5 comments about Vanished Arizona: Recollections of the Army Life of a New England Woman.

1. The second in the series, Living Voices of the Past, of diaries of the 1800s is the memoir of Martha Dunham Summerhayes' adventures of an Army wife as she follows her husband from post to post.

   Born and educated in New England, Martha (Mattie) is a well-traveled young lady, having spent time in Europe, most notably Germany. The tales of her life begin with her marriage to Jack Summerhayes in 1874. She follows him to the Wyoming Territory and Fort Russell where she learns that Army wives don't have nurse, cooks, and maids. She is totally on her own and makes due with what she can. She learns to put up with sand storms, scorpions, wild coyotes stealing their food, Indians, Mexicans, and the Army protocol.

   Mattie is a woman who is not used to hardship, but as the memoir is told from the early 20th century, the hardships and reality checks she faces do not seem so difficult as they must have been when she was enduring them.

   Mattie follows Jack to more than ten posts during his 30-year career. Along the way she has two children, Harry and Katherine, but Mattie seems more concerned with her own comfort and illnesses along the way than she does about her babies. Most of the time she refers to Harry as her son, and it is a good hour and a half before listeners learn his name.

   Jane Merrifield-Beecher is the voice of Mattie. She reads Mattie's memories so fast, that they are often difficult to decipher. Mattie's memories are rather superficial and while listeners learn about life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the adventure is more like a bad "B" movie than a real-life account of an Army wife.




2. In the late nineteenth century, Martha Summerhayes and her young lieutenant husband take up residence in the dusty army forts of Arizona. Vanished Arizona is a collection of memories of those days. Along the way, the reader meets a variety of characters such as a nearly-naked Indian cook and a "dentist" who accidentally extracts the wrong tooth.
   
   We learn of treacherous travel in which mule carts overturn and people drown while crossing rivers. In one harrowing adventure, young Martha is advised by her husband to shoot herself and her baby son in preference to being captured by Indians.
   
   What I love about this book is the guileless storytelling that seems unblemished by political correctness. She does not varnish the truth as she sees it, nor does she attempt to make her life in dusty Arizona attractive; she offers an honest appraisal of the rather brutal trials of an army wife in that era.
   
   At times you'll love Martha Summerhayes for her courage, and at times you'll wish she didn't whine quite so much.
   
   I recommend this book to anyone interested in frontier America and the brave people who settled the land.



3. Vanished Arizona is a wonderful book. Read it! Unfortunately the audio book verison does not do it justice. Both the abrigement and the narrator's performance serve to make Martha "Mattie" Summerhayes sound like an idiot. As a descendant of hers I take that very personally. In fact my whole family, including my sister Katharine Summerhayes Beale, named after Martha's daughter, listened to the book together and we had to turn it off we were so horrified with the production. I urge you to read the compelling book, but don't waste your time or money on the audio version.



4. Infatuated with the military, Martha Dunham's romance with the parades, music and uniforms of splendid young soldiers began while studying literature in Hanover, Germany. She thrilled to the color and excited aura surrounding the events. Following her fanciful dreams, she married Jack Summerhayes in 1874 and lived with his regiment for four years in the Arizona Territories as they traveled from fort to fort through the wilderness. Reality thuds as this inexperienced, Nantucket born, upper class, 28 year-old woman struggled to survive. Martha Summerhayes kept a
   journal and published this book in 1908, at the request of her children, Harry born in Fort Apache, 1875, and Katherine born in Boston, 1879. Vanished Arizona, a valuable history classic,gifts
   readers with an account of those early territorial years through the eyes of a woman. Few 'her story' autobiographies exist among the many 'his story' tales of the cavalry, infantry and scouting battles to keep the Indians on the reservations. Indian hostilities were due to an influx of whites into empty land that native cultures needed for hunting grounds, homelands and basic survival. Martha's words describe a harrowing tale from a wife and mother's point of view.
   
   Follow the map. It took two very long months for the lieutenant and his wife to travel from Fort Russell in Cheyenne to Camp Apache in Arizona, their first destination. They traveled by ambulance (vehicle with 4 mules and a driver)and then steamer from San Francisco down the coast to Yuma and on to Fort Mojave. Bad food, suffocating heat and misery accompanied their journey across the Mojave Desert by wagons and schooners drawn by mules. Martha called the experience a 'glittering misery'--natural beauty across the Mogollons and Tonto Basin but living hell of snakes, centipedes, spiders, tarantulas, lizards and scorpions. Her carefully packed possessions, including china, disappeared when a wagon went over the cliff. She never really lost her respect for the military, but the earlier quixotic romance transformed into a recognition of courage as the men dealt with dangerous, difficult and painful conditions. The women who accompanied them aided each other through the fearsome journey.
   
