This book is a work of love by a long time visitor to Fire Island. Mr. Richards has done a magnanamous and magificent job of capturing this famous barrier island in all of its moods and seasons. It is to be recommended to all who visit the island or wish to. I can only hope Mr. Richards will train his camera on more topics in the future and that the public will be able to purchase his work.

This book is a wonderful compilation of Fire Island's history. My family became residents of Fire Island in 1923.Until I read this book, I never realized what made this date significant. The book is just filled with interesting information about the island. It should be a coffee table book for every beach house.

This book is superb. Packed with spectacular photography and interesting essays regarding Mount Desert Island's history, geography, and ecology. The print quality is first rate; kudos to the publisher. A very inspiring volume which reminds us how important it is to have places like Mount Desert Island and Acadia. Highly recommended from a resident of Maine.

Sterngass's history of three of the first American resorts -- Saratoga Springs, Newport, and Coney Island -- shows in fascinating detail how these sites came to give birth to commercial leisure in the U.S. Destined for classic status, Sterngass has a solid theoretical grasp of the changing socioeconomics of leisure, and a winning narrative style. Built on exceptionally deep research, he weaves a dense and satisfying narrative of each resort and its place in American society from the early antebellum era to the early 20th century. Using primary sources such as diaries and letters as well contemporary newspapers and magazines, he shows with masterful command how each resort was shaped and then undone by local, regional, and national sociopolitical and economic factors.

He shows through lively anecdote, public records, brief biographies, and other primary sources, how these resorts at first document the free sociality of the antebellum period, a period during which Americans self-consciously created the institutions and practices of the first democratic society. He then shows how after the Civil War the concomitant rise of class distinctions based on wealth, the commercialization of leisure culture and its increasing privatization meshed with new consumerist values in such a way as to scuttle these egalitarian and democratic ideals as expressed through the relatively open culture of early resorts.

Sterngass relates, for instance, how it was that during an age of extreme religious piety (the Second Great Awakening) resorts were able to prosper in a still largely Calvinist society. He argues persuasively that early resort goers were part of long tradition of pilgrimage that had blossomed back in the Middle Ages.Saratoga's early entreprenuers touted the "healing" waters as"therapeutic," the "bathing" at Newport and Coney Island was touted by doctors as "restorative" and "re-creative." Not unlike the opium-laced patent medicines of the time, the healing waters were a cover for loosening of the usual social restraints. When tourists got to these early resorts, the hotel ballrooms (which featured nightly dancing), dining rooms (where twenty guests unknown to each other would be seated at table -- a practice which scandalized the European aristocracy who visited), and vast lobbies and porches (which fostered mingling, talking, and voyeurism) served as liminal spaces where the unexpectedly erotic or socially fortuitous meeting might occur. By contrast, the guest's rooms were tiny and ill-ventilated, a fact that seemed to bother no one -- after all the point was to see and be seen. And, just as importantly, there was no set formula, no expectation as to what accommodations in a resort hotel should be like. He also notes that for a country believed to be resolutely puritanical in its beliefs and industrious in its practices, that almost all Americans of the antebellum period went on vacation, and that a vacations of a month or more were common among the bourgeoisie and the aspiring middle class.

Saratoga's water were free for visitors and residents for better than fifty years. Early in the 1800s the town fathers passed a law to that effect, and in effect zealously guarded the amount of water that was drawn from the springs. Eventually, as leisure became more commercialized, the springs were fenced in, the water sold, and the springs, not surprisingly, were almost depleted -- an early parable of sound husbandry of natural resources giving way to the destructive forces of unbridled capitalism. Similarly, Newport's beaches were open to all from the early antebellum years until just after the Civil War, but soon after Newport was colonized by the robber barons and their friends, who attempted to privatize what had been held in common. When"cottage" dwellers like the Rockefellers and the Carnegies had trouble rescinding public access to the beach, they simply decided that bathing was not an activity people of their sort should engage in, thus creating just one of many rules that would police the boundaries between themselves and those unlike themselves. Coney Island, perhaps the most democratic of these resorts by virtue of its proximity to New York City, drew millions to its beaches and amusement parks every summer for decades, ending only in the 1940s. Sterngass shows how Coney Island's carnivalesque egalitarianism in the Gilded Age was the gift to New York of an amazing Irish politician, John McKane, whose great style and cunning helped create a safe escape for the city's burgeoning factory and office workers searching for diversion and excitement . The world's first great amusement space, nutured by the cagey McKane and his cronies, was very quickly copied the world over. Eventually brought down by reformers who consolidated the district with the rest of New York City and shuttered its rowdier establishments and attractions, the reformers drove McKane to an early grave, and instigated a process which eventually destroyed Coney's unique charms. The process continued to play out well into the 1950s when Coney's vitality finally succumbed under the weight of ill considered public housing projects, the massive infusion of money into suburban developments and the rise of car culture.

Well-illustrated with maps, photos, handbills, and other fascinating documents, this attractive book was published with great care by Johns Hopkins Press. Clearly, they believe they have a winner. I think they're right.

As a devoted 1000 island cottager, I was particularly impressed by the detail that the author included. While I have boated by many of the islands myself, I found that I really knew very little about them until I read this book. A true find for those who enjoy a colorful rendition of the local history.

This book talks of the people, politics and history of those that lived on Jones Island. It includes stories from people who were still alive to tell the tales of life on the island. It includes many pictures and names, a must for those researching their roots that go back to Jones Island.

Enid Blyton's "Five on a Treasure Island" is the first of the "Famous Five" series. In this opening story of the series, the "five" (four children and a dog) happen upon an old wreck that was raised to the surface by a fierce storm and discover a map that tells the location of gold ingots that disappeared hundreds of years ago. However, the map falls into the hands of criminals who also have designs on the lost gold and it then becomes a race between the children and the criminals to find the lost gold. Old wrecks. mysterious islands, secret tunnels, thrilling escapes and rescues are all part of this outstanding story. Although the famous five books are regarded as a childrens series, they are so well done that an adult would find it virtually impossible not to find it compelling and thoroughly enjoyable!

Mr. Medina's poetry is a cultural tour. It tastes of hot dogs and cafe con leche. It smells of El Malecon and New York's South Street Seaport. It transports you to Giotto's world, Philadelphia, Miami and Asbury Park. Highly recommended.

Boy, do these plays ever pack a bunch. With sex, secrets, family betrayal, homosexuality, incest, and a bevy of other topics, there's no telling how anyone could place these plays down. Machado is one of the best Cuban comedy writers I've read in ages. I've never laughed so much about the Bay of Pigs or Fidel Castro. I never thought I would. I really do hope these were supposed to be comedies, because each play makes me think of I Love Lucy - but with the edge of a soap opera. If these are not supposed to be comedies - well, I can't even begin to think that way. They simply have to be. There's no doubt about it!

This is an excellent and complete flora of the island that also can be used as a reference for plants in the area. It is a beautiful and interesting book that shows careful preparation.