5 comments about All Souls: A Family Story from Southie (Ballantine Reader's Circle).

1. MacDonald characterizes himself as cursed with an "Irish whisper." That is, unable to keep the secrets he's entrusted with under wraps, blaring out what he should have kept hidden. This memoir of the 1970s through the 1990s, when Whitey Bulger's thugs replaced the anti-busing protests for media attention in South Boston, moves efficiently, with modest attention to Michael Patrick's own coming-of-age as contrasted with a fearsome family scenario of ten siblings, four of whom meet violent ends and three of whom die tragically. The one who survives might as well have died earlier; she survives a coma only to emerge a psychological and physical wreck. While this story often blurs the schooling, or lack of, that the author gained as he grew up in the midst of the anti-busing boycotts, and while you gain a stronger sense of the other members of his family rather than himself, this may be redressed in the new sequel, "Easter Rising." You get a less distinctive depiction of himself compared to his larger-than-life Ma and assorted brothers. Yet, the author appears here to deliberately focus upon his family and the violent milieu that boasts of its solidarity yet which poisons its very cohesion by such corruption on a moral level and a sociological scale. MacDonald redeems himself and his neighborhood as he grows up not only in body but in spirit, managing a buy-back gun program and learning to trust (a few perhaps) police.
   
   The same department who sought to imprison his brother, at thirteen, as Boston's youngest suspect: such maturity for the narrator emerges gradually and realistically. His story of how he survived Old Colony, absent of maudlin sentimentality or contrived cutesy anecdotes, reflects what in his acknowledgements appended he calls "every painful and personally redemptive sentence." (265) MacDonald manages to tell a story that could have been akin to the film "The Departed" or the HBO "Brotherhood," yet avoids ethnic cliche and predictably pat endings. The drama of abiding by the neighborhood code that forbids snitching but vowing to break that same omerta by seeking the culprits behind two of his brothers' deaths and the imprisonment of a third adds natural tension to this narrative. Yet, MacDonald sidesteps special pleading.
   
   Many of the memories he shares deserve repeating. For this review, three quick examples. First: the author accounts for the absence of a regular man in Ma's life as she cares for eight kids. "A man would only be abusive, tear at Ma's self-worth, and limit her mobility in life. Welfare could do all that 'and' pay for the groceries." (33). Her third (named) partner and second husband, Bob King, gets hit over the head by Ma with the wine bottle that made him drunk. When he comes to, she accuses him or stealing the "Christmas money" and he's sent off down Jamaica Ave. for the last time. Staggering down the street, to staunch his bleeding head, he holds what Michael Patrick fetched on his mother's orders: a Kotex pad.
   
   Ma herself gets shot randomly, through the living room window, by a teen high on Whitey's cocaine, just before the episode of "Dallas" comes on that she and all of America had been waiting for: "Who Shot J.R.?" Whether evoking the terror of his brother Davey's schizophrenia at Mass Mental, the fear of rats and roaches that infest the projects, the rage of the busing protests, the desperate schemes of his Ma to stay ahead of the authorities, or the conniving that infects both cops and criminals with the same lack of morality, MacDonald holds a calm eye for the telling detail and a cool pen to record what transpired. I look forward to his sequel, "Easter Rising." He keeps to the unadorned, if often witty, accounts of "street justice" that complicate his series of vivid incidents, recalled conversations, and local lore that add up to a poignant, yet honest, depiction of what it was to grow up in what was Southie, before gentrification, integration, and disintegration.



2. The past few years there has been a bright spotlight shone upon the South Boston social and political climates that have forever given Southie the reputation of being a sort of rough and tumble sort of place. With movies such as The Departed glorifying and demonstrating to the rest of the world what exactly Southie was all about, the resurgence to try and understand what living in South Boston must have been like is perhaps stronger now than ever before.
   
   Though a textbook format could certainly provide readers with a sociological and psychological look at the factors that went into making South Boston perhaps one of the most volatile sections of the country, not everyone is always looking for the highfalutin academic approach to gain a glimpse into a society. Rather, what is too often not focused on is the personal stories of the area.
   
