No comments about American Map Corporation South Coast Maine Pocket Map.

No comments about Nature Walks In Central Massachusetts: Nature-rich Walks from Worceser County through the Connecticut River Valley.

1 comments about Lighthouses from Aloft: 51 Scenic New England Lights.

1. Met this photographer/artist at the photo lab. Have enjoyed seeing his books on many coffee tables, where they do a great job of illustrating the Great State of Maine and her coast. Lighthouses are tiny vestiges of a past that we all should respect. Feil does that with his view from above. Accurate color shots at sunrise and dusk make these images rich and detailed. You just can't get the feel of the lighthouses and their importance from the ground.. Being free, up in the air, close to sea, Chuck Feil has done a great job in creating a book that entertains and illustrates this part of our heritage. Five stars!

5 comments about Stone Crusade: A Historical Guide to Bouldering in America (The American Alpine Book Series).

1. I have used this book many times to find bouldering areas. I have also found that it gets me to the boulders easier then the published guide. This book has a lot of great history on bouldering in the United States, the people who started it all and which areas they had the most influence on. It is like Rock And Road for bouldering only better.



2. Stone Crusade is THE book of bouldering and the history of the sport in the USA. John Sherman's witty and irreverent writing style and his artistic photographic skill capture the true feeling of the sport across the entire country. A guide book, history lesson, and entertainment all rolled into one. You will want to hit the road on your own Stone Crusade.



3. It reads as a guidebook, a history, and as literature. Sherman writes with surprising grace and introspection about the sport. Nice profiles of the locals at different areas, too. And I was relieved to see no reference to the finest, and apparently still secret, problem at Carderock, MD.



4. This book is fantastic. If you like bouldering and John Sherman's humorous tales you will enjoy this book.

   The SOFT COVER BINDING FALLS APART after one or two openings. Of three people I know with the soft cover, all three have fallen apart. BUY THE HARD COVER VERSION!




5. John Sherman has really done it with this excellent book. Though some may find his sense of humor somewhat caustic (I happen to like it), this is an indispensable guide to all the major bouldering areas in the country. Make no mistake--this is not a "guide book"--you will find no route topos or maps of bouldering areas here (though there are maps TO bouldering areas). The text stays within the historical realm, and Sherman's knowledge of these places is revealed on every page. Of particular interest are his (and other's) memories of places like the Buttermilk boulders, which are presented in a light that precedes the mega-popularity that Bishop has attained in the last five years or so. And Sherman is not only a talented writer--he is also one of my favorite climbing photographers. Beautiful and tasteful prints illustrate almost every page. Well worth the money.

2 comments about Acadia Panorama: Images of Maine's National Park.

1. Alan Nyiri combines a sensitivity of light, a keen sense of place and obvious love of nature to produce this marvelous collection of images. In this book the artist explores and expands the panoramic format in the exquisite setting of one of the most beautiful parks in all the world. If you're a fan of panoramic photography, a fan of Mount Desert Island, or are considering a visit to that enchanted island, you'll want this book.
   
   Full disclosure; I'm a friend of Alan's and an admirer of his work.



2. Alan Nyiri's notes accompanying the images caused me to see them differently than I expected to upon sitting down and opening Acadia Panorama. One gets the faintest notion that his use of panoramic equipment puts Nyiri self-consciously outside the norm, as if he were requiring us to use a GAF Viewmaster or employing some contrivance to interpret the scenes. Reading the notes increased my curiosity and intensified my inspection, corner to corner, edge to edge, over and over. Somewhere along the way there was a spark of recognition. I had been there once before, not to Mt. Desert, but to that place where you can tell yourself you have nothing better to do than to wait and watch, gather in a bunch of seemingly wasted moments till you apprehend THE moment. I wanted to be there again, so I slowly turned page after page, imagining the ascent to the vantage point, thinking how brisk the air must be, how my beard must be getting a bit straggly after several days, how little I am missing revving engines and ringing phones. Thank you my dear friend Mr. Nyiri, for taking me to that place again.

4 comments about The House on Nauset Marsh: A Cape Cod Memoir, Fiftieth Anniversary Edition.

1. Wyman Richardson's account of life on Cape Cod, first published in 1947, is a delight to read even tho' much has changed on the Cape since then. This is a book to treasure in the dead of winter when one longs to 'feel the whims of the sea'or 'hear the slow low pitch of a cricket's song.' Richardson, besides being a physician, is a first rate nature writer. His 'other' life comes alive as he describes morning in the old farmhouse where 'you can look out the south windows over the ...grassy hills...over the blue water of Nauset Marsh' and in the early morning 'an orange moon slipping behind the western horizon.' Richardson paints pictures with words that draw the reader, however briefly, into the pages of his book. First rate. I loved it.



