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Books to read if you're planning a vacation in "Northern", sorted by average review score:
Memoirs of a revolutionary
Published in Unknown Binding by Gordon Cremonesi ()
Author: Seán Macstiofáin
Average review score:

The autobiography of the founding member of the Provos
This is a highly readable account of one of the founding members of the Provisional I.R.A. Sean McStiofain, (John Stephenson), was born and raised in London in the nineteen thirties and forties. He served in the British Army after the second world war, and upon leaving the army joined the I.R.A.'s London Unit. Arrested in the nineteen fifties for an arms robbery that went wrong, Sean became a fierce and committed physical force republican. After his release from prison Sean made his first journey to Ireland and became heavily involved in republican politics. During the civil rights upheavals of 1968-9 the catholic population soon came under attack, not just from the auspices of the state, but also from the Protestant Loyalists. Catholics looked at the virtually inactive 'Marxist' I.R.A. with distain, at their inability to defend the areas. This led to an intense debate within the republican movement and this is where the book comes most sharply into focus. It was the time that Sean was to make his mark. During the republican conference of 1970, the movement split. The disidents, (or Provisionals), were led by McStiofain. They soon organised the army and began to defend the Catholic ghettos. McStiofain was to be their first Commander in Chief. The book gives a good feel to the tensions and issues of what is now called the 'dark days' of the early seventies. The book was published in 1974 and does not reach the 'Dirty Protest' or 'Hunger Strike' days. What it does however, is give an interesting insight to the first secret negotiations between the 'Provisionals' and the British Government. Although 'Memoirs of a Revolutionary' is a quite dated book it does give a good feel and insight into the thought processes and political motivation of one of the main players in the modern Irish 'Troubles'.

Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement
Published in Hardcover by Harvard Univ Pr (September, 1993)
Author: James R., Jr. Ralph
Average review score:

dull yet informative
James Ralph's account of the Chicago Freedom Movement was very informative, yet just lacked something...interesting details, perhaps, photos maybe...the language is very understandable, yet I still found my self falling asleep after every 10 pages or so. It's valuable for academia, but not a candidate for a "weekend read."

Social Ideas of the Northern Evangelists, 1826-186
Published in Textbook Binding by Octagon Books (February, 1977)
Author: C. C. Cole
Average review score:

Lack of sympathy mars this study's conclusions
Whereas Cole was absolutely correct when describing the revivalistic flavor of antebellum reform, I found his overall evaluation of the evangelical reformers to suffer from a lack of sympathy. According to him, the evangelists were pessimistic and intolerant, leaving a legacy of moral absolutism which frustrated modern thinking. (But lest you judge too quickly--by "modern thinking," he meant the oversimplification of issues during the McCarthyist era in which he wrote.) Moreover, his study might have benefited from a clearer choice of subjects. At one point, he assigned to the northern evangelists some responsibility for "irrepressibility" of the Civil War, yet earlier he had admitted that these same people had divided over the slavery question. The work later became associated with the "social control" school of antebellum historiography, primarily because of Cole's unsympathetic approach and depiction of reformers as conservatives. Unlike the social control thesis, however, the underlying assumption of his work is that ideas motivate people. I recommend this work for serious students only. The social control thesis is best summarized in C. S. Griffin's superior Their Brothers Keepers (1960). More recent interpretations of antebellum reform can be found in Steven Mintz's Moralists and Modernizers (1995) and Robert Abzug's Cosmos Crumbling (1994).

Trout Streams of Northern New England: A Guide to the Best Fly-Fishing in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, First Edition
Published in Paperback by Countryman Pr (November, 2001)
Author: David Klausmeyer
Average review score:

Not to much info here...
A nice collection of maps and general info, however, this title doesn't supply much more information than the NH Gazetteer. Can't speak as specifically to the VT and ME sections. Little info on when to fish, just general descriptions of how to get there and what may or may not be stocked. Really just a surface survey.

Birder's Guide to Northern California
Published in Paperback by Gulf Publishing (January, 1991)
Authors: Lolo Westrich and Jim Westrich
Average review score:

Northern California birding trip frustration
I'm afraid I'll have to agree with what's been said about this book. I took a trip earlier this month to Northern California and my friend and I found this book only mildly useful. It does provide general information, however for anything more than that, another book is needed. Seasonal variation is ignored in some site descriptions and detailed directions to sites that require them are absent. There are no bar-charts to tell when a species is common, rare or even present, only a very general checklist in the back. Northern California is a large area to cover with a birding guide, so I can see why this book may be thin on detail. I think a much better bet would be to try John Kemper's "Birding Northern California". We saw this at the Pt. Reyes visitor's center near the end of our trip and certainly regretted not having it the whole time. Until an ABA/Lane guide comes out for this region, I think Kemper's is the best there is. Good birding!

