can only be a blessed union.
*****Linda Parsons Marion

I loved this book. The adventures happened on an island in Maine like ones near where I live. Mrs. Katherine says the twins can keep a treasure of "enormous value" that is hidden in her house, if they can find it! There is lots of excitement and a surprise ending.

I loved this book. The adventures happened on an island in Maine like ones near where I live. Mrs. Katherine says the twins can keep a treasure of "enormous value" that is hidden in her house, if they can find it! There is lots of excitement and a surprise ending.

Copleston's series, "The History of Philosophy", is quite possibly the best introduction to the history of philosophical thought that has ever been published and certainly the best currently in print.

You will be hard pressed to find a better collection of solid philosophical surveys in one place. The beauty of the series is that Copleston has clearly done his research on each period and each thinker of Western philosophy.

I cannot recommend this series any more highly. It is a must-have collection for anyone who is a scholar (professional or casual) of philosophy, theology or any of the arts.

If this isn't on your bookshelf, it should be!

Copelston is one of the pre-emienent thinkers of philosophical history. Every one should read his entire works including this fine volume.

The paperback History of Woolwich, Maine is available from The Woolwich Historical Society, P.O. Box 98, Woolwich, Maine 04579. This book is 355 pages with dozens of photographs. Historical facts and resident memoirs make this a great read.

This interesting and well-researched history of a small Maine town was written by members of the Woolwich Historical Society and is still available for purchase from them.

If you want to know what happened to the Maine, read this book. There's a little historical background, but not the hundreds of pages that some authors devote to this subject.

It deals mostly with the "nuts and bolts" of the explosion and what caused it.

The story of the U.S.S. Maine and the disaster it encountered has been written many times. The tragic loss of 266 lives was blamed on a mine, and it was a partial cause of the Spanish-American war. Admiral Rickover's couriosity was tickled by a newspaper article, which indicated that the original Court of Inquiry ivestigating the cause of the explosion and destruction of the ship had some peculiar irregularities involved. The Court did not call on existing experts in explosions and mines to testify or examine the available evidence, and the ship's captain who might have been responsible was allowed to attend all court sessions and question witnesses. Admiral Rickover assembled a team of historians and explosions experts to examine all original records and evidence to form his own picture of what happened in the light of modern day knowledge of explosions. The book is the rsult of his team's work, and the first, and so far only, work that has dealt accurately with the technical aspects of the ship loss. All his team members were competent in their field, drawn from Navy experts, and there can be no doubt that his finding that the cause of the explosion was internal and purely accidental is accurate. His book is the definitive verdict on the story, and it is presented very clearly, even the technical details are explained so a layman can understand them, although not proven in the sense that scioentists would demand. From a purely scientific point of view, the reader will have to believe in the expertise of Admiral Rickover and his team. But who is to doubt the father of the nuclear submarine?