Gamaliel Painter: Biography Of A Town Father is the story of how one adventurous pioneer transformed a cluster of log huts into a thriving village and one of Vermont's most influential towns. Gamaliel Painter, a man of forceful personality that combined daring, shrewdness and caution, arrived in Middlebury from Connecticut in the mid-eighteenth century. He took on many trades and professions including pioneer town founder, college founder, associate of Ethan Allen at the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, Captain of Artificers in the Continental Army, a two-fisted sheriff, judge, singer of Vermont's Declaration of Independence, legislator, surveyor, land speculator, industrialist, and toll-road tycoon. Biographer Storrs Lee has drawn upon a wealth of historical material to produce a vivid, lively, accurate, and impressive account of Gamaliel Patiner, a most remarkable and accomplished man who left a lasting imprint on Vermont's colonial and revolutionary history.

Faith Middleton, host of a very popular call-in show on Connecticut Public Radio, has assembled an extraordinary collection of her caller's stories, about good deeds that happen every day, but get ignored by a media obsessed with bad news.

Particularly moving and important is the chapter on Faith's monthly Alcoholics Anonymous call-in meeting. If you know anyone with a drinking problem who's still denying that it exists, you might want to give them this book.

Although I love reading, often I don't have enough time to sit down and concentrate on a book; yet Grace Point is so enthralling, so suspenseful that I discovered I'd read it in just a matter of days. With alternating POV characters and two different time periods, this novel keeps the reader wondering what will happen next and how the two circumstances are connected . . . in the end, the stories were connected in a way I didn't predict. Fantastic! LeClaire is a fabulous writer.

Jane Philbrick's memoir and cookbook, "Gramma Kilburn's Kitchen" recalls the seasonal rhythms of a Vermont farm in the first half of the 20th century. The Farm, as the family always called it, was purchased in 1848 and worked for almost a hundred years, until it was sold in 1946.

Philbrick opens with a brief history of the place and leads the reader on a child's eye tour, through the five barns, the springhouse, the chicken house, the corncrib and the forbidden territory of the ice house; greeting the animals, jumping in the hay, grinding corn for the poultry. The house too brings back memories of warmth and industry with its hand-hooked rugs, Turkey carpet and the big heart of the house - the kitchen.

Susie Kilburn not only cooked bountiful meals for family and hired help, she also put up her own vegetables and preserves, made real mince meat and served home-cured hams. Philbrick includes "receipts" for all of these delicacies as well as for pork headcheese and sweetbreads and beef tongue. Also included are receipts from other family members and friends - Aunt Ida's Carrot Marmalade, Irene's Doughnuts, Aunt Bertha's Salad Dressing.

Beginning with spring (maple sugaring and Easter), each section opens with the author's lively remembrances, complemented with farm-life history and the memories of other family members - Philbrick's siblings, mother and aunt. The author also fleshes out the season with excerpts from her grandmother's diaries. Susie kept a diary most of her life but these terse passages reveal no innermost secrets. Instead they paint an intriguing, detailed portrait of farm routines from age 11 to 66, from farmer's daughter to farmer's wife and grandmother.

"May 1 Wednesday, 1890 Ida put Ma's bedroom carpet back down. Rollo and Frank planted potatoes. Mr. Jones came here to borrow the buckboard to go to Fair Haven. Ida attended a meeting at the school house with Mrs. Jones. Eli Drake carried her home. Harry Northrup came here and staid all night."

"October 6 Monday, 1941 Gladys washed in the A.M. The men finished filling the silo. Norm worked on the new shed. Ed sent his insurance on the buildings. In the afternoon Gladys varnished the dining room table. Ida came in the afternoon and Carrie Dean called. In the evening Ed took me for a ride up by the lake."

Then come the recipes - lamb and asparagus and fish and stewed greens in spring; new potatoes and peas, jelly making and canning in summer; apples and pickles and squash in the fall; venison, stews, and baked beans in the winter. And no lack of desserts at any season. "Of course dessert was served at all meals - including breakfast at The Farm."

The dishes are just what you'd hope to find - hearty, rib-sticking country food. Gramma's Sunday Chicken is a fricassee with egg dumplings, there is a whole collection of doughnut recipes and a section devoted to puddings, including Indian, Rhubarb and Bread. "I thank my lucky stars that I was a child during the time that puddings were still a part of our diet. Now, I am talking about home cooked puddings. There may be a place in our society today for instant puddings but not in this cookbook."