   Martha Summerhayes had a mixed view of the Indian tribes. She feared their dances, the tomtoms, shouts, war whoops and wildness. But, she was fascinated by the Indian families she met when they came for allotments of food. She enjoy the wives, pretty young women and children. She wrote about the pretty girls,their black hair in long braids, dressed in moccasins, short skirts, bared legs, muslim camisas and bits of soft blanket or calico fastened in front. Totally incapable of dealing with pregnancy, birth, infant son,lack of nourishment and profound fatigue, the Indian women payed her a visit, coming to her aid with a pappoose cradle.
   
   Vanished Arizona is packed full with such feminine perspectives. When her lieutenant husband accepted the dreaded Ehrenberg camp, she bathed in the river, preferred to live as the Mexican women did with simple clothes and eat tortilla and beans. She became an emaciated invalid, fearing for her son's life. On the other hand, the contrasted Fort MacDowell in Maricopa County on the Verde River offered improved quarters with a ramada, sidewalk and cotton wood trees as well and several good friends. An avid horse woman, she delighed in exercising the horses for the calvary. Throughout the text, Martha detailed each of the numerous forts and camps where the couple lived. She usually had a cook and laundress. Often feisty, she became furious at the blind obedience of her husband who never questioned orders.
   
   During the Arizona years, Martha returned to Nantucket/Boston twice, once to recuperate from Ehrenberg and the other to give birth to her daughter, Katherine. On her return she was happy to see the soldiers again (that old romance with the military) and even the country looked attractive. She wrote, "I wondered if I had really grown to love the desert." Life got easier with the coming of the railroad. The old hardships, deprivations they had endured lost their bitterness when they became only a memory.
   
   This review concentrates only on the Arizona experiences, but her book includes accounts of California, Nevada, San Francisco,San Antonio, Santa Fe, Devil's Island (the four happiest years of her life) and Fort Meyers near Washington DC. The book also centers on the many famous people they met along the way such as artist, Frederick Remington who remained a friend throughout their lives. The couple are buried together in Arlington National Cemetery.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   



5. Anyone that has traveled around Arizona (or most anywhere in the west)and wondered how the earlier travelers ever made it will enjoy Martha Summerhayes recollections. Her perspective and detail is fascinating and there are so many places (Ft. McDowell is now the name of the casino on the Ft. McDowell Indian Reservation, Ft. Apache can be visited in the White Mountains) that have immediate name recognition.

1 comments about 25 Bicycle Tours in Maine (25 Bicycle Tours Series).

1. I have enjoyed Howard Stone's bike books for Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and as a new resident of Maine am delighted to have an opportunity to enjoy his rides in my new state. As always, Howard's ride descriptions and directions are very thorough and accurate. I especially appreciate the consistency with which he rates the difficulty of the rides. As an avid, but strictly recreational, cyclist, I found this to be an excellent book.

1 comments about Backroad Bicycling in Vermont, Fourth Edition (Backroad Bicycling).

1. My husband and I are avid road cyclists, and we found this book to be a perfect guide for our recent vacation in Vermont. Rides are in all geographic locations across the state. The author features great rides with extremely clear directions, as well as tourist-focused descriptions for each of the towns that he takes you through. The rides are incredibly scenic, and the information on places to tour and eat along the way were invaluable to us. The only very minor complaint I have is that the charm of a few of the listed attractions are sometimes a little too enthusiastically stated - although all information was factually accurate. Make sure that you're getting the latest (2006) edition!

5 comments about A Tramp Abroad.

1. A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain's tongue-in-cheek, semi-fictionalized account of his second European trek, is, despite it's 600+ pages, a lightning quick read. Twain's singular wit is on full display engaging the reader to such an extent that pages swiftly fly by. Though not his best piece of travel writing (see Innocents Abroad), I devoured this book in large chunks eager to see where Twain wandered next. When he arrives in the Alps, A Tramp Abroad vaults from an amusing piece of travel writing to a supremely satisfying form of entertainment.
   
   If there was any disappointment it occured with Twain's unexpected exit from the stage. A Tramp Abroad covers Twain's travels in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, but concludes quite suddenly with mere mention that the Netherlands are next on the docket. Yet, wishing a book to continue confers no blackmark on an author. It is further confirmation that A Tramp Abroad easily merits 5 stars.



