No comments about Brookline (Images of America).

2 comments about The Rough Guide to Devon and Cornwall 2 (Rough Guide Travel Guides).

1. We just completed a two week trip to Cornwall, and used this guide extensively. We found it accurate and meticulous, a rare event. For travel, our favorites have been the Michelin Green guides because they are light, compact, and carry an extraordinary amount of information. This guide meets all those criteria. We particularly appreciated the maps... so many guides have good information, but no maps... and this really slows a tourist down! Great book!



2. I was actually searching for pictures and pictures but...there wasn't worth much to see.
   No pictures of the lovely coastal green fields.lovely cliffs.
   very disapointed.
   A lot of information and words but not enough visual stuff.
   Not worth to buy.

No comments about The Road to Canterbury: A Modern Pilgrimage.

3 comments about Islands in Time: A Natural and Cultural History of the Islands of the Gulf of Maine.

1. This is a beautiful book--I'm sorry to see that no one has commented on it yet. It gives a wealth of information about the geology, ecology, and ecosystem of coastal Maine, but even better, it's written in a style that often verges on the poetic. Can't recommend it highly enough.



2. When Phil Conkling came out with the first edition of Islands in Time he more or less created a genre of Human Ecological writing that was actually of use to a wide audience. Mixing history, geology, ecology and geography with a healthy dose of the story-tellers whimsy the book has become something of a cult classic for many of us in the Archipelago. Unfortunately the second edition is a bit of a step backward. It's big. too big. The first edition fitted comfortably in a daypack -this seems aimed more at coffee tables. It's chatty, and I think that a rather savage editor would have worked wonders. We get a bit too much of the "and-then-Raven-gave-a-thump-as-she-ran-over-the-puffin" style of writing & it tends to distract us from some really good stories & the solid history/natural history that shone so clearly from the first edition. That being said, if you are only going to take one book with you Downeast & are going the whole way Downeast, and can't find the first edition, get this.



3. I'm just finishing my first read of this book, and all I want to do is go back to the beginning and read it all again. This book is filled with people, history, nature, fascinating anecdote, gorgeous prose, introspective rumination, and too much rich information to even begin to digest in one reading. Conkling is a scientist comfortable with an amazing array of subjects and he is also a humanist and pretty-nearly a poet. I have a tendency to fall into the bleeding-heart environmentalist category, and while not offending my sensibilities in the least (he loves nature with a passion), he opened my eyes to many valid coastal points of view among the lobstermen, fishermen, and others. I changed my mind about a number of things while reading his book and I love Maine even more as a result of reading it. Lovely, informative, fascinating book! I'm one of those English-major types and a writer, and Conkling has not only increased my respect for science but has shown me how beautifully the arts and sciences can blend in a thoughtful, productive, earth-changing way.

3 comments about Wallpaper City Guide: London (Wallpaper City Guide).

1. It's unclear for what audience this series of guidebooks is intended. The first-time visitor will find them totally bewildering, while the seasoned traveler will inevitably quibble with the extremely quirky choice of locations included, none of which is marked on the rudimentary map on the inside back flyleaf. The 100 tiny pages, presumably intended to fit into a trouser pocket or small purse, are largely devoted to photographs (attractive), but which reduce still further the space for actual travel information. Wallpaper would have done much better to have merely collected in one place all the great restaurants, hotels, shops, and services featured monthly in the pages of their magazine. Instead, only four shops are featured for a city as huge and varied as London! The idea of reserving only one page for an alleged "insider" profile (once again with minimal "tips," none of them marked on a map) is an interesting "concept" but nearly useless to any traveler. It would appear that Wallpaper's aim was to present each city as a "concept" rather than a series of useful, practical pieces of information (why then an entire section on "escaping" from the city, when you've hardly even discovered it?), but in the end it's mostly an interesting conceit that will appeal to devotees who don't really need another guidebook at all. I religiously clip the tear-out travel pages in the monthly magazine; the recent page for London contains far more useful information for the traveler than this entire book (and has a useful map besides). Wallpaper the magazine is a terrific treasure-trove of cutting-edge information for the on-the-go, in-the-know citizen of the world. In reducing the format and the content, however, both the excitement and the utility have been pared away as well. What could have been a stunning series is instead little more than a curiosity.



2. I was really excited when I picked up this guidebook for my recent trip to London. I'm a seasoned traveller but hadn't been to London in almost twenty years and I was looking for a happening, locals' list of places. Pretty quickly I realized that not only is the book very limited, it's also focused primarily on the more expensive end of an already incredibly expensive city. It's definitely the 'swanky' guide to London. Best sections were landmarks and architecture -- stuff that generally isn't covered in other books.