2. I picked up this book looking for a unique, personal perspective on life on Cape Cod. What I got was long-winded discussions of fishing. If you're into long descriptions of and justifications for fishing and duck hunting--you might like this book. The book is also annoyingly written. The author switches voice all over the place: back and for from "I" to "you" to "one." I found that very distracting. He doesn't seem to know that much about the Cape either. If you want ruminations on the quiet of nature--don't bother; try Thoreau's Cape Cod or Henry Beston's The Outermost House.



3. Set in a small farm house on a Cape Cod marsh in a the 1940s and early 50s, it portrays the Cape in a time before masses of visitors changed it from an isolated backwater to an overrun tourist destination (a change that seems to have taken over so many parts of our country). I spent summers on the Cape as a young boy in the late 50s and early sixties, and Richardson's writing brings back that sense of wild emptiness and special light that used to make Cape Cod so special. The writing and lovely illustrations recall a time when you could have a hand in the gathering of your own food and take joy in the beauty of the process. We have gained much smugness and lost so much else since then; the House on Nauset Marsh brings back a sense of how lives connected to nature used to be.



4. This is an important book because it, like Thoreau's journals, is a record of a particular place at a particular time. What did it look like then? What plants, birds, fish came and went? How did people think about the place? These questions are answered in writing that transports you back in time to an apparently quieter and more leisurely world. Yes, there's a bit too much on fishing and hunting for my taste, but I find that I just skip those chapters when I go back to this book, as I do every couple of years. A must for anyone trying to get a handle on Cape Cod.

1 comments about The Oxford Book of London.

1. Well, perhaps not definitive London, but a good collection nonetheless. Like most modern histories of London, the books pays only cursory attention to the period prior the Norman Conquest; there is a simple reason for this -- not much exists text-wise to give account of life, history, etc. prior to this time. The Oxford Book of London, edited by Paul Bailey, is divided into three sections: Part I, Twelfth to Eighteenth Century London; Part II, Nineteenth Century London; and Part III: Twentieth Century London.

   Part I includes observations and rememberings of monks, poets, diplomats, clerics, and royals (being the major divisions of literate people during the 12th to 18th centuries). Included are visions of Chaucer and Shakespeare, Nashe and Donne, Jonson and Herrick, Hobbes and Pepys. The texts include passages from person diaries and newspaper headlines such as 'A Whale in London' circa 1658. All sides presented, as a perusal of headlines will show: "A Revel! A Revel!' balances 'An Absolute Hell on Earth'. Here you will be introduced to (or reminded of) Wat Tyler, Moll Flanders, John Boswell; you'll walk the streets as seen by Mozart and Haydn.

   Part II narrows the focus a bit, and when most people think about 'Old London', it is in fact this period of time to which most of them harken back. The nineteenth century saw London's explosive growth and true development as an imperial world city. In 1834 Thomas de Quincey published 'The Nation of London'; excerpts are here. Wordsworth and Blake wrote of London during this period, as did Keats and Thackeray (his 'How to live well on nothing a year' is wonderful). This is also the London of Dickens and Sherlock Holmes, perhaps the two visions of London that endure most. The rise of popular press also took hold during this period -- the true miracle here of this section is that it does not go on for a thousand pages.

   Part III is a similar miracle. London is established, in many ways a city of unparalleled urban blight (Jack London--hmmm, where do you suppose he got that name?--called it a 'vast and malodorous sea'). Shaw's post-Victorian London images remain firm in our minds, as does E.M. Forster's; T.S. Eliot describes London as an 'Unreal City', yet, for the fire wardens during the war, the city was far too real, and far too flammable.

   One is inclined to agree that London is in many ways the 'Capital of all Capitals', to quote Steen Eiler Rasmussen (1937), and yet, while there is hopefulness in the latest visions of London, there is also a sadness and an underlying fear that perhaps the best days are behind.

No comments about Cambridge: An Architectural Guide.

No comments about Hiker's Guide to the Mountains of Vermont.

1 comments about New Hampshire Street & Road Atlas (American Map).

1. Finally a comprehensive map book of all of New Hampshire. Like all American Map products, it is well put together and easy to read. Important tourist destinations are highlighted. Now if American Maps can just do one book for all of Ct. all will be convered in New England.