Jay Kaiser has done a wonderful job writting a comprehensive, interesting and helpful travel guide to Acadia. The book has information for any sort of trip: Whether you're interested in adventure (camping and rugged hikes) or relaxation (staying at an inn and finding great restaurants), this book will take you where you want to go. Lots of lovely pictures, helpful maps and lively comentary. I'm so glad to have had this book with me throughout my recent trip to Acadia to make it clear what sights I couldn't miss. I can't wait to return because there is so much left to discover!

For the type of person who needs to know the intimate details surrounding your destination, this book is a must. It touches on history, geography, geology of the region in a concise, logical manner, while offering an encompassing view of the activities, layout, and surrounding area. Pictures and detailed maps are scattered throughout the book providing a sense of place and are a trip planner's dream. PLUS, Mr. Kaiser includes an overview of the Maine lobster including eating instructions. Talk about covering all your bases! All in all, a very informative, detailed covering of Acadia and its surrounding area with an insider's take to avoiding crowds and hitting little known spots.

This book is a must have for those who have experienced the beauty or have the desire to experience the beauty and offerings of Acadia National Park. Mr. Kaiser has finally produced the guide to do Acadia justice. You'll learn all the side trips, cool lunch spots, etc. to enjoy on a Saturday afternoon hike with a buddy, and you'll also have the memory of your journey when you get home through Jay's pictures!

Horror stories just do not get any better than this one.

I read Deus-X a few years ago and had waited to read more of Citro's work. However, there has not been much out, but I was glad to see the re-release of this series. Shadow Child is the first book of three that are all being re-released.

I greatly enjoyed this book, it is an excellent example of a frightening book that is somewhat based in fantasy and reality. It is un-nerving and impossible to resist. If you like horror that leaves you double checking the locks on the back doors when you go to bed then this is one for you.

Joseph Citro has written a masterpiece in keeping me up all night to finish Shadow Child. This book has you engulfed in the content of the story with every sentence. Soon after your Eric's arrival in Vermont, you will not know whether or not anyone will make it out alive from this rustic New England town. All in all, the best book written in years by any horror author. You will be checking the locks on your door(s) before you turn in for the night.

Mary was delighted to hear your raving reviews of her book. I am sad to tell you that she passed away August 18, 2001 at the age of 96. She was in the process of completing a sequal to "The Widow Down By The Brook". Had her body not given out, believe me, her mind would have finished it. I was fortunate to have spent the past year trying to keep up with her. The immediate personal connection you feel reading the words in her book are the same feelings you had meeting her. She found humor in every day. She was a delightful woman, a precious one that got away. She will be truely missed.

To the reviewer from Modesto - please email me, I know Mary would love to hear from you.

Mary's book read like a conversation between friends as she reminisced about the challenge of making a barn into a home and then adjusting to life as a single woman upon the death of her husband. Although for me it was reminiscent of similar experiences as I was her neighbor, living just over the hill, everyone will enjoy her style. In her telling of the love and support she found among neighbors, she reminds us all of a life and time many of us knew but now has been lost.

This was fabulous! The author clearly does NOT hate Puritans. She is objective, insightful. It's a treasure!

Ulrich succeeds in bringing to life the obscure and the mundane in a manner that intrigues and entertains. This is not a small feat given a subject that I thought would be somewhat dry. Rather than reading like a textbook, Ulrich targets the divisions of women's lives that Nancy Cott used, religion, sisterhood, domesticity, and marriage relations with a wit and wealth of facinating vingettes.

The only real issue I have with the book (aside from becoming a little dated twenty years on) is the title. People seem to assume that a book entitled 'Good Wives' is a type of antiquated self help manual, rather than a record of the Good wives of 17th and 18th Century America.

Good Wives sheds an illuminating light on the lives of early American women in New England. Ulrich does a great job in proving that these women's lives were far from static and submissive, a fact long lines of historians have never realized or have ignored. Of course, one reason New England's pre-colonial women have not been studied to any vast degree is the fact that primary (and even secondary) source material is almost nonexistent. For example, there is no female diary written before 1750. Ulrich deeply mines the sources that are extant and presents her findings in a way that is highly organized, richly detailed, and quite illuminating. Her main sources consist of court records, probate records, family papers (which include only a very small number of letters written by women), diaries of men, church records, and the contents of ministerial sermons. She is very careful to qualify the reliability and utility of each source, and, in a bibliographical essay, she points to the shortcomings of previous historical monographs that either ignored colonial women or dismissed their influence in colonial life.

