I found an old copy of this book and read it a year ago. An incredible true story. I`m glad to see that it is available in paperpback again.

After having read The Perfect Storm, I was interested in other stories about the fishermen of the Gloucester area. This book fit the bill perfectly--just as harrowing as The Perfect Storm, but with a happier ending.

This is without a doubt the best seafaring story I have read since reading Joshua Slocum's account of his sailing adventures. Would make a wonderful film if produced by someone careful enough to make the details realistic.

It has rarely been my experience that a picture is worth a thousand words -- the best pictures often elicit no words at all. Maps, however, are different -- these, when well done, I would gladly substitute for the best prose. And those in Mapping Boston are absolutely superb, giving greater clarity to a wide range of topics than words ever could.

Boston, of all cities, must give historical cartographers fits -- the city's boundaries have changed so greatly over time as to render historical comparison a great challenge. But Mapping Boston succeeds wonderfully in helping the reader to understand the city's gradual evolution from peninsula to metropolis. The growth of the city, the changes in population and land utilization, Boston's shifting ethnic and economic face are all elucidated colorfully and clearly. The bottom line is that the lover of Boston history will revel in this volume; indeed, I expect most every resident of the area will derive considerable pleasure from it.

For those who do, I would also recommend Diana Muir's Reflections in Bullough's Pond, which does for the region around Boston what Mapping Boston does for the city itself: places it in context, gives it color, brings it to life.

This book beautifully portray's Boston's physical past, present and future through maps and photographs. The book does an excellent job showing how streets and shorelines through the years match to the present topography (a huge interest of mine when exploring the city). This book is for you if you love history and maps of Boston and New England. VERY WELL DONE!

Collects in one place excellent plates of all the great historical maps of Boston, as well as some rarities. Ranks up there as one of the necessities for anyone with a passion for Boston's topographical history.

This thin handbook is as indispensible as your neurology tools during residency training. It packs a lot of information in a tiny space and covers many topics. It does not have references or prognostic stats, but it will help you in DDx, basic management issues, or just simply act as a reminder when you can't quite remember details about something. I was pleasantly surprised at how much info is in this book. Highly recommended.

Well, I haven't had any life-changing experiences with Flaherty's book, but it's certainly a good read.

You will not learn Neurology from this book mind you -it's more a checklist of things to do when confronted with daily Neuro problems on the floors and in casualty - but it's one of those things that's nice to have in your pocket if not very many years have passed since you got that MD certificate framed, and on a night call you get one of those 3.00AM pages from the neuro ward...

No other neurology handbook packs as much useful information so succinctly. I wouldn't be without it on the wards. Lots of imaging coverage. It also has relevant coverage of psychiatry, medicine, and neurosurgery.

This map and guide covers lights in both MA and NH. In June of 2000 I used this map to visit Lighthouses in MA & NH. This map was very useful. On one side is a map pointing out the locations. On the other side there are details for each individual light such as: directions, hours, and phone numbers. I am from Michigan so I was not familiar with New England at all. Some of these lights were hard to find even with the map because some roads are not clearly marked. But I did find everything I was looking for. The price of these maps is an incredible bargain. Some people buy two of them so they can hang one on the wall to display the watercolor images and get another to use.

It made it very easy to find where the lighthouses are located and a nice article on each one.

This was a great resource in locating lighthouses - compact, yet gives specific directions on which lighthouses could be visited and how to get there. Very nice layout, design, pictures, etc.

Having just moved to the area, I (a professional historian specializing in modern Europe) have been reading as much local history as possible to get a feel for the history of central Massachusetts. "Murdered By His Wife" is outstanding. Ms. Navas writes with clear, crisp prose, and sticks very close to the original documents, many of which are reproduced in her book. She tells a superb tale of mystery, murder, and intrigue -- and a gripping tragedy about the execution of three revolutionary soldiers and Bethsheba Ruggles Spooner, who was five months pregnant on the day she was hung on Washington Square in Worcester on July 2, 1778.