2. A Tramp Abroad is the third and least successful of the travel books written by the pen of Mark Twain.
   In this book we follow Twain as he tours Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland. I found the early chapters chronicling his visit to Heidelburg University; hilarious visits to opera houses and tale tales such as the Blue Jay yarn to be well done.
   The longest section of the book deals with Twain's alpine climbing adventures in Switzerland. This material is interesting but goes on a bit too long for the modern reader.
   This is a fine book and deserves to be read and enjoyed by a wider readership that better known but lesser Twain novels and
   travel writing,
   I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys listening to a great author recount his peregrinations through Europe in a leisurely and informative manner.



3. It's fascinating to compare my own experiences, having lived now 3 years in Germany, to those of an American from 125 years earlier. I've been learning to speak German, and his Appendix on the "awful" German language was hilarious. In poking fun at German grammar (e.g., long sentences), he purposely commits the same errors in his own writing. The scene "riding" the glacier down the Alps was so funny I had tears running down my face. It's amazing to think that it was written in 1879, when America was barely a century old, and the insights and perceptions then can be incredibly, eerily similar to either my or "typical" American's attitudes today.
   
   I'd recommend it to anyone, but particularly to anyone visiting or living in Europe. It's way funnier than his "Innocents Abroad", which is also a good read on travel in Europe.



4. This is a single book, not the whole set and the book is in less then usable quality. The seller was to send return address materials and has not as of 12/19.



5. I listened to the audio version of both books, and will admit up front that the narrator for this one is not one of my favorites, but I got past that after a while.
   Twain seemed to be "padding" the narrative with an awful lot of folktales and legend, rather than his own experience. There's a lengthy (and highly annoying) "fantasy" sequence - I suppose he was trying for parody - as well. I found myself fast-forwarding through almost a full cassette of a gory description of two deuls (near the beginning); he delights in recounting grisly mountaineering stories later on during the novel. The storyline ended abruptly at the end of cassette 11 of 13; the last two were the appendix, which I skipped.
   I really liked "Innocents" and am planning on purchasing "Following the Equator" (I looked through it at a bookstore and it seemed pretty interesting), but I wish I'd skipped this one. Three stars for the humor when he actually describes his own experiences.

5 comments about Hiking Acadia National Park (Regional Hiking Series).

1. I found this book to be very helpful in planning my vacation in Acadia. I have 2 boys aged 5 and 13 and needed hikes that were doable for the youngest one. He turned out to be the best hiker of us all! This book gave me a good sense of what the trails would be like. We only did easy and moderate and one strenuous one (South Bubble Trail). You will need to buy a more detailed map (like from the AMC) but the trails are well marked. I liked the section on the authors' favorite hikes. We did most of our hikes from their recommends. Don't miss the Wonderland and Great Head trails if you go! Happy hiking.



2. For a party with kids, this book is just what we needed. The descriptions and difficulty ratings were right on. The directions to the trail heads were very clear (unlike in many hiking guides). Perhaps the best thing about it was the size. The book fit easily into my back pocket. No taking off my backpack everytime I wanted to check the map!



3. This guide is a scaled-down version of the longer "Hiking Acadia National Park" by the same authors. Included in this guide are 21 day hikes within the national park boundaries, some of which follow along the coast while others go to the more accessible mountains. Each hike contains directions to the trailhead, an adequate though not particularly detailed map, and a brief but adequate description of the hike. Length ranges from 0.5 mile to 5.8 miles, with the average falling at around 2 miles.
   
   There are a couple of things you should know before purchasing this guide. The book is only 84 pages long and only measures 6" by 4". This small size makes the book easy to carry, but at a cost. Specifically, only hikes on Mount Desert Island are included in this guide, with the rest being left on the cutting room floor from the larger version. So, if you are only planning a few days vacation to Acadia (like I did), this book will probably fit the bill. If you want a more comprehensive guide to Acadia hiking, you will want to look elsewhere.
   
   Second, the term "easy" in the title is relative. True, there are no multi-day backpack journeys described here, and the handhold rock climbs do not appear in this guide, but not everyone in even decent health will be able to hike all of these trails. For example, as an experienced day-hiker with average conditioning, I could have hiked any trail in this guide. However, my 60-something mother would have struggled on many of these trails even though she has no major health problems. My point is simply that not all of these trails are easy strolls on a level path, and I think you should know that before buying this guide. You may still need to choose a trail for your ability, and given the guide's size, your choices are somewhat limited.
   