Ulrich states that this book is a study of role definition, and she organizes her text around three role clusters associated with three Biblical women (an appropriate framework for the religious societies of colonial New England). Her three prototypes are Bathsheeba for economic affairs, Eve for sexual/reproductive matters, and Jael for matters of female aggression within the bounds of religion. Ulrich identifies and expounds upon the following roles for colonial New England women: housewife, deputy husband, consort, mother, mistress, neighbor, Christian, and--in some cases--heroism. While women were subservient to men, they could assert themselves to certain degrees within the social framework of life. For example, women commonly helped men with their work, conducted business matters in the place of a husband who was unavailable, oversaw the raising of all neighborhood children collectively, dominated the frequent occasions of childbirth, and indirectly exercised influence within the churches. In some of the most interesting material in the book, Ulrich examines the accounts of females captured by Indians. Although she finds significant differences between them in terms of their levels of submissiveness and aggression toward their captors, she develops a framework in which these differences can be understood within early New England society as a whole. The real magic of the book is its success in describing the normal, daily lives of women and comparing and contrasting the stories of those residing in urban centers, town outskirts, and frontier homes. While the lack of primary source material makes it impossible to know the true aspects of these pioneer New England women, Good Wives offers a sweeping yet individualized picture of an important part of colonial society in all its aspects, a society in which the boundaries of men and women did sometimes blur within the individual household.

Kate Maloy has the life I want to live. We have similar backgrounds, including age, gender, past marriages, Quakerism and more. So perhaps I should seek that life -- it's out there, she proves so in this book.

This is not a light or superficial book -- it is rich and shines with deep thoughts and reflection. She includes all the wrinkles, twists and lines that real life brings to us. In this book she shares the kinds of things you might think about, but not speak, the contents of a personal journal, introspective and quite true.

She has managed to make the most of her life, and this book is a wonder to read. Her writing style is one that invites the reader along, and I felt (as you probably will) as if this was part of a conversation with a close friend, part with myself, part simply a life viewed through a warm and inviting window.

She writes about so much, this book is incredibly full -- I'm not done yet reading it again and again.

A quote I love, "Long before I ever met Alan, I wondered if any man of my generation could love a woman his own age, could feel passion (and compassion) for her aging, vulnerable flesh, could open himself to a soul-deep love even as he himself loses muscle tone, stamina and hair -- could well and truly stand naked in front of another and not be ashamed. Now I know there is at least one such man on the planet."

Sigh. This Friend speaks for me.

An uplifting, warming reading for cool nights and warm days, too.

I'm not a Quaker and I've never attended a Meeting. Although I consider any religion that calls its practitioners Friends a step in the right direction, my motivations in reading SBN were strictly secular. I was first drawn to the book because I have enormous respect for the publisher. The cover also spoke to me. The simplicity and purity of it. A single stand of snow covered trees. And I've always been intrigued by bridges as metaphors, so the title was perfect. There's no doubt that SBN is a book of the spirit in the sense that it's a look at the effects of Quakerism in the writer's life. And this is a strong theme of the book. To say otherwise would be misleading and disingenuous. But the book is so much more than that, too generous with its reach, too honest in its outpouring of contemplations, too bighearted and open-minded to be pigeonholed as a theological dogmatic text. It is indeed a soulful book, but it offers its deep solitude, silence and solace to all. For some unknown reason I dipped into the book haphazardly, rather than reading it linearly, which did not ruin the experience for me. Covering a rapid and transitional year in her life, it alternates between journal-type entries and short and long meditations on all things human: emotions, food, television, our education system, everyday life, and even the internet, which becomes another form of metaphysical uplifting for the author. It turns out she's met her new husband on the web. Some of their communications back and forth, via re-mail, are included in the book. That atypical love story is just one of the truly fine, honest - and surprising - things that the author reflects on. They all conjoin into the story of a lifechange. An intelligent, quietly passionate, appealing, and insightful story of the process of continuing to make oneself a better person through faith in life and in each other.

I'm Kate Maloy's ex-husband. She speaks about me in her good book, A Stone Bridge North, anonymously, because she was considerate enough to try to protect the guilty.

