No comments about American Map Rhode Island State Road Atlas.

2 comments about Moon Acadia National Park (Moon Handbooks).

1. This book is extremely helpful as a planning guide to a great trip.



2. This book is well written. It seems quite complete. I do have to qualify that our trip involved cooking on our own, hiking and a little bicycling, so we didn't avail ourselves of all the other things to do in the park and surrounding areas. I like the layout and the text font. The reference maps are clear.

No comments about Exploring the Hidden Charles: A Guide to Outdoor Activities on Boston's Celebrated River.

1 comments about Streetwise Northern New England Map - Laminated Area Road Map of Northern New England - Folding pocket size travel map.

1. very small type, of course, but great for getting a general idea of where everything is in relation to one another

No comments about Lynn (MA) (Images of America).

No comments about Kent.

1 comments about The Good City.

1. This book is a compilation of short stories and/or essays, very slow and dry. It seemed like a text for a college-level class more than leisurely reading.

1 comments about A Guide to Historic New Haven Connecticut (History & Guides).

1. But don't let the size put you off.
   
   The first thing you will notice upon browsing this book, beyond its small size, is that there is a whole lot more to New Haven than Yale University. If you're looking for a comprehensive guide to buildings at Yale, this is not the book. While Yale has its proper inclusion, so do all of New Haven's other fascinating neighborhoods. New Haven's history includes a significant period of industrialization, so most of its colonial core is gone. Though there are a few remaining examples, colonial and federal structures made way for mid to late 19th century romantic styles. Lovers of Victorian architecture have to consider New Haven a treasure.
   
   Since the guide is small and the building stock in New Haven is rich, the entries are exceptionally short. Most simply include an address, building name, date of construction and a brief description. There are a few black & white photographs scattered about, but the author hasn't attempted to add one for each entry. There are few really good photographs, but there are still a few.
   
   Since the book is arranged around walking tours (and a few driving tours), there are nice maps for each chapter that exactly pinpoint the building locations. You're going to do a lot of walking to cover all this material, that's for sure. There are no historical essays to introduce the city or the architecture, rather, the author chooses to get us right to the architecture itself. And there are no architect biographies.
   
   I know I seem to be talking a lot about what this book isn't, but perhaps I should mention what it is; a surprisingly complete and effective catalog of historic New Haven meant for the curious traveler and casual architecture enthusiast.
   
   Note the title: There's no modernism here, but there's a drop-dead beautiful church on every corner (and every page).

5 comments about Reflections in Bullough's Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England (Revisiting New England).

1. It is hard to imagine how Reflections in Bullough's Pond could have been better written. Diana Muir gives an account of the interplay between New England's economic history and its environment in a lapidary prose which never leaves the reader behind. By the end of the book we are enlightened about the ebb and flow of these matters over the five hundred-odd years from early European settlement to modern times without ever being overwhelmed, for Ms Muir always wears her erudition lightly.

   She breaks new ground in her treatment of the environment as both an economic resource and as a complex-often vulnerable-amalgam of ecosystems. Her thesis is that we are living on capital, be it fossil fuel, topsoil or forest-she is particularly compelling on the vulnerable biochemistry of these last. Unusually, however, Ms Muir is scrupulous in her use of statistics and fastidious in her argument. She never seeks to undermine the legitimacy of the economic impulse, though she does not flinch from her conclusion: an argument for restraint in economic activity and population.

   Nor does she lose sight of the propensity of ecosystems to renew themselves, albeit often in new forms: she is pleased-almost amused-by the return of the beaver and the moose, while regretting the extinction of the elm and the emergence of local spruce monocultures. Indeed Ms Muir expresses herself more forcefully on the loss of flora than fauna. Perhaps this is because the long life cycles of the former make it harder to take an optimistic view of their capacity to renew themselves. Alternatively it may be because the collapse of agriculture in New England following the opening up of the West, has stimulated the return to southern New England of so many species formerly evicted to Canada.

   Reflections in Bullough's Pond is no naïve elegy for a Paradise Lost; it never loses sight of a human interplay with the landscape which long antedates industrialisation, not to say European settlement. In a particularly ingenious section of the book, Ms Muir reminds us that in the middle of the nineteenth century, the courts and legislatures altered common law doctrines of liability to free up industrial activity. This reflected the climate of the times. Ms Muir argues that the climate of our own times may well give rise to more extensive liability concepts to restrain the corporations, notions very much with the tail wind of popular and professional thinking.

   Given the book's generosity and elegance, it seems curmudgeonly to cavil at any part of it. But a couple of issues do arise. First forests. Since the invention of agriculture, we have cleared them for the simple reason that we have better uses for the land. This has been going on in the Old World for millennia. Of course there have been local environmental disasters, eg in North Africa and Mesopotamia, but nothing sufficiently general to justify veneration of forests as a precautionary measure. This is an artefact of late-twentieth century sentiment in the New World. There such virgin forests as have not lost within living memory are being destroyed even now, thus the local salience of the issue. Over the past fifteen years their defenders have sought to enlist support by arguing that they served one or another vital purpose: producing oxygen, acting as feedstock for drugs, now Ms Muir points to their role in topsoil. The first two arguments are infrequently heard these days. As to the last, let me point out that where I grew up in the eastern part of England, the ground was cleared eight or nine hundred years ago, but the topsoil remains sufficiently fertile for the local farmers to get out record yields.