   In summary, I gave this guide a good rating because I felt that it accomplished what the authors intended, namely a compact guide designed for short-term park visitors. However, depending on what kind of trip you are planning, this guide may not be for you, as I described above. So I recommend that you decide what kind of Acadia visit you desire and then use this review and others to choose the guide that will help you the most.



4. My wife and I just got back from Acadia. It was amazing. However, this book was useless for planning hikes. It has less information than what you can get from the park hand-out you get. We stayed at the Atlantean B&B and they had a book with a man and his 3 dogs on the front. It was excellent. I did not get the name/ISBM, sorry.
   
   However, we really enjoyed the extended Bubbles, Beehive and Goram (sp?) hikes. The beauty of this area rivals the Rocky Mts.



5. Good book and the descriptions are accurate.
   If you haven't been to Acadia, this is a good book to get.
   Acadia National Park is very big and has a lot of different areas with many options, so this book really helps you make informed decisions.

5 comments about Walking to Canterbury: A Modern Journey Through Chaucer's Medieval England.

1. Walking to Canterbury is a lyrical journey by foot from London to Canterbury. The marriage of history, adventure and soul in this book, spiced with medieval illustrations, is a delight from the first page. I read it for my book club and the discussion that followed among ten of us was a treasure.



2. I have to take exception to most of the other reviews. Please hear me out.
   
   The author, a man of Native American and English heritage, wrote an earlier book, Walking the Trail, about a several month walk tracing the infamous Cherokee "Trail of Tears" backward from Oklahoma to his home in northeast Alabama, as well as two other books tracing historic American routes. Mr. Ellis says his trip to England to follow the medieval Christian pilgrims' route from London to Canterbury Cathedral, described most famously by Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, was an effort to connect with his English heritage. I finished the book concluding that Ellis' so-called pilgrimage was just a way to provide his publisher with a sequel to sell based on the reputation and success of Ellis' earlier writing.
   
   For someone supposedly seeking to understand his English roots Mr. Ellis invests minuscule effort in the process. He commits only nine days to his first trip to England: arrives in London, departs the next day a seven-day, 70-odd mile walk, spends the last night in Canterbury, then returns to London by train to catch a flight back to the U.S. Such a short trip can't provide enough material for 295 pages, so Ellis pads the book with flashbacks to his Trail of Tears walk plus a lot of material about medieval English history, customs, daily life and English and non-English Christian practices. Some of the historic material consists of pages-long quotes from other books. Mind you, the historic extracts can be interesting, but there are better sources for such things and the book's subtitle promised "a modern journey through Chaucer's medieval England."
   
   Ellis focuses on some fairly odd people for someone saying he wants to get in touch with his English heritage. His most significant encounters are with unemployed, spike-haired, slackers and their pet iguana (he actually tarries an extra day to party with them), Swedish, French and Dutch tourists, an Iranian immigrant and several bar tenders. No significant encounters with farmers, police officers or teachers. And certainly none with Christians.
   
   Ellis' walk is hardly a religious pilgrimage. His own beliefs are Native American/New Age (i.e., deifying created objects rather than a Creator) and he expresses scant respect for Christianity. On one occasion Ellis hurts his back when he trips in the forest and experiences excruciating pain. That night, seemingly for the first time, in desperation he prays for relief. The next morning he experiences a self-described miraculous healing. Then, rather than credit God for healing him, and perhaps seeing the occurrence as "a sign" to repent and complete the trip as a true pilgrimage of thanksgiving as medieval Christians would have, Ellis quickly explains away his healing as a fluke.
   
   Ellis encounters some New Age tourists from Holland. They are lead by a Dutchman calling himself Geronimo who, for unexplained reasons, came from Amsterdam to England to practice some half-baked version of Native American spirituality in an attempt to relieve urban angst. Ellis writes: "Geronimo's teaching Native American spirituality when he has no such heritage disturbed me." But a few pages later non-Christian Ellis perceives no hypocrisy in himself when he arrives in Canterbury and, among secular visitors there to see the historic building and its art, makes a spectacle of himself by ascending the Cathedral steps on his knees in imitation of a pious Christian pilgrim. Afterward Ellis celebrates the conclusion of his "pilgrimage" at a bar where people mock Christian heritage, then leaves early the next day to rush back to Alabama.
   