Because I figure in her book, but not in especially complementary terms, I figure that potential buyers or readers of her book might be interested in my take on it.

It's a captivating story of emotional venture and spiritual adventure, with author-centered but gifted, exquisite reflections on the meaning of the struggle - in terms with which anyone can empathize - to enrich a life, a marriage, a sense of self, one's soul.

It's also a guarranteed page-turner, a compelling story of the roles of reflective struggle and the mystery of grace in amazing turns of life.

The story of how Kate found the wonderful man who became her soul-mate and new husband is, simply, amazing by any standard.

Any person who ever wondered how - by concerted effort or by gentle grace - life can, indeed, take magnificent turns needs to read this book. And take heart.

Elegant writing by Ernest Hebert. In some ways he reminds me a little of Norman Maclean in style. Honest and elegant. A compelling time-period and characters who struggle with the way their lives are and what they could have been.

One day last spring, one of the other parents dropping kids off at school stopped me to say, "I stayed up late last night finishing the most wonderful book, and I have to tell someone, so I'm telling you." The book she was so ardently recommending was Ernest Hebert's The Old American. What is it about certain books that elicits such a need to pass them along?
I remember when I first read Hebert's novel The Dogs of March, which I've argued should be assigned to newly arrived New Englanders as required reading, like taking Vermont's Freeman's Oath. Myself, I read every paragraph twice as I made my way through the pages, the only time I ever recall doing that. Hebert has an incomparable ear for dialogue, an ability to set off a dramatic incident like a blasting cap, and his prose conveys the gnarled, bruising beauty of the north country. Darby, the town he invented as setting for his characters' collisions with fate and one another, is a place now present in detail in my mental cosmos.
Having achieved so much in a certain mode, Hebert evidently felt constrained by the conventions of the contemporary "realistic" novel. In the early 1990s he wrote a cyber-punk thriller called Mad Boys, worked on a nonfiction book about wood, then commenced work on a project seemingly very different.
As he explains in a note at the end of The Old American, he had been pondering childhood memories of a monument in Keene, New Hampshire. Almost hidden behind a hedge, a plaque commemorates the site where in 1736 a settler named Nathan Blake built the town's first log cabin, indicating that Blake was captured by Indians and taken to Canada for three years then ransomed by his wife.
So why do certain books compel readers to pass them on? First, there's the power of a fabulous story. The Old American has that, in spades: the tale of Nathan Blake's captivity unfolds with gravity and old-fashioned excitement. This is the New England frontier, sparsely populated, opulent in game, and with cloud-crowned forests and wild, spume-torn rivers. Nathan survives a series of tests among his captors, including traversing the infamous gauntlet in a rather original way (this episode is a tour de force of narrative strength and agility). Ultimately, although by definition still a slave, Nathan makes a home for himself in the village of Conissadawaga, a town of refugiés from tribes decimated by assimilation, war, and disease. Pulled between contesting strategies for survival ' settlement with European-style cabins and farms, or continuing the nomadic, foraging life further north ' the community is coming apart along age-old rifts. Saturated with historical insights and accuracies, Hebert's writing nonetheless vaults above its scholarly sources and succeeds as a vivid, vigorous story. In scenes of hunting and fishing, planting corn, gossiping by the fire, and gambling (paradoxically, to gain prestige by losing everything), the ancient dwellers on this land come alive. Especially moving and frequently comical is Hebert's way of conveying the linguistic mix surrounding Nathan, a simmering stew of Iroquian and Algonquian languages, French, English, Dutch, and even "slaughtered" church Latin.
Secondly, The Old American has magnificent characters. Although he initially tried to tell his tale from the viewpoint of Nathan Blake, according to Hebert after several failed drafts he re-routed and built the novel around the thoughts and narration of the elderly Indian named Caucus-Meteor, former slave himself and skilled as a multi-lingual translator. He is a combination of philosopher king and court jester, grand in intellect but self-effacing and mischievous. While Hebert's story is endlessly engaging, what lifts this novel to the level of greatness is the character of Caucus-Meteor. Hebert's bold choice, defying imaginative difficulties as well as literary-political correctness, is a mark of his stature as one of our most gifted novelists.
The Old American evokes an epoch far from our own, a time exhilarating in potential yet verging on catastrophe. Those of you who have read the book have surely noticed the enthusiasm and even urgency with which you commend it to others.