A disappointment
This book needs work. It is not going to be a lot of help in planning a birding trip. It is too generalized.

Birder's Guide to Northern California
Don't waste your time or money on this book. The information was to generalized and did not include specifics. I have never experienced a book with such vague and poor directions to birding sites. Too bad that there is not an ABA guide to birding Northern California.

Corbett Mack: The Life of a Northern Paiute (Studies in the Anthropology of North American Indians)
Published in Hardcover by Univ of Nebraska Pr (October, 1996)
Author: Michael Hittman
Average review score:

Not what I thougt it was...
This is the story of Corbett Mack, a "Stolen Child" (half blood) of the Northern Paiute of the late 1800's. It tells the story in his own words of what it was like to be unaccepted in the white world nor the Indian world. The plight of the Notrhern Paiute after the arrival of the whiteman. He became an alcohol and opiate addict, and lead a tragic life that was somewhat typical of Native Americans during that time.

Judging the book by it's title I had hoped it was about the life of the Northern Paiute prior to white man's arrival. A good book for this purpose is "Indians of The Plateau and Great Basin" by Victoria Sherrow.

Death of a Hero: Captain Robert Nairac, Gc and the Undercover War in Northern Ireland
Published in Hardcover by Metro Books (January, 1999)
Author: John Parker
Average review score:

An Important Story Atrociously Written
This book does a good job of reporting the interagency turf wars in Ulster, which bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the blue--on--blue "mine is bigger than yours" squabbles described in Yves Lavigne's <<81's at War>>, Carsten Stroud's <>, all of Dick Marcinko's novels, and the last chapter of Colonel David Hackworth's <> The essential difference is that Ulster had in Bob Nairac and Ian Phoenix unique heroes of a character and charisma powerful enough to infect others with their overwhelming sense of mission, which was powerful enough to at least temporarily diminish the petty internicine chicanery.

This book also exposes the backgrounds of the little darlings of the First Tuesday newsmagazine segment which, CNN "Valley of Death" style, accused British Intelligence of complicity in the 1974 Dublin/Monaghan bombings. Holroyd is revealed to be a heavy drinker with marital problems, a Walter Mitty wannabe despised by everyone with whom he worked. Colin Wallace is revealed to be a jealous husband convicted of manslaughter, a fact not at all surprising given the murderous gleam in his eyes and the cold, hard expression, completely devoid of human empathy, on his face during the First Tuesday interview. The much maligned Bob Nairac, by contrast, was very well liked by his co-workers, who seem to genuinely mourn his loss. The author demolishes Holroyd and Wallace's credibility by pointing out the patent falsehood of their assertions that Bob Nairac "was SAS."

These revelations, however, are unfortunately eclipsed by the horrible style of the author. Every page is packed with run-on sentences and sentence fragments that go nowhere.In other places, it seems that the author simply transcribed each interview he did, word for word, when a lot of them are saying the exact same thing. It would have been far more effective (and palatable to the reader) if the author had instead written what was unique about each interview, and then connected each account by saying "In this regard, Source X is corraborated by Source Y, who also states..." The net effect is that a highly attractive story comes out like a textbook on analytic geometry or organic chemistry; you have to re-read four-fifths of the sentences multiple times before they begin to make any semblance of sense. I cannot speak for the UK, but in North America, such bad writing would merit an F minus, if it were submitted as a kindergarden writing assignment.

The information in this book is extremely important, not only to the Ulster conflict, but to any in law enforcement and anti-terrorism who want to cooperate effectively with other agencies with the aim of effectively neutralising the tangos. It is therefore a tragedy that Yves Lavigne, Carsten Stroud or Jack Holland did not do the writing.

High Wall of Spring
Published in Paperback by Fithian Press (01 August, 2001)
Author: Julian Stamper
Average review score:

Strangest book ever
This has to be one of the most poorly written books ever published. Pages and pages of random words and phrases.
There's no plot. Time and location change from sentence to sentence without warning. I had to force myself to keep reading and even then I didn't know what the book was about.
The author seemes to make up words and describe the same thing over and over.
Don't waste your time or money on this one.

Hooked On Golf : Golf Courses of Northern California & Northern Nevada
Published in Paperback by Bay Sports Publishing (09 March, 2000)
Authors: John Abendroth and Mitch Juricich
Average review score:

not what I expected
Just a listing of courses, yardages, etc. I returned it.

Great Granny Webster
Published in Hardcover by Scribner (July, 1978)
Author: Caroline Blackwood

Related Vacation Book Subjects: Arizona
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