   Thanks to the work of Michael Patrick MacDonald, readers from across the globe can read a much more personal take on life in the South Boston projects, streets, hospitals and morgues. In 2000, MacDonald and Ballantine Books release All Souls: A Family Story from Southie . MacDonald, who grew up in the projects located in Old Colony in South Boston tells an amazing family story that is so far reaching that each page seems almost as unbelievable as the next.
   
   The MacDonald family, although perhaps never willing to admit it back in the day, did not have it easy. Though they may have been masked in their zeal for their homeland, South Boston, the realities that existed were perhaps only realized once a look back at Southie was taken by those members of the family that were fortunate enough to get out.
   
   The book tells remarkable story after story in which the trials and tribulations of the MacDonald family and the life and events taking place in the world around them in Southie. The family is perhaps the ideal capture of a family that has been through so much yet continues to remain strong. Certainly the societal factors so prevalent in South Boston such as drugs, poverty and Whitey Bulger affected this family as it did so many in Southie. However, the remarkable part is that the author faced with the tragedy of having to bury sibling after sibling and seeing both his family and friends suffer so much is capable of releasing such a well thought out and brilliant book.
   
   What remains true not just for the MacDonald family but also so many that grew up in South Boston during the mid to late 1900's is that despite all of the social evils taking place around them perhaps the unifying factor of being from Southie was all they needed to remain strong. When others might have crumbled or lost all hope, Southie residents and the MacDonald's in particular were able to time and time again pull themselves out of the gutter and move on in life.
   
   The book is written in a very methodical and organized way. The stories tell a sort of time-line approach to the life of MacDonald and how it interrelated to not just his family members but also the issues that Southie will forever be remembered for: the busing riots, the drug trade of the Irish underground and the fist fights on street corners that turned into an almost daily occurrence.
   
   What MacDonald does well in this book is not just tell a story, but rather allows the reader into the lives of those around him. Through an almost genealogical lens, MacDonald brings the reader into his family in a way that at times makes the reader forget that they have no idea of this family prior to turning to page one.
   
   All Souls is the perfect read for someone that is both familiar with Southie either because of geographic or historical relevance or for someone who has no idea about what South Boston and its residents were faced with. The book is an amazing account of what is right about South Boston when so much has been wrong about South Boston. Even when faced with amazing extenuating circumstances, what held South Boston together was families like the MacDonald's.
   
   Though certainly sullied by a few bad apples, the bunch is never ruined.
   
   
   Recommended:
   Yes



3. I usually try to read all books that I get a hold of that are memoir..but this one I read about 1/4 of it--maybe a little more and I just couldn't keep going. I put it away for awhile and got it out again and tried again--I started from the beginning but I didn't even get a 1/4 of it read before shutting it for good. I don't recommend this book to anyone. :(



4. i could not stand this book and did not finish it. it was poorly written and has probably gotten its good reviews from people who feel sorry for their poverty, but it is neither touching nor sympathetic. if chapters on hiding the boyfriends and the big color television from the government welfare worker appeal to you, you are in luck.



5. Every once in awhile a book comes along that affects me in a profound way. This is such a book. I laughed, I cried and I got angry. The characters came alive for me, proud of their heritage, with their self-identifying clothing brands, hairstyle and tattoo dot on the wrist, branding them forever as a "Southie"
   Amidst the poverty, the drugs, the fights, and the untimely deaths, there was still a sense of community. In a world where most of us hardly know our neighbors, Southie was a tribe of white Irish warriors where every outsider was perceived, and rightly so, as the enemy. It was never dull in Southie, for life was lived on the edge. As Ma laments years later after moving to the mountains of Colorado, "people here just don't know how to have fun". What a family, what a life, set in the background of an era that is now over and gone, there will never again be "no place like Southie".

4 comments about The Concord Quartet: Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau and the Friendship That Freed the American Mind.

1. This book is truly fantastic! Not only is the subject matter facinating, but the author weaves all the sublties together seamlessly. What might have been heavy subject matter is made by Schreiner into an exciting and surprisingly a fast read! This book is both informative and fun! I highly recommend it and it is going in all the Christmas stockings this year!