Fascinating plot and characters as mentioned above. Ernest Hebert is one of the rare ones who can start a sentence and then come seemingly out of nowhere to surprise the reader with images and rhythms juxtaposed in new and delightful ways. Treat yourself to this book now!

This 248-page book offers story variety in a great cross-section of New England hauntings. Among the contributors are doctors, college professors, teachers, and others the author deemed credible by way of their non-superstitious nature, type of education and profession, and whether they seemed genuinely affected by their experiences. All accounts are intriguing and well-written, and most have multiple witnesses and interviews to the events described. Chas. T Robinson, an anthropological researcher and newspaper columnist, has done his homework. "After The Fact" is poignant and thought-provoking; "Don't Look In The Closet" is downright frightening; "Grandma's Gripe" is scary in a comical way. "Whitman Farm" and "Haunted Stairway" are also spooky. In fact, the entire book is superb! Many stories end with short "author's notes" which offer additional tidbits of info and personal commentary. Most entertaining if you can get your hands on it!...

simply the best most fritening book on earth! its great for scaring children and halloween

I definitly recomend this one!

I've loaned this book out so many times I had to buy a second copy. The stories are both interesting and believable. The author does his best to protect the privacy of some haunted home owners but there's plenty of descriptions of public places for those who want to do some investigating on their own. It's the most entertaining book on New England hauntings I've found yet.

I found Jasper Milvain, the "alarmingly modern young man," to be the most interesting character in Gissing's New Grub Street for a number of reasons, the most significant of which is that he evinces what can only be considered a modernist's consciousness in his approach to writing. That is, while it soon becomes clear to the reader that Milvain represents the antithesis of what Edwin Reardon personifies-i.e., the work of literature as an emanation of author's native genius-and thus one of the intercalated plots of the novel involves the incremental success of Milvain as a modern man of letters, and the concomitant gradual abjection of Reardon. In a manner of speaking, then, Milvain and Reardon's fates emerge from a common source, namely some sea change in the reading public's (the consumer's) preferences and tendencies.

Milvain identifies as vulgar the most lucrative market for the product of the man of letter's labor. The vulgarians, or "quarter educated," drive the market (479), and since they have been determined to desire nothing more than chatty ephemera, they have successfully opened an insuperable gulf between material success in writing and artistic success. Reardon's psychologically penetrating novels just aren't in demand. Therefore, there emerges quite an interesting conceptual shift within the nascent hegemony of the quarter-educated as established by their purchasing power: what was once considered healthy artistic integrity has transmuted into a peculiar kind of petit bourgeois hubris, if, in the new paradigm, the writer is more an artisan than an artist. Therefore, Reardon's artistically-compromised and padded three-volume novel, written with no other end in mind than to pander to the vulgar reader, nonetheless achieves only modest success because, the fact that it is indistinguishable from countless other similar works glutting the market aside, his novel is infected from his irrepressible integrity, and thus his novel becomes a strange sort of counterfeit, a psychological narrative masquerading as a popular novel. Reardon thus becomes a sort of Coriolanus among writers.

Milvain, on the other hand, is a sort of Henry Ford among writers; he reveals his particular genius when offering advice to his sister Maud about how to write religious works for juveniles: "I tell you, writing is a business. Get together half-a-dozen fair specimens of the Sunday school prize; study them; discover the essential points of such a composition; hit upon new attractions; then go to work methodically, so many pages a day" (13). In other words, Jasper has managed to streamline and to mechanize the writing process. He studies previous works, abstracts formulae from them, isolates the elements of these formulae, and then deploys and rearranges these elements to give his own writing a patina of originality. By treating writing as an exercise in manipulating formulae, Jasper exchanges "authenticity" (whatever that word means anymore) for the convenience and efficiency of not having to grapple with his own potentially mutable and recalcitrant genius. Jasper did not invent writing, just as Ford did not invent the automobile. But like Ford did with automobile manufacture, Milvain discovers those aspects of writing that lend themselves to mechanical reproduction. Thus he is able to capitalize on his time and effort, and effectively becomes the very machine Reardon believes himself to be but never actually becomes because of his lingering notions of artistic integrity (352).