The best part of this book is that it becomes a challenge and adventure for your whole family to rediscover the route of the story. You can visit murder victim Joshua Spooner's grave in Brookfield Cemetery off Route 9. About 3/4 miles down the road, you can walk, bike, or drive to the site of his and Bethsheba's home, where a plaque still commemorates the notorious murder. Kids of all ages will love the abandoned well still on the property -- the place where Bethsheba Spooner's lover(s) dumped the body (now covered by a stone which leaves enough visible to excite the imagination). You can also find the remnants of the house's old stone foundation, and four large flat stone steps leading from the road to the site of the old house.

The Spooner House is located on Elm Hill, now an historical landmark zone, and large parts of the road are a wildlife sanctuary perfect for spring, summer, or autumn walks. This is one of few places where you can reproduce the feeling of a colonial road and how it stood 200 years ago. The old stone walls along the Old Post Road are still intact, and you get a feeling of being carried back in time.

I highly recommend this book as a basic tour guide for the central Massachusetts leg of your next tour to New England. The site of all the adventure is just 15 minutes off of Exit 9 on Route 90, or the Sturbridge Exit off Highway 84.

Murdered by His Wife by Deborah Navas is at once a gripping "Gothic" page-turner and a solid piece of scholarly research. Navas writes in an elegant, clear and concise manner. A fine balance is sustained between objective, documented reporting and carefully considered interpretation which is never allowed to override the facts. The book is packed with information including fascinating transcripts of eighteenth century testimony. While the narrative stands on its own as a riveting drama that will appeal to the general public, the book should be of special interest to historians,legal historians, feminists sociologists and psychologists. In my opinion this is a landmark book.

Hard to believe this happened and so close to home! Exceptionally detailed account!

I was a student who took part in a program exactly like this one, in another city. I got assigned this book in my sociology class and it was so amazing for me to read it because it is exactly what I went through 5 years ago. Also, many of my friends who are black and who went to suburban schools for different reasons said they could relate to this experience. I could not believe it when I read that this author was white, because all along I was reading it and because it was so accurate and real I naturally assumed she must be a black woman. This made the truth and honesty of the book even more amazing. The book would be really good for all teachers, guidance counselor and school principals and white parents to read because it really speaks to the black child's experience in a white school. And when I was a kid in school I could not have put into words some of the struggles but also all the benefits and good things that grew out of my complicated experience. But this puts it into words what so many young people are feeling but also what they think about their experience when they are looking back as grown ups.

This is an excellent book. It shows readers a better alternative to so-called forced busing which got its worse name in the city of Boston. But this book is about a voluntary program that let black kids go to suburbia. The writer really lets the former students talk for themselves and because of that it is a really moving book that feels honest and real. When the writer does comment on things, it is always very graceful and plainly spoken. This book does not try to be overly academic, and so is a welcome treat to read. I wish there were more 'human' books out there about subjects like this, which are usually written in very dull, dry styles.

This book is well written, thoughtful and balanced. It is a book that makes you think and provides the reader with some unexpected twists. I knew this writer would be a great one!!!
:) Dean Whalen

Review of A Place for Theodore by Prudence Steiner The writing of history is difficult. If you're writing about someone or something already well known you face a hoard of kibitzers who question every statement that doesn't fit their preconceptions of the case. If you're writing about something unknown, well, where do you begin? How do you know what to look for? How do you know you have found everything? And how do you know how to organize what you do have? George Williams, in A Place for Theodore, has confronted both problems. Well-known is Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard, notable New Englander from a notable family. Loyal Harvard alumni and conventional historians of higher education already "know" all about him. Virtually unknown is Theodore Parkman, chemist, soldier, who was killed and, literally, lost in a small and complicated Civil War battle at Whitehall, North Carolina in 1862. The intersection of these two lives, the process by which Williams has accounted for what is known to have happened, his speculations about what might have happened and why, form the substance of this paperback (Holly Two Leaves Paperback, ISBN 0-9656484-0-0). Don't expect a tidy narrative. That's not how historians work. Pieces--letters, photos, newspaper clippings, old bullets, public proclamations and private denials--swim into the net or are dredged up from murky corners in an unsystematic way. With each new piece, historians must revise their first ideas about what happened, their earlier interpretations of the causes. Most published histories appear after years of research and speculation have refined and polished them into coherence. Williams has chosen another method. For the most part the book brings us the raw materials in a very rough chronological order. Facing pages may include the author's narrative, original materials, photos or diagrams, in an assemblage of elements that is hard for the casual reader to follow but that accurately and vividly evokes the very process by which historians gather and sort out information. Williams' favorite typographical elements seem to be the question mark and the italic; hardly a page appears without several of both. Ordinarily these devices raise suspicion: how much of this book is true? Why is the writer so insistent? Is he right? But this is not an ordinary book; in the best sense, it is not even a finished book. Rather, it shows the process of writing history, and leaves us, the readers, with a sense of the materials and an eagerness to push on, to learn more about Theodore Parkman and why historians are still looking for him. As a former teacher of research techniques, I commend A Place for Theodore to other teachers as well as to Civil War buffs. You may be irritated, you may disagree with the author's tone and conclusions, but Williams's book will give you an unusual collection of materials as well as valuable insights into the slipperiness of "facts." 12 November 1997