2. This book is a nice overview of the lives of four key authors who spent most of their time in Concord, Massachusetts: Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. These men helped craft and define the course of true American literature through their essays, poetry, short stories, novels, nonfiction, conversations, lectures, and above all, journaling. Though no new material is presented here, Mr. Schreiner does a good job of tracing the four threads, merging them, and synthesizing basic facts with the subjects' own words. Along the way, the reader learns much about the town of Concord itself. Recommended reading for anyone who is looking for a casual yet fairly accurate introduction to the transcendentalists and to the Concord of the 1800s.



3. This wonderful book succeeds in making the great Concord writers and thinkers (Alcot, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau) living people without diminishing their indispensable contributions to the history of American literature and thought. The story of their relationships, quirks, disagreements, and, ultimately, love and support of each other goes a long way in identifying why this moment of time--the mid 19th century in Concord MA--led to such a flowering of philosophic and literary genius. Of particular worth in this volume is the redeeming vision it provides of Bronson Alcott, a figure often underrated and undervalued by modern critics. This is a fascinating story of a crucial moment in America's intellectual history.



4. I was attracted to this book by its subject matter, but I was immediately put in an antagonistic position because of my own scholarly investigations.
   
   Briefly: To say that American transcendentalism began with the Concord friendship seriously distorts our literary (and intellectual) history. William Cullen Bryant (who is not even mentioned in the book's text) had been exposed to similar ideas by his father, Peter, who had encountered them with Harvard friends when he served in the Massachusetts legislature. The son's burst of poetry, published in 1821 after he addressed the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard on invitation from Harvard-connected North American Review editors, clearly shows the fruits of such ideas. (By the way, Emerson, who was graduating that year, was in the audience for that address.) See my William Cullen Bryant: An American Voice.
   
   It is similarly a severe wrenching of our literary history to continue to posit a Concord/Boston/New England genesis of our literature. New York City, after Philadelphia, had been the heart of American intellectual and literary life. See Brockden Brown and the Fortnightly at the turn of the century, the impact of Washington Irving and the unfortunately neglected James K. Paulding, and Bryant as well (who moved to NYC in 1825.

5 comments about The State Boys Rebellion.

1. I never gave the imposing Fernald School campus much thought, even though the house I shared with my friends was literally across the street from the large brick buildings. It was not until I researched the effects of radiation on soldiers during the Cold War that I learned Fernald's dirty secrets. I immediately bought this book, and it filled me with rage and despair. D'Antonio's style is not preachy, nor does he editorialize. He allows the recollections of those who were there to speak for him. Wherever he can, he uses several sources to shade each event, from conversations with the boys, to the memories of the staff members, to the cold, un-enlightening medical records from the school. As others have said, the story ends not in misery but in triumph. It is a cautionary tale about society's complacency and willingness to let the horrors of our past remain behind the locked doors of our crumbling institutions.



2. The State Boys Rebellion tells the story of the Fernald State School in Massachusetts. Michael D'Antonio does a great job of telling the story through the eyes of Freddie Boyce, a child that grew up in Fernald. The story is quite chilling, specially to those of us who did not live through that time period. It is disgraceful that we, the United States actually started Eugenics, although I was taught in school that Nazi Germany was the creator. This book should remind us that as a society, we sometimes leave out the bad stuff our forefathers did, even if they meant no harm. I would highly reccomend this book to anyone, but it will touch the heart of anyone with a child who is considered "special".



3. Michael D'Antonio has provided us with a very interesting book that he has subtitled "The Inspiring True Story of American Eugenics and the Men Who Overcame It". There is no doubt that he cares tremendously for his subject, but this is not a comprehensive history of the Eugenics movement or even of the the State Boys Rebellion at the Fernald School for the Feebleminded.
   
   From a journalistic perspective, this is a tremendous piece of writing & investigation. Evaluating the events primarily through the eyes of Fred Boyce, the author skillfully weaves in the stories of fellow inmates at the Fernald school and the events leading up to the rebellion. Unfortunately, the key point that I see as the "rebellion" only gets about 4 pages of treatment, with regular references to the people involved in the riot throughout the rest of the book. Boyce's life is traced up through the time when the book was written, and is a compelling story.
   