Also of interest is the fact that Albert Yule is a sort of synthesis of Milvain and Reardon. Like Milvain, Yule attempts to streamline his own literary production by delegating some of the labor to his daughter Marian. However, like Reardon, Yule clings to the superannuated notion of the necessary individuality of writing: "[h]is failings, obvious enough, were the results of a strong and somewhat pedantic individuality ceaselessly at conflict with unpropitious circumstances" (38). In other words, Yule fails to recognize the obsolescence of the lone, learned genius within the realm of literary production. A market of vulgarians who demand occasional literary confections simply does not expect Works of individual genius. Moreover, even if they were in demand, works of individual genius are too ponderously inefficient to keep pace with the rate at which they are consumed. Therefore, Yule straddles the either/or proposition personified by Reardon and Milvain: One may preserve his artistic integrity and write "for the ages"--hence Yule, Biffen, and Reardon's fetishization of Shakespeare, Coleridge and authors of classical antiquity--and starve in the process, or one may write "for the moment" and actually turn a respectable profit.

The shadow of Charles Darwin indeed looms large over the events and characters of New Grub Street. The growth market brought about by the advent of the "quarter-educated" vulgar class, and their discretionary income coupled with their callow aesthetic sensibilities and truncated attention spans, represents a nascent economic, if not ecological niche, for certain social creatures to occupy. However, it's not simply a matter of being able to adapt one's skills to the tastes of these consumers. One must also be a prodigious enough writer to keep pace with an equally prodigious rate of consumption. Individuals like Milvain and Whelpdale are adequately adapted to this niche in that they satisfy the demands of this niche in terms of both content and output. Reardon panders to the vulgar taste only grudgingly and after long resistance and thereby cannot meet the production demands of this niche. Biffen absolutely refuses to pander at all. Alfred Yule does attempt to pander, but his mode of literary production is too inefficient to meet production demands, and he is also largely ignorant of vulgar literary taste. While more in touch with the vulgar reader than her father, Marian Yule is as inefficient in her literary production as her father. Therefore, each of the characters named above are equally maladaptive, albeit for various reasons, and thus their extinction by the novel's end strikes the reader as somehow inevitable. Whereas Milvain and Reardon's widow Amy are left to come together as the triumphant niche occupants and thus reproduce themselves in their offspring, should they decide to produce any.

George Gissing's 1891 novel, "New Grub Street," is likely one of the most depressing books I've ever read. Certainly, in its descriptions of literary life, be it in publishing, or in my own realm of graduate scholarship, the situations, truths, and lives Gissing portrays are still all too relevant. "New Grub Street" itself points to the timelessness of Gissing's portrayals - as Grub Street was synonymous, even in the eighteenth century with the disrepute of hack writing, and the ignominy of having to make a living by authorship. One of Gissing's primary laments throughout the novel is that the life of the mind is of necessity one which is socially isolating and potentially devastating to any kind of relationships, familial or otherwise. "New Grub Street" gives us a world where friendship is never far from enmity, where love is never far from the most bitter kinds of hatred.

The anti-heroes of "New Grub Street" are presented to us as the novel begins - Jasper Milvain is a young, if somewhat impoverished, but highly ambitious man, eager to be a figure of influence in literary society at whatever cost. His friend, Edwin Reardon, on the other hand, was brought up on the classics, and toils away in obscurity, determined to gain fame and reputation through meaningful, psychological, and strictly literary fiction. Family matters beset the two - Jasper has two younger sisters to look out for, and Edwin has a beautiful and intelligent wife, who has become expectant of Edwin's potential fame. Throw into the mix Miss Marian Yule, daughter of a declining author of criticism, whose own reputation was never fully realized, and who has indentured his daughter to literary servitude, and we have a pretty list of discontented and anxious people struggling in the cut-throat literary marketplace of London.

Money is of supreme importance in "New Grub Street," and it would be pointless to write a review without making note of it. As always, the literary life is one which is not remunerative for the mass of people who engage upon it, and this causes no end of strife in the novel. As Milvain points out, the paradox of making money in the literary world is that one must have a well-known reputation in order to make money from one's labours. At the same time, one must have money in order to move in circles where one's reputation may be made. This is the center of the novel's difficulties - should one or must one sacrifice principles of strictly literary fame and pander to a vulgar audience in order to simply survive? The question is one in which Reardon finds the greatest challenges to his marriage, his self-esteem, and even his very existence. For Jasper Milvain and his sisters, as well as for Alfred and Marian Yule, there is no question that the needs of subsistence outweigh most other considerations.