3. So if you're like me and you've traveled a bit, you know that pretty much all maps in ALL guidebooks are less than totally useful. If you want a comprehensive map, ESPECIALLY for a place like London, get an A-Z. I like this guide because I like opinionated suggestions about places to go during my limited free time when I'm traveling on business. Are all of these suggestions great? No. Can I afford to stay at all the hotels? Again, no. But these guides give really interesting ideas, food for thought, and a couple of places that made colleagues say "How did you hear about THIS place?". And for $8.95, that's more than worth it to me.

No comments about Walking the London Blitz.

3 comments about South Boston, My Home Town: The History of an Ethnic Neighborhood.

1. I had to read this book...and comment on it. Like Thomas O'Connor, I am also a native of Southie. Using a voluminous store of references, and countless personal interviews, O'Connor has written the most comprehensive history of "The Town" I've ever read. He takes the reader from the very beginnings of life in the relatively isolated peninsula settlement, through the cultural, ethnic, occupational, and religious history of the residents, emphasizing their insular nature, seemingly always at odds with the rest of Boston and other outsiders, right through the 80's.

   The detailed background information provided by O'Connor over an entire chapter, regarding the forced busing for school integration and ensuing Southie riots, will give the non-Southie(and maybe some Southies also) reader a much better understanding, and different perspective, on the town. O'Connor is clear on the causes of the riots, namely a clueless judge following the path paved by a self-serving state legislature that passed a law which would preclude busing to Boston's lily-white suburbs, compounded of course by Southie's insular nature and desires to maintain their neighborhood schools. I recommend Michael MacDonald's recently published "All Souls" for a terrific read on the tragic experiences of one very poor Southie family in the projects during the those riots in the 70's, and on through the 80's, into the 90's.

   Overall..a terrific historic work on South Boston by O'Connor..the best Ive ever read.




2. Written by a South Boston expatriate [who hasn't lived in South Boston for decades], the book: 'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town - The History of an Ethnic Neighborhood' (c. 1988, 1994) by B.C. history professor Thomas H. O'Connor, ignored the usual tenets of logic and historiography and took a contingent and non-teleological world view of the history of his ex-neighborhood, South Boston.

   Containing all the usual ingrediants of determinism - such as: truisms (e.g. "The Dorchester Heights monument was completed in 1901 ..." p. 107) interpreted with many unreferenced categorical statements (e.g. " 'Most' of the Irish who came to America ..." p 78, and "In 'most' South Boston Schools ..." p. 121, or " ... the anti-semitism among 'some' Irish Catholics ..." p. 186); Professor O'Connor, in an attempt to initiate a self-fulfilling prophecy, simply collected a series of stereotypes which coincided with the media coverage of the anti-forced busing events of 1974-1984 Boston, of which he personally was not involved!

   This blatant manipulation of information is further enhanced by these curiously irresponsible statements that "To a great extent, Irish emigrants brought their traditional drinking habits with them when they came to America." (p. 44) and " ... the potato was the absolute mainstay of the Irish diet." (p. 47). In light of the facts that the first beer pump in Boston is found in South Boston at the German bar "Amrheims"; and in Ireland, the Irish don't just eat potatoes!

   As a further case in reader manipulation, the book 'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town' contained an anachronism as Prof. O'Connor perpetuated a crude specimen of Boston 'Mytho-history'. On page 254 in Prof. O'Connor's sources is found the screed LIBERTY'S CHOSEN HOME (c.1977) where journalist Alan Lupo related the excited outburst of an anti-forced busing protester in 1974 to then Mayor Kevin White that: "No matter how poor we were, Kevin, we always had clean lace curtains on our windows"(p. 30). And through sheer hyperbole, this exclamation from a non-Irish women found its way into 'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town' (p. 87) as the 1901 long established tradition of "the lace curtain Irish"! It is undocumented that there has ever been a lace curtain Irish in Boston and this description is specious.

   The book 'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town' presented a series of inconsistencies and mechanistically biased views of the author's former hometown: Prof. O'Connor emphasized white racism and ignored all the black racism found in Boston (p. 219); constantly referred to South Boston as an 'ethnic' neighborhood, but didn't describe at EXACTLY what point South Boston became a 'white' neighborhood when it came to his description of forced busing (p. 209); the author mentioned historical 'forces' throughout his work with no explanation of exactly what those mysterious 'forces' were? (e.g. pgs. 115 & 246); and in confusing digressions for correlations, Prof. O'Connor committed the 'post hoc' fallacy by constantly comparing two disassociate events: the Irish immigrants in the 1854 North End (Boston) as a "theme" (p. 32) for the behaviour of the Irish American minority in 1974 South Boston, two miles away and 120 years later! (An illegitimate teleology occurs when an author speculates, without sufficient proof, that x causes y).

