1 comments about American Map Central/Eastern Connecticut Street Atlas: Hartford, Middlesex, New London, Tolland, Windham Counties (American Map).

1. Trying to navigate across the state with this is impossible. Rather than a standard atlas - where the end of the page helpfully says "continued on map xx", this is organized alphabetically by town - and in many cases the map doesn't even hint at where you should look as your road runs off the page. Strangely, although owned by the same parent company - American Maps uses this poorly organized way, while Hagstrom Maps are easy to follow and use.

No comments about Lighthouses of Massachusetts: A Guidebook and Keepsake (Lighthouse Series).

1 comments about NEJM Clinical Problem Solving (New England Journal of Medicine).

1. To doctors and even to nurses, this book can be valuable for the problem solving skills it sharpens in the reader. The chapters comprise case study examples. Puzzles, if you will. Where you could have incomplete knowledge, but continued probing may yield an eventual accurate diagnosis.
   
   To readers from the sciences, the book also shows a commonality of deductive reasoning, shared between the sciences and medicine.

2 comments about Shoot the Widow: Adventures of a Biographer in Search of Her Subject.

1. I read this book on a recent jaunt to LA and believe me, I didn't want it ever to end. I kept hoping that Meryle Secrest would reveal more and more data about her methods as a biographer.
   
   That review from PW by James Atlas was just offbase in every possible way, culminating in his snidely separating Secrest from his precious rank of "great biographers" (note that every example he lists is a male writer, and this is said to have been "at random"). He's just way off base. Over the years I've read many of Secrest's biographies (though not all) and one has to admire her range, though Atlas says this is a sign of weakness and she should have stuck to a very limited cast of characters. If she had just stuck to Kenneth Clark and Berenson he would have had more respect for her I assume. But in reality, it is orecisely her willingness to jump in with both feet into a field she had previously left alone that makes her unique. When she wrote about Dali people said, "She knows nothing about surrealism," and when she turned to Frank Lloyd Wright there were complaints that she knew little about architecture. I hear people say that she knows nothing about musical theater and should have stayed away from Sondheim and Richard Rodgers. Well, maybe so, maybe not. But in SHOOT THE WIDOW we can now discover what gave Meryle Secrest her zest for the unknown. For she tells the story of her own life and sensitively, yet persuasively, makes you feel what it must have been like for a poor English girl uprooted out of a humble yet safe life in the UK and brought over on a troop ship and dragged halfway across Canada (to Hamilton) on a cross country nightmare train voyage, and set down in a lakeland paradise completely despoiled by steel mills.
   
   There your Meryle learned the ABCs of journalism, as a way of escaping her personal and emotional circumstance. This part of SHOOT THE WIDOW is a real inspiration, as is her account of the great discovery she made while writing the life of the painter Romaine Brooks: in her entire mansion Brooks kept only one picture of a man, but who was he? Through amazing luck and a cool head, Secrest discovers a painting of the exact same guy, and when she reproduces them on adjoining pages we can see they're identical, and so she was able to solve the single biggest conundrum in Brooks' life. As a biographer myself I give her sleuthing four stars. As for her qualms about the family of her subjects, and how the family can reach in and try to quash the biographer's revelations (as happened to her with Kenneth Clark's family), it is a sobering possibility. Apparently those in Clark's family who gave her grief are all now dead, and she is having a fine old time dancing on their graves!
   
   A friend told me some years ago that Meryle is the mother of Ryan Seacrest from AMERICAN IDOL but this is apparently not the case. No worries, she has accomplished plenty without having to depend on siring a famous son for validation.