"New Grub Street" profoundly questions the relevance of classic literature and high culture to the great mass of people, and by proxy, to the nation itself. For England, which propagated its sense of international importance throughout the nineteenth century by encouraging the study of English literature in its colonial holdings, the matter becomes one of great significance. The careers of Miss Dora Milvain and Mr. Whelpdale, easily the novel's two most charming, endearing, and sympathetic characters, attempt to illustrate the ways in which modern literature may be profitable to both the individual who writes it and the audiences towards which they aim. They may be considered the moral centers of the novel, and redeem Gissing's work from being entirely fatalistic.

"New Grub Street" is a novel that will haunt me for quite some time. As a "man of letters" myself, I can only hope that the novel will serve as an object lesson, and one to which I may turn in hope and despair. The novel is well written, its characters and situations drawn in a very realistic and often sympathetic way. Like the ill-fated "ignobly decent" novel of Mr. Biffen's, "Mr. Bailey, Grocer," "New Grub Street" may seem less like a novel, and more like a series of rambling biographical sketches, but they are indelible and lasting sketches of literary lives as they were in the original Grub Street, still yet in Gissing's time, and as they continue to-day. Very highly recommended.

"New Grub Street," published in three volumes in 1891, is George Gissing's grimly realistic exploration of literary life in 1880s London. While it is a remarkably vivid novel, it is also an accurate and detailed depiction of what it was like to be a struggling author in late nineteenth century England, "a society where," as Professor Bernard Bergonzi points out in his introduction, "literature has become a commodity, and where the writing of fiction does not differ radically from any other form of commercial or industrial production."

"New Grub Street" is the contrapuntal narrative of two literary figures, Edwin Reardon, a struggling novelist who aspires to write great literature without regard to its popular appeal, and Jasper Milvain, a self-centered, materialistic striver whose only concern is with achieving financial success and social position by publishing what the mass public wants to read. As Milvain relates early in the novel, succinctly adumbrating the theme that winds through the entirety of "New Grub Street":

"Understand the difference between a man like Reardon and a man like me. He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He won't make concessions, or rather, he can't make them; he can't supply the market. I-well, you may say that at present I do nothing; but that's a great mistake, I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skillful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets. . . . Reardon can't do that kind of thing, he's behind his age; he sells a manuscript as if he lives in Sam Johnson's Grub Street. But our Grub Street of today is quite a different place: it is supplied with telegraphic communication, it knows what literary fare is in demand in every part of the world, its inhabitants are men of business, however seedy."

Gissing brilliantly explores this theme through the lives of his characters, each drawn with stunning depth and verisimilitude. There is, of course, Reardon, whose failure as a novelist and neurasthenic decline destroys his marriage and his life. There is also Reardon's wife, Amy, a woman whose love for Reardon withers with the exsanguination of her husband's creative abilities. While the manipulative and seemingly unfeeling Milvain pursues his crass aspirations, he also encourages his two sisters, Dora and Maud, to seek commercial success as writers of children's books. And intertwining all of their lives are the myriad connections each of the characters has with the Yule family, in particular with the nearly impoverished Alfred Yule, a serious writer and literary critic, and his daughter and literary amanuensis, Marian.

It is Marian--struggling to reconcile the literary demands and expectations of her father with the desire to lead her own life, struggling to escape the claustrophobic world of the literary life--who ultimately, pessimistically challenges the verities of that life while sitting in its physical embodiment, the prison-like British Museum library:

"It was gloomy, and one could scarcely see to read; a taste of fog grew perceptible in the warm, headachy air. . . . She kept asking herself what was the use and purpose of such a life as she was condemned to lead. When already there was more good literature in the world than any individual could cope with in his lifetime, here she was exhausting herself in the manufacture of printed stuff which no one even pretended to be any more than a commodity for the day's market. What unspeakable folly! . . . She herself would throw away her pen with joy but for the need of earning money. . . . This huge library, growing into unwieldiness, threatening to become a trackless desert of print-how intolerably it weighed upon the spirit."