   From a historical standpoint, although there is no clear thesis, the book obviously was written to educate the reader about the Fernald school and a few key residents that were able to make great strides in their lives and lead a relatively "normal" life after being released from the institution. The most interesting argument the author presents is that some of the medical experiments conducted within the confines of the Fernald school were reflective of Cold War America, where government aims included furthering science in an effort to find a way to defeat the Communists.
   
   Overall, this is a very interesting book and an easy read. The story is enthralling, and keeps the reader entertained throughout. If the reader is looking for a comprehensive story of the American Eugenic movement, this is not the book; I believe there are probably better scholarly works out there that address eugenics in America. I would recommend this as a book to start one's understanding of eugenics and how this one school in the Boston area plays into the bigger picture.



4. A must read for anybody. I am currently employed at one of the said institutions in MA and heard of this book through a co-worker. I have worked here for over 20 years, long after they stopped admitting people. The residents that currently reside there get the best of care available and the staffing ratios way outnumber the amount of clients residing here. I am in no way condoning what happened to Freddie and all the other state children, I just wonder how some of the residents would have turned out if not institutionalized. My supervisor and I have roamed through the old dormitories and found a wealth of info and pictures. Some of the pics show young children about Freddies admission age that looked scared to death, it brought tears to my eyes to think of what these poor kids went through and reading Freddie's story helped me better understand just exactly why these children were admitted. When I started working here, over 1,000 residents lived here, now we have under 300 and the remaining people really do benefit from the care they receive. I just could not comprehend why some of the residents were there 20 years ago, now I know. My family has welcomed in a former resident in the shared living program and it has been benificial to both him and my family. After reading the "State Boys Rebellion", my only regret is that I never got to meet Freddie Boyce. In my eyes, he and all the other state children are true heroes for surviving the great injustice done to them. In closing, I have to truly say that I have been humbled.



5. Hello avid readers of true stories. I appreciated The State Boy's Rebellion, as I too was a victim of the mental health system when I was 8 years old. I remained institutionalized for 10 years; even though authorities were informed I was not retarded. Like the kids in The State Boys Rebellion, I was deprived of my civil liberties, denied an education, and horribly abused. If you want to read a remarkable story of the human spirit to survive horrific odds, read my true story. You'll be glad you did.
   Charles A. Carroll, Author, Victim/Victim's Advocate
   HARD CANDY: Nobody Ever Flies Over the Cuckoo's Nest

2 comments about Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Studies in Cultural History).

1. Awash in a Sea of Faith is a book of its time. The intellectual and historiographical context of Jon Butler's revisionist history of religion in America is found in the camp that Jack Greene, Keith Thomas and David Hall have been preparing for some time now. This trend, which Butler perfects, is marked by a strong skepticism toward the influence of Puritanism in American culture, toward the major claims of American Protestantism, toward the basic dogmas of traditional American religious history and by a desire for historical and geographical egalitarianism. A pervasive skepticism is not the only component at the foundation of Butler's approach. His historical logic is partially guided by a continuous dialectic between the sacred and secular, elite and popular, the barren colonial landscape and the rise of sacred structures, orthodoxy and occultism. Considering the large and long religious historiographies in North America, Butler's approach starts with profoundly untraditional premises and assumptions. It should not surprise us, then, that Butler would arrive to untraditional conclusions. After all that is what revisionism is- to change the way we perceive history and to challenge some rusty assumptions. His main argument, that the Christianization of America came through a process of syncretism, would have not only alarmed Protestant leaders in the 19th century, but would also have worried religious historians in the 20th century. In his presentation of European Protestantism and its journey toward the America continent, Butler emphasizes occultism as a transforming force in religion and society. In doing this, he ignores the strength of the anti-idolatry Protestant movements that "cleaned out" many churches, the close relation between modern empiricism and Protestantism with its emphasis on the "Biblical evidence," and the influence of effective preaching on parishioners.