Within each season are sections focused on special activities - summer harvest, turkey drives, the Rutland Fair, butchering - and ordinary activities like housekeeping, shopping and, of course, cooking. Holidays get special treatment, with mouth-watering menus and recipes for every dish from Roast Turkey Dressed with Oysters to Plum Pudding.

I should probably mention that the author is my mother-in-law. This is no indication of prejudice. Rather, it means I have had the pleasure of enjoying many of the dishes, from holiday favorites like Cranberry Chutney and Parker House Rolls to year-round fare like Roast Pork, Bread and Butter Pickles, Potatoes au Gratin and Oyster Stew. I can attest that Aunt Ida's Famous Ginger Cookies deserve their fame and Aunt Ida's Swedish Meatballs really are "the very best Swedish meatballs this side of Uppsala or Stockholm."

Full of memories, history and good food, Philbrick's book is a warm, fascinating and useful tribute to a bygone way of life.

There's a story told about a Buddhist monk who could look into your eyes and see your grandmother's soul. The collaboration between author Howard Frank Mosher and photographer John M. Miller, called "Granite & Cedar: The People and the Land of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom" gives the common reader a chance for a similar view. This remarkable book gives a profound opportunity to see into and beyond the familiar of "home."
"Granite & Cedar" is set in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom; the black and white photographs (most taken between 1971 and 1976) represent a simpler time when the region was a world unto itself. Then the Interstate rolled through, and it was suddenly easier to have second homes here. Long-time residents could come and go with ease, and the world of the Northeast Kingdom changed. Patterns of life shifted, and familiar traditions suddenly reappeared as people, places and ways that were different.
Mosher's haunting story of Aunt Jane Hubbell weaves through the photographs like hand washed thread turning into fine lace. The story opens in 1965 as the plans for the Interstate are introduced. Aunt Jane has fierce stubbornness and loyalty to family, both living and dead. Will she stand up to the engineers at the public hearing for the highway, or will she back down in deference to her 78 years and ancestors lying at rest? How will she be remembered?
We see the time-worn buildings standing tall beside symbols of an emerging era of rapid obsolescence; we see wool jackets and spruce boards holding their ground to synthetic fleece and vinyl siding; we see men and women whose lives and ways are somehow very familiar although today - they are gone.
We see into a place and time well used by those who lived off the land and were shaped by it and who like Aunt Jane were, above all, practical. Mosher and Miller have unwrapped the gift we thought unique to the legendary monk.
For those with connections to the Northeast Kingdom "Granite & Cedar" will be tenderly familiar. And yet strictly regional, this book is not. For those who only know Vermont's fringe from a distance, the connection to home will prevail.
"Granite & Cedar" is Mosher and Miller at their best.

Particularly striking are the many plates which provide a rare insight into the artistic notions of a culture that generally frowned on decoration. As a document on early American notions of form, the books holds its own with the best studies of architecture, pottery and antiques that I have seen.

This book is an informative and interesting account of the spread of religious enthusiasm in eighteenth-century New England. The work is a good overview of the Great Awakening in that region. It is a particularly good, though concise introduction to the period.

For another detailed consideratin of the Great Awakening, including an interesting discussion of major personalities involved, see Richard Hofstadter, America at 1750: A Social Portrait, which also discusses other events and themes in colonial American history.

THE NANTUCKET BOOK is one good read! There are well-researched chapters on the Island's history, and culture. Did you know that Nantucket has more toally preserved buildings in the National Register of Historic Places than Boston, Salem, or Plymouth? And that it was a refuge for escaping slaves and free blacks after slavery on the island was abolished in 1770? The book is also chucked full of lodging, eating, shopping, environmental, and recreational information. I used it to plan my summer vacation. But its a great read for armchair travelers too.

Searchable by any keyword including date and name, this CD-ROM version of the 3-volume "The Great Migration Begins" is extremely convenient for genealogists to use. It contains information on over 900 early New England families and represents the first phase of the Great Migration Study Project - an effort to identify all those Europeans who settled in New England before 1633.