2. Writing a biography is extremely difficult. It takes a great deal of effort and time, and the results usually do not please the people closest to the one written about. I know this from personal experience having spent more than five years writing a biography which I hoped would make the world want to know more about one who in my judgment was a great Jewish leader, Rabbi Shlomo Goren.
   Meryle Secrest is the author of among others biographies of Bernard Berenson, Kenneth Clark, Salvador Dali, Frank Lloyd Wright, Steven Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein and Richard Rogers. In this memoir she describes her experiences as a biographer, though there is too much autobiographical information which tells how a Secrest worked her way to an honored place both in journalism and as a biographer.
   Among the secrets of the trade she reveals is the one suggested by the title. The close relatives, especially the widow can be the bane of the biographer in denying access to important materials, letters, archives, etc. Family members want to see their honored representative in a good light and do not want the skeletons in the closet revealed. Here the most instructive story relates to Secrest's writing of the Kenneth Clark biography. All was cooperation and sweetness at first but then when it became apparent that the story of Clark's first wife's alcoholism, and his frequent dalliances were going to be part of the story the tone and situation changed. Here Secrest herself became a bit two- faced in her dealings.
   It is interesting that Secrest presents herself as a certain kind of biographer, what might be called the 'commercial biographer'. There are biographers who become so devoted to the study of their subject that they virtually give their life-work to it. One thinks of Leon Edel with his five- volume biography of Henry James. But Secrest clearly explains it is not her absolute devotion and desire to understand to the depths which motivates her but rather a combination of real interest and commercial prospect. Her subjects are people who have been very successful, who there is a great public curiosity about.
   Another element in her work is what be called finding the 'secret element' often the 'dirty secret element' This is the set of facts which is the great revelation of the inquiry the new stuff which then leads to the marketing hype around the book. But as Louis Menand points out in an instructive article on this book in the 'New Yorker' explaining the apparent gift, the valuable public thing by the secret small private one is an extremely dubious practice..
   Secrest is considered a very respectable, workmanlike biographer. She is not aiming to be Johnson's Boswell, and she does not perhaps go deep enough into her subjects to give us the great and memorable work. But she is a hard- working, inventive, and amusing story-teller who has written an instructive and entertaining book.

No comments about Fun with the Family Connecticut, 6th (Fun with the Family Series).

No comments about Great Gardens of the Berkshires.

2 comments about Far from This Earth and Other Stories (Nesfa's Choice) (Nesfa's Choice).

1. Far From This Earth continues the omnibus with presentations of his North Wind, Rite of Passage, and Just Like a Man. Oliver focused on travel to other worlds and human struggles for survival: these collections offer a refreshing look at writing styles of the past and an interplanetary focus featuring human endeavor over politics, war, and cyberspace.



2. I can't believe there aren't more reviews for this book on Amazon. If you are a fan of classic SF from the '40s, '50s, and '60s--in other words, in the era when SF wasn't all hung up on "character development" or on high literary concepts, but instead concentrated on telling fascinating, thought provoking stories filled with wonder, adventure and humor, this is the book for you. I happen to favor the short story idiom for SF--tasty little morsels which go down easily yet leave a lasting impression. I have been reading short form SF (and the longer works too) for about 40 years, and Oliver's short SF is among the very best I have ever read--by anyone, in any genre.
   
   I can't thank NESFA enough for bringing Chad Oliver (and other great classic SF authors!!) back into print. NESFA's books are of the highest quality, hard bound, printed on acid free paper, good type size for easy reading, sturdy dust jackets with cover art by leading SF artists--books which will endure and be the pride of your collection. Check them out--if you like this style of SF, I am sure you will be very pleased.

1 comments about Picturing Rhode Island: Images of Everyday Life, 1850-2006.

1. Another gift purchase, but I did look through it, wonderful pictures of Rhode Island. Purchased as a gift for a Rhode Islander who has moved away. Know she will love it.

No comments about New Milford (CT) (Images of America).

1 comments about Jamaica Plain, MA.

1. When I wrote this book on Jamaica Plain, MA
   I was amazed at the rich history of this neighborhood of Boston that was once a part of Roxbury and originally known as the Jamaica End of town. With the Arnold Arboretum, and the Bussey Institute, Jamaica Plain became part of the Emerald Necklace and retains a bucolic and suburban setting. Hopefully, a text history of Jamaica Plain will be written shortly to augment this
   photographic history.
   Email comments to me at asammarco@msn.com
   Share your photographs!