   The omission of relevant data also marred 'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town' as Prof. O'Connor listed some of the whimsical nicknames (p. 178) found among South Boston residents but neglected to include his poster boy's, former mayor Ray Flynn, sobriquet of 'Mel' Flynn (and why he earned it). Also omitted from this work was the fact that the Irish American became a vocal minority by 1974, surpassed in the 1950s by Lithuanian, Polish, Estonian, Latvian, and Albanian immigrants fleeing communist persecution by the former Soviet Union - thereby breaking any contingency between the Irish immigrants of 1854 Boston, and the Irish American of 1974 South Boston! There were also 240 Afro-American families, plus a small colony of Mic Mac Indians from the Canadian Maritimes living in Southie when the Federal judge declared the Boston Schools segregated, which escaped the author's attention.

   Though this was supposed to be a history of South Boston, the author tended to drag in the history of all the Irish no matter how far or removed from Southie; e.g. Irish immigrants of New York city. (This is where Prof. O'Connor's specialty in demographics tended to displace his knowledge of South Boston history.) Then, inconsistently, Prof. O'Connor failed to mention the most segregated and insulated neighborhood in Boston's entire history - Chinatown!

   Professor O'Connor's collection of generalizations, unsubstantiated allegations, and unreferenced claims, makes it impossible for the researcher to verify his information. The yarn: 'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town' by history professor Thomas H. O'Connor, is a distorted work which is not history, but encompassed all the worse traits of a poorly written biography. By allowing his imagination to run away with him and indulging in a weak psychobiographic speculation with few sources or no proof, professor Thomas H. O'Connor had produced not a technically proficient work of history, but a weak biography on his ex-neighborhood, with all the veracity and authority of an eighth grade book report.

   Any life long resident of South Boston would immediately pick out the flaws and errors of this work (e.g. Life long South Boston residents do not refer to themselves as 'Southies'!)

   'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town: The History of an Ethnic Neighborhod' is a perpetuation of many media stereotypes, documented truisms, vague categorical statements, and added nothing new to the knowledge of South Boston's history.




3. "South Boston My Hometown" is a detailed but very readable history of a unique Boston neighborhood. Written by a native who is a professor at Boston College, the book is remarkably objective considering the South Boston Irish background of the author. If there is any flaw, it is the apology given for the long standing ignorance and bigotry of many South Boston natives. The pitiful anti-semitism of the 1930's and the disgraceful racism of the 1970's deserve no forgiveness. Perhaps a later edition will tell if any effort has been made to educate the new generation of South Boston Irish to avoid the sins of the last century.

No comments about English Experiences: Exploring & Enjoying England & Unearthing the Essence of "Englishness".

5 comments about Boston Popout Map: Greater & Downtown Boston, Beacon Hill, Harvard Square, Subway (Popout Map).

1. This little number is about the size of a cd, but opens up like a childrens pop-up book. It features the city center, surrounding areas, subway routs, streets and places of interest. This is the only map you will need for your trip and is unobtrusive enough to open up and not look like a tourist. The freedom trail is clearly marked along with other historical items. Grab it!



2. I've bought this popout map for my visit to Boston and found it quite useful. I now have 3 or 4 of these for different cities and like the idea that I can stick it in my back pocket and pull it out when I need it. I do have to remember to bring reading glasses, however, the print can be difficult to read otherwise.



3. I bouth this for an early fall trip to Boston and used it 100% of the time over all other maps. Its small and convienient and fits right in your pocket.



4. I have used this map on two visits to Boston thus far. I was able to find everything I needed and the nice thing was I didn't have some bulky map to carrying around and unfold looking like the fish out of water tourist. It fit right into the back pocket of my jeans. I also loaned it to a friend for her trip to Boston and she raved about it as well. Buy the map and enjoy Boston!



5. This is what my wife and I used to get around Boston and Cambridge with for a week. It fits in your pocket, is concise and up to date. It doesn't matter where you are from in the world - this takes up no room and is the only map you will need.

No comments about North Brittany & the Channel Islands: Cherbourg to Ouessant (Royal Cruising Club Pilotage Foundation).