Everyone is aware of friendly-fire and "collateral" deaths in war. The Mai Lai massacre in Viet Nam is the most famous. Incidents from the Gulf War are still in the news. Did a President of Harvard help cover-up the death of a Harvard student? Major George Williams has written an interesting tale using historical documents and the soldier's perspective of war. This book is a unique look at an overlooked incident during America's Civil War.

A Place for Theodore won a Willie Parker Peace History Book Award from The North Carolina Society of Historians on Nov. 1, 1997. Mr. L.G. Williams also won two other awards for associated projects.

Illustrated by Peter Fiore and edited by Steven Schnur, Henry David's House introduces young readers ages 5 to 9 to the life, thought and writings of Henry David Thoreau. Text and illustration collaborate to showcase the beauty, power and subtlety of solitary living withing the context of a nature-oriented retreat as represented by Thoreau's tiny house in the woods and on the shore of Walden Pond. Henry David's House is an enthusiastically recommended addition to school and community picturebook collections.

"Near the end of March I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond and began to cut down some tall white pines for timber..." Author, Steven Schnur has chosen several wonderfully engaging passages from Henry David Thoreau's Walden, in this elegant picture book, and young readers will really get a vivid sense of the hard, yet rewarding work of building his house, the few possessions needed to live comfortably, the beauty of the changing seasons, and living the simple life in harmony with nature. "Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time." Peter Fiore's lush and exquisite watercolor illustrations bring the splendor of Thoreau's existence at Walden Pond to life on the page, and together word and art evoke feelings of peace, quiet, and contentment. Perfect for readers 8-12, this book works well as a real aloud with D.B. Johnson's Henry Builds a Cabin, for younger children. With an editor's note at the end to fill in further biographical details about Thoreau and his time at Walden, Henry David's House is an evocative treasure to read, share, and most of all discuss. "We can never have enough of Nature."

Henry David's House is a picturebook adaptation by Steven Schnur of a part of Henry David Thoreau's classic nature book "Walden", told with only a limited amount of editing. Beautiful, slightly abstract yet full-color illustrations by Peter Fiore bring this classic thinker's words to vibrant life for young readers. Henry David's House is a superb introduction to a literary masterpiece for young readers, and its final message, "We can never have enough of Nature," reverberates in the hearts of all ages. Highly recommended for family, school, and community library picturebook collections.

A 1999 revised edition of the 1980 classic by one-time Boston Globe and current Nation architectural critic Jane Kay, this beautiful book is filled with images of buildings and squares tragically allowed to fall into disrepair, destroyed by fire or bulldozed for parking lots and malls. Pictures, maps and photographs are black & white, and are interspersed throughout the book, organized into subjects such as signs, spires, schools, etc. The text is arranged chronologically, and is generally well-written and highly accessible. The author delves into the history, policies and people of various times from 1630 to the present day.

Many of the buildings and areas depicted are truly beautiful, some destroyed as recently as the 1970s, when you'd think people would have known better. Scenes after the fire of November 1872 make you want to cry. I have a fair number of pictorial histories of The Hub, and still found some pictures in here that I hadn't seen elsewhere, and the author's perspective is worthwhile reading.