   I was also left uncertain as to the course Ms Muir might prescribe for the several billion who have never seen Bullough's Pond, and whose habitats have been profoundly altered by economic activity for millenia rather than centuries. The residents of Asia's great river valleys cleared the forests long before Columbus saw the New World. They have to eat-with luck raise themselves above thoughts of the next meal. Ms Muir has practical suggestions as to how the courts might restrain US corporations, but nothing on how to restrain the aspirations of those who dream of a fraction of American prosperity. I suspect she is wise enough to know that there is nothing to be done on this score. In a rare nod towards the nether reaches of environmental alarmism, she hints that she expects nature to impose population restraint, if we do not. I am more sanguine. In whatever might come to pass as in what has come before, we will wade through. As we must.




2. This is one of the best books I have ever read- period! At the core of the book is Ms. Muir's message that we are part of nature, not separate from or above nature, and we have a great responsibility to maintain the integrity of the environment. Granted, this message is not new. Where this book is very different is how Ms. Muir leads up to this message. She shows how the New England landscape changed from one where farming dominated to one that was a mixture of many different types of mills and factories. You learn the consequences of everything that was done along the way: the consequences to fish and birds of damming rivers; the consequences to forests and to the air we breath of heavy logging; the consequences of catching too many of one type of fish, etc. What is great about this book is that Ms. Muir does not deal in hazy generalities. She takes you step by step and shows you specifically how certain actions cause certain changes in the environment, often unforseen. There is nothing simplistic in her observations and she knows there are no easy answers. She lays out the data for you and you can come to your own conclusions. But what really takes this book to another level is the fascinating biographical information that Ms. Muir provides concerning the many, many New Englanders that invented the machines of the Industrial Revolution and kept the economy vibrant as the importance of agriculture diminished. The way this book is put together is very unusual, due to the combination of all of the above factors and in the space of 248 pages you will learn a great deal of information. The research Ms. Muir must have done in writing this book is staggering and her knowledge across many different areas is amazing. Don't miss reading this book.



3. Using a pond near her home in Newton, MA as a backdrop, Diana Muir weaves a compelling view of New England history, which she argues is a series of ecological crises.

   From pre-Columbian times, Muir says, New England was populated by individuals struggling on a land that was not conducive to making a living. Radical solutions to unsolvable problems were their only escape. In the 1790s, when farming was the only occupation, a growing population and a soil spent by generations of misuse, resulted in a dearth of farmable land. With no prospects and no future, individuals like Eli Whitney and Thomas Blanchard, were forced to look for creative solutions to society's problems and set in motion an industrial revolution.

   I was particularly intrigued by the story of Frederick Tudor, the man who in 1806 introduced ice to Martinique. It is one thing to sell ice to people who because of their location, understand the concept. It is quite another, to sell ice to people who have never experienced it, to say nothing about the practical necessities of ice houses to warehouse the product.

   His father's real estate speculation losses left Tudor with nothing but ambition and a house with a pond in Saugus, MA. He succeeded after two difficult decades. There was always a wrinkle to be solved before a fortune could be built. Iceboxes had to be designed and then marketed in southern ports to people who had to be taught how to preserve it.

   This phenomenon explains why there so many Crystal and Silver Lakes dot the New England landscape, relics of an enterprising age. Savvy ice dealers understood that attractive names sell products. For a brief period even Muir's Bullough's Pond was briefly renamed Silver Lake.

   Diana Muir e-mailed me twice during the past two years introducing her book to me. Having read her book, I am grateful for her persistence. If you enjoy reading unique looks at our history, I implore not to wait for her to contact you. Read her book; you will not regret it.




4. Other reviewers have discussed the virtues of the book, so I will only add that the lessons to be learned from this well written and fascinating study are relevant to the entire planet, not just New England. As such, the book is highly recommended to anyone anywhere who is interested in mankind's relationship to the environment and its effects on culture and economics.



5. Ms Muir is a great storyteller. I was interested in the topic and prepared to slog through boring text to learn something, but this was AMAZING. Read like a novel. She sees inter-relationships and draws conclusions which taught me a lot. Now I want to read everything she's written. I was sorry when I finished this book.

2 comments about Frommer's Wonderful Weekends from New York City, Fifth Edition.

1. We have been using Marilyn Wood's Wonderful Weekends Copyright 1984, 1987 and enjoyed it very, very much. Right from the first trip, we knew we had a winner. The paperback is dog earred, paperclipped, underlined in red and there are pencil and ink notes in all the margins. It is a truly wonderful book but needed updating.

   We purchased the "All New Fourth Edition!" of Wonderful Weekends thinking it would have the best of the previous edition, plus new places to explore minus the places that are no longer there.

   Not so! Several of the areas that we looked up included restaurants that have not been there in 2 or 3 years. One of the B&B's has had new owners for years and the listing shows the old owners' story and names.

   We will stick with our original 1984-l987 version and use the new one for backup with each trip. Hopefully, there will be some New information in this Fourth Edition.

   This was a lesson to me that when I look for updates for books of this type, it would be a good idea to find out the date of the update before making a purchase.




2. Aside from the listings that are out of date there are errors about what took place when and who was born where. If you simply must visit the site of a certain event or birth place of a famous person, you had better check another source before making a three hour drive.