1 comments about Fodor's Around London with Kids, 3rd Edition (Around the City with Kids).

1. This book offers little more than a condensed version of their regular guide book and doesn't add any new kid specific suggestions.

1 comments about Islanders.

1. It is sort of strange to buy a book on a whim and find it peopled by folks you know and having pictures of where you live. Living on an island myself, I bought it for its title. I am from Away, but I have lived on this island more than half my life. I can say from experience that this book is quite accurate and gives a good picture of island life. Put it together with "The Lobster Coast" by Colin Woodard, and you have a very complete picture. I present this review with a plea not to move to an island unless you have children who will go to school here.

No comments about The Dales Way (Recreational Path Guides).

No comments about Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the Nineteenth Century.

3 comments about London.

1. London, the book YOU should read. Don't waste time get the book! Do you want it? Buy it here then. London is a great book which contains an amazing amount of information that will make your brain burst!Well anybody out there want to find out about London?Come here and click on the button! London is a book that is basiclly amazing, basically real and finally, brill! Well London is basically the only book that will travel you through London. This is THE BEST BOOK ABOUT OLD LONDON!Read it in front of your children and they will know instantly about London. Read it to your friends and they will go talking about it all day long! Read it to your relatives and they will go mad about it! Read it to a stranger and they will invite you over every day!



2. The much-honored Russell spent nearly thirty years as chief art critic for the London Sunday Times, and then came to New York and did the same thing for the New York Times for another sixteen years. Even after leaving London, though, he still considers himself an insider of that city, and in this book he shares his fifty-year perspective with the reader. It's not a guidebook nor a travel book, but a highly idiosyncratic sort-of-memoir of London, organized around many diverse themes, including Samuel Johnson, Buckingham Palace, the rebuilding of the city after the Great Fire, the role of the Thames, and what he calls the "spirit of place" -- which is one of the best chapters in this marvelous book. Throughout, he illustrates his thoughts and recollections and often witty commentary with reproductions of art and photographs of people and buildings which, brought together in one place like this, are just about worth the price of the book by themselves. One of the best books about London I've seen in years.



3. John Russell has put together in this book, simply entitled London, a wonderful guide to the memory of London in word and, most especially, visual images. Lavishly illustrated and bejeweled with paintings, photographs, drawings and maps, this is the ultimate 'coffee table' book on London. But please, don't set your coffee (or, as it is a book on London, more appropriately, tea) cup on it, and don't just let it sit there. Peruse the pages -- no reading required! Although, unless I miss my guess, you will want to read these pages that accompany such wonderful visual treats.
   
   Russell includes drawings by Wren (who practically rebuilt London after the fire of 1666) for whom there is no monument ('If you want to see a monument, look around', he is once reported to have said, meaning the abundance of architectural monuments most of which remain to this day), Carter, Gilbert, Soane, Kip & Knyff (a print of the original drawing for Buckingham House, now Palace). Among the paintings are all famous portraitures and landscapers, scenes royal and common, serious and fanciful. Nearly 200 illustrations, including almost 100 full-colour plates of paintings, make this book a stunning edition.
   
   Russell recounts an early comment on urban renewal, by Francis Bacon, who commented upon buying a house in an unsafe neighbourhood: 'I have bought the house in which I shall be murdered.' But, within a year, the Foreign Minister had purchased the neighbouring house, making the area safe and sought-after.
   
   Russell said that the changes talked about here [and generally everywhere in the history of London] owe nothing to Authority. No government planned them, foresaw them, or sanctioned them. They are owed to the experimental, liberated, and sardonic temper of the individual Londoner as it has evolved.
   
   'Like every other big city in the western world, London was built for a society that no longer exists.' This one statement perhaps best sums up the history of London. This book gives new life to that departed society, and helps to put London in its proper context.
   
   This was obviously a labour of great love on the part of Russell. Do yourself and favour and purchase the hard-back edition. You will be glad you did.

2 comments about Kidding Around Boston: What to Do, Where to Go, and How to Have Fun in Boston (Kidding Around Boston).

1. I was really pleased to come across this book. Living near Boston, I sometimes need ideas for showing visiting family or friends around the city. Kidding Around Boston is full of great ideas and information about Boston's history and lore. The style is clear and engaging, and the young people I've shown it to have enjoyed it. It's terrific for visitors, but I think it might be equally useful in classrooms as an ancillary book for independent reading.



2. This is a wonderful resource for planning excursions in Boston and the environs with children. The entries on sites of interest are full of great information, and the prose is clear and accessible to young readers. The format, including photos and activities, encourages children to help with planning trips and teaches them a thing or two about the city in the bargain. Besides using this book to guide kids around the city, I have given it to visiting relatives and local children (and to some folks who have moved away and wanted their kids to know what they were missing.) All have loved it. Enthusiastically recommended!

No comments about Lowell: The Story of an Industrial City : a Guide to Lowell National Historical Park and Lowell Heritage State Park, Lowell, Massachusetts (National Park Service Handbook).

No comments about Boston Insight Pocket Maps (Insight Pocket Map).

No comments about Maine: Downeast and Different: an Illustrated History.

1 comments about Hakluyt's Promise: An Elizabethan's Obsession for an English America.

1. This new study of Hakluyt gives the scholar-propagandist his due. I remember reading A.L. Rowse's books at school covering some of the same ground, but I suppose they are not much read now and this brings the picture to a new generation. I enjoyed the book and found it pleasantly informative; I was, however, worried by the number of slips I observed on a fairly casual reading:
   p16 contains great confusion. Eleanor of Castile died in 1290 and was Edward I's wife, not Henry III's [his wife Eleanor of Provence died in 1291]. Clearly neither was being buried in the 1490s;
   Bishop Fox of Winchester founded Corpus Christi College, not Christ Church;
   'Kinneston in Hereford' is actually Kinaston in Herefordshire;
   it is strange to assert as if all agree that the Black Death started in India;
   p92- 'memento mori' is misused;
   William the Silent was not Elizabeth I's cousin [though princes addressed each other in such polite terms];
   the forms Madre de Deus and Madre di Dios both occur;
   Hugh Castlehaven was not a prelate [actually the term canon is also misused at one point with the phrase 'the canon' as if a cathedral only has one. I think clerical titles confuse our author at times.]
   Well, it is still a good book but it does shake one's confidence a little.