   Ellis is a bit of an odd traveler, to boot. He lugs a 40 pound backpack of camping gear and spends a third of his nights in a tent in the semi-rural landscape, sort of like camping in the suburbs while walking from New York City to someplace in Connecticut. And he cooks on campfires several times at historic sites and just off the road in scraps of forest and farmers' fields. I've made walking tours in the British Isles and can tell you people just don't do that sort of thing; most people don't build campfires anymore when they hike in the U.S. One bit of quaintness - the trip occurred in 1999 - is Ellis talking about the great pocket knife he always carries and uses to carve figures in his oak walking stick. Ahhhh, pocket knives.... remember when we were allowed to carry those when we traveled in the good old days before 9-11?
   
   I don't recommend this book. The stories aren't that good and you can easily find better sources about the history of Canterbury or medieval England. I bought it because I enjoy making and reading about both Christian and secular pilgrimages, but this isn't, to my disappointment, really a pilgrimage book.
   
   Walking to Canterbury includes a small scale sketch map of the route, some small black-and-white reproductions of medieval scenes, a three-page bibliography of sources used for the historic extracts and a grainy photo of the author.



3. This investigation of modern and medieval England is done in a lively hands-on approach by the author in a unique way, as he walks the route of Chaucer's piligrims. A real pilgrimage route in the Middle Ages, the reader feels that he is there every step of the way. If you like adventure, heart, soul, humor and history, you'll love this journey.



4. I am partial to travel commentaries. The best ones have history and sociology lessons embedded in a moving narrative with rapidly changing settings and characters. The author's role is indispensible for he must impose a theme on his trip and package it engagingly for the reader. Jerry Ellis does this quite well. He treks from London to Canterbury along the 60 mile route established in medieval times. The cathedral where Becket was murdered has been drawing pilgrims for centuries. Ellis is of English as well as Cherokee ancestry and this jaunt was intended to lend symmetry to his work since he had earlier walked and written about the Trail of Tears.
   
   You will not enjoy this book unless you have interest in the lifestyles of twelfth century pilgrims. After a few pages of contemporary narrative, Ellis hears something to remind him of ancient ways and the reader knows he's in for a history lesson. However, they are appropriate, informative and quite interesting. Clearly, more time was spent reading the three dozen books in his bibliography than was frittered away in the south of England.
   
   The author uses the novelty of his trek to positively engage people and his interactions tend to be significant- perhaps too meaningful by intention. (He is on a religious pilgrimage.) Of course, he is of the "big tent" religion, and actively seeks parallels between Christian ways and the Cherokee beliefs. Some unifying observations are quite touching.
   
   I found it remarkable that Ellis could find spots to regularly pitch a tent and build a campfire. Evidently, once you are out of London the city ends and woodlands and wheatfields prevail. I can't imagine a pedestrian being so fortunate around any American city. Our less restrictive zoning extends the city for miles along our routes of egress. If Ellis were to make a pilgrimage out of New York, his campsites would likely be threatened by cranky suburbanites and dozens of state, county, village, environmental and parkway police for 60 miles in any direction. To bad he didn't write a bit about land use...



5. This only mildly interesting book weaves tales of the author's 1999 walk from London to Canterbury with English history and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
   
   Despite a potentially interesting premise and loads of unusual historical facts to link past and present, the author's ego distracts throughout the book; however it does get to a point where it's almost comical rather than irritating. He's just a bit too dramatic and evidently has had more Very Deep Thoughts and Mystical Life Experiences than the rest of us mere mortals. After a while Professor Lockhart from the 'Harry Potter' books started springing to mind whenever the author's commentary would circle back -- as it always did -- to himself and his mystical insights.
   
   Overall, it's a quick and easy read and I found the historical portions of the book interesting. Frankly, I was rather surprised that one *could* still walk from London to Canterbury on suburban and country roads. However, after reading this, I'd rather walk with someone else.

No comments about New England Trees & Wildflowers (Pocket Naturalist - Waterford Press).

No comments about Frommer's Cape Cod, Nantucket & Martha's Vineyard 2009 (Frommer's Complete).

1 comments about Time Out Boston (Time Out Guides).

1. This is a well researched and hip guide to Boston. Though there are some suprising (sometimes large) errors. Like repeatedly refering to South Boston's 'Seaport' district as the 'Waterfront'. Wrong. Boston's Waterfront District is well known to be located between the North End and Financial District. And although the book cites many seldom recognized gems, it overlooks venerable and cool spots like the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge's Central Square.

No comments about Michelin New England Regional Road Atlas and Travel Guide.