It is Marian, too, who ultimately becomes the romantic victim of Milvain's aspirations, the powerful language of Gissing's anti-romantic subplot twisting into almost gothic excess as he extends the metaphor of London's fog to Marian's sleepless depression:

"The thick black fog penetrated every corner of the house. It could be smelt and tasted. Such an atmosphere produces low spirited languor even in the vigorous and hopeful; to those wasted by suffering it is the very reek of the bottomless pit, poisoning the soul. Her face colorless as the pillow, Marian lay neither sleeping nor awake in blank extremity of woe; tears now and then ran down her cheeks, and at times her body was shaken with a throe such as might result from anguish of the torture chamber."

"New Grub Street" is deservedly regarded not only as Gissing's finest novel, but also as one of the finest novels of late nineteenth century English literature. Grimly realistic in its depiction of what it was like to be a struggling writer in late nineteenth century London, it is also remarkable for its historical accuracy and its literary craftsmanship. If you like the realism of writers like Harding and Zola, then "New Grub Street" is a book you must read!

A different style of book with a unique approach to traveling in Massachusetts. The content is worth 4 or 5 stars. But this book does not allow printing! In the case of a travel ebook, this is unfortunate. Are we expected to take a PC with us on our travels? Until such tight restrictions are lifted, this book's value is limited.

"An interesting and charming book where Tougias writes free and poetic. He recounts his experiences in a concise and welcoming way." The Standard Times

"Different form other travel books in that it's a little bit travel, a little bit history, and a little bit personal diary." Dartmouth Chronicle

First let me say I am a New England Patriot fan.

Overall, this book was a disappointment. Nevertheless, any Patriot fan will find reading the book interesting and essential to get the inside story of the 2001 New England Patriots.

Starting with the book's shortcomings:

1. Very little attention is paid to most intriguing element of the 2001 team - the ultimate replacement of Drew Bledsoe with Tom Brady. Johnson gives very, very short shrift to this key story of the team. Maybe, being a coach on the team he was afraid of going into the kind of detail that appears in journalists' account of the relationship between Bledsoe, Brady, Belichik and the team.

2. There's too much I I I in the book. I didn't want to hear about Johnson's coaching philosophy or incidents that occurred specifically to him. I wanted to hear about the team.

3. It does a poor job of building drama and excitement. It has a very bland and unadorned writing style.

4. Not necessarily a shortcoming, but there are very few X's and O's talking about plays and play calling, as well as in-depth coaching philosophies.

Now why you should read it:

1. The book does a good job of walking the reader through the entire season in segments and has even greater detail on the playoffs and Super Bowl and preparations leading up to them.

2. It clearly demonstrates the importance of teamwork and less high profile players on the team for this particular squad to make the playoffs and win the Super Bowl.

3. It gives the reader a glimpse into the day-to-day life of NFL coaches.

4. It allows fans to re-live the 2001 season.

I loved this book. I hate to read but found that this book was just what I was looking for. I have never been more excited to read a book in my life. I am a big New England fan and so wanted a book to bring the whole champion experience out for me. If you are a hige Patriots fan this bookk is for you!!!!

WON FOR ALL:
The Inside Story of the New England
Patriots' Improbable Run to the Super Bowl
Pepper Johnson with Bill Gutman.
...(256p) ISBN 0-07-
140877-0
After losing three of the first four games in
the 2001-2002 season, the New England Patriots
roared back to finish the year with an 11-5 record
and completed the surprising turn-around by
beating the St. Louis Rams in one of the most
exciting Super Bowls in NFL history.
Johnson, who played linebacker for 13

years, joined New England as an unpaid liason
in 2000 and was the inside linebackers'
coach during the championship season. Although
Johnson does reminisce about his
playing days (particularly his years with the
New York Giants), he gives a first-rate account
of the Patriots' transformation from a 5-11 team
in 2000 to Super Bowl champs the
following season. Johnson, writing with Gutman
(Parcells: A Biography), picks up the story
at the end the 2001-2002 season, then backtracks

readers from training camp through
the Super Bowl. Along the way, he describes
how head coach Bill Belichick created a winning
team by weeding out players who did
not fit his playing style. Johnson does a terrific
job of bringing readers into the Patriots'
locker room as he discusses strategy about
each game while also providing an insider's
perspective on various members of the team;
an especially compelling chapter deals with
a week in the life of an NFL coach, illustrating
the pressures coaches face each week in
the season. Patriot fans will no doubt enjoy
this recap of the Super Bowl run, as will fans
who want a glimpse of what goes on behind
the scenes in professional football. (Nov.)