The book is constructed of high quality paper and concludes with picture credits, a selected bibliography and a good index. It should be of interest to those with some connection to Boston, architecture or history, particularly of the 18th and 19th century.

Boston has a reputation for being something of a Puritanical stick-in-the-mud. It is surprising, then, that it has experimented so vigorously and persistently with its urban design. Some of those experiments - the Back Bay and the Emerald Necklace - we recognize as glittering successes, while others - the creation of Government Center and the Fitzgerald Expressway - are festering failures that the city is only beginning to address today. Of the numerous histories and narratives that this tremendously fertile subject has produced (many of which I've read), the most wide-ranging, elegantly written and well illustrated that I have found is Jane Holtz Kay's Lost Boston. It works equally well as a coffee table book and a curl-up-on-the-couch book.

The creation and evolution of Boston is arranged here chronologically, starting with the first settlements in 1630 and concluding with an epilogue on urban renewal and it's ramifications at the close of the 20th century. Even though it is an accurate history, it tells a great story without becoming dry or academic. The language is descriptive and accessible, introducing major players in the Boston scene, from Charles Bulfinch to James Michael Curley. You also get a wonderful feel not just for the power brokers, but the neighborhoods, people and places that made the city a vibrant place. There is a warmth to Kay's writing, without delving into sentimentality. Because the background history - the day-to-day development that made Boston the Hub of the Universe - is so readable, it helped me understand the context of major events in the city's history: filling of Back Bay, the Great Fire of November 1872 and the razing of the West End in the 1960's. Instead of examining these as isolated events, they are knit together to show the city as a living, evolving organism. It was fascinating to see how Boston reinvented itself after the Fire, to see the creation of Frederick Law Olmstead's Emerald Necklace, only to lose its way, lured by the siren song of renewal.

And throughout are some of the best photographs and period illustrations of old Boston you're likely to ever see. There are the bustling wharfs on Atlantic Avenue, the original Museum of Fine Arts (where the Hancock Tower now stands), and the graceful mansions of Roxbury. There are dozens of examples of the Boston Granite style that dominated the city's architecture before the Great Fire. For me, the most moving photographs were the ones of Adams and Scollay Square and the West End, all of which fell victim to the wrecking ball to make way for Government Center and urban renewal. They themselves serve as simple, eloquent statements for common sense and reason when it comes to grand urban experiments.

And yet, it's an unfinished history. The Big Dig - the largest public works project in American history - is nearing completion, which will bring down the despised Fitzgerald Expressway. The land cleared for that highway will yet again be developed into inhabitable space and add another major chapter in the history of the city's evolution. So as history loops back on itself in Boston, it does so in new and unforeseen ways. In that, Lost Boston serves us well as a history and a speculation on the future of the city.

What a treat to have this updated version of the author's classic history of Boston. The photos still resonate with the sadness of their loss and the beauty of their existence. But this isn't just a coffee table book. It remains the best history of this fascinating old, and new, city. I especially liked the supplement telling what had been saved, what was threatened and what was lost. I bought the first version 20 years ago and have bought the second to give to the next generation in my household to say how cities grow and should grow. A splendid book!

Having spent a lot of time looking for information on imaginative & fun (and sometimes luxury) travel with kids, I can tell you that this is a really unique book. It is comprehensive, carefully researched and well written with loads of practical tips. Some 'travel with kids' books might as well just be bland advertising copy, this one really provides good editorial content, with positive and critical comments. It is a pleasure to read and we will use it for a long time. Fodor's should publish more of these for other parts of the US/world.

I loved this book and would recommend it to any family wanting to travel in the northeastern United States. The writers offer tips and reviews on places of interest, resorts, and campgrounds in a wide range of prices. In fact, we have visited some of those places and found a brand new vacation prospect in Lake George which we will be trying out this summer! Definitely one of the most informative travel books on the market today -- entertaining even if you do not go to these places.

I've been searching for a book like this for several years and haven't found one that fit the bill until now! I had a great time reading it - so well written - and got more useful information than I'll ever be able to use in one lifetime! Thanks so much to the writers and publishers!