   Considering that the word "holocaust" in the post World Wars is related with the Nazi's massacre of the Jews, Butler demonizes American Protestantism for its missionary zeal and for its emphasis on civil obedience among the African Americans. By doing this, Butler completely disregards the humanitarian impulse in their behalf, which was equally syncretic. And by assuming that African American ideology was secular before 1760 he contradicts his conclusion that "Slavery's destruction of African religious systems in America . . . . constituted cultural robbery. . . . of the most vicious sort." If we still ignore this contradiction, his analysis of the African-American mass movement into Protestant Christianity cannot explain how would the unsophisticated African religious systems could have been a match to Protestantism and to the complex life in American Slavery.

   In revising the Great Awakenings Butler take luster out of these movements by emphasizing its conservatism and downplaying its egalitarianism. But here Butler's assumption falters in logic. He presumes that increase social status for the clergy and increment in church authority always meant conservatism. In the American religious context, where pluralism was the main characteristic, more leveled status to clergy, and more authority to non-state-churches (dissidents) meant egalitarianism- particularly compared with the European religious experience. Furthermore, by indicating that itinerant ministers opposed settled ministers selectively, he is not only ignoring their significance, but is also ignoring social forces that would naturally motivate the Itinerants to seek support and sympathy from some settled ministers while ignoring others. Curiously, Butler's analysis of American revivalism is distinguished by a robust defense to the Anglican Church, and a downplaying of dissent's strength and growth-, which is also a revision in traditional American religious history.

   Throughout his entire book, but especially on the Antebellum Christianity, Butler always defines the practice of Alchemy, the curiosity for the gothic and the secret, and the believing in dreams and miracles as indication of spiritualism and witchcraft. Defining these religious experiences, which some orthodox leaders, have seen with suspicious eyes, may belie Butler's position of standardization-a secularized Protestant mainstream. At this point the reader would wonder why Butler includes the practice of alchemy with the believing in miracles, since science (to mention only two) was not as clearly define and not as evenly spread as it was a century later, and miracles have always been regarded as part of Christian beliefs. It may be that Butler needs this combination to highlight his point of Protestants' lack of purity and imprecision, which would have been impossible otherwise. Perhaps inexactitude is inbuilt in certain aspects of the study since Christianity is itself syncretic, thus invalidating any model of Christianity detached from "its" culture and historical setting.




2. Thoughtful and scholarly, yet readable, history of religion in US history and its ups and downs.

5 comments about Weird New England (Weird).

1. This book is generally a fun and quirky read, as long as it's not taken TOO seriously. This book reminds us that there remains an abundant number of odd and quirky tales of people, places, events and downright weird things in New England that add to the region's character. Weird New England is a book you can pick up and flip through when the everyday world gets too depressing and overbearing.
   
   The book is not without its fault and some of the errors can be downright annoying to the knowledgeable New Englander. First, there are misspellings of town names, for example the book mentions "Abingdon, MA", which does not exist, but there is an Abington. Some of the "unexplained" structures or buildings described in the book have in fact been well-explained, but again no one should take this book as a serious reference. One serious error does need to be addressed regarding what ancient Greeks and others termed the "music of the spheres". The books states that the term referred to mysterious musical sounds while in fact the ancient scholars where referring to the orderly movement of the sun, moon and planets in what they believed where fixed spheres.



2. This is an excellent edition in the Weird series, mainly due to the author's enthusiasm for the subject. He tackles a sprawling amount of New England history and folklore, and will definitely give you a ton of travel ideas for your next road trip. My only complaint is that Citro hails from Vermont and devotes too many pages to it over other states - here's hoping Volume 2 is in the works! I bought this volume along with Weird New York (by a different author) and can say this is significantly better.



3. Weird New England (Weird) Very interesting book! Being from New England, I had to have it!



4. I was very pleased with the delivery of this book. It arrived in really good condition. An excellent book!



5. Got this as gift, not sure I would have bought it on my own. Was a fun if not weird read. Some of the tales I had heard myself many years ago unfortunately they did not add much closure to what I already knew. Not for kids, I'll be keeping it away from my younger ones till they hit 12-13 or so. Still worth a look to relax and daydream a bit.

5 comments about Mr. and Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Family Moved Out of Slavery and into Legend.

1. MR. and MRS. PRINCE is an extraordinary achievement. Meticulously researched and engagingly written, it uncovers a fascinating chapter in 18th-century African American literature. The story of the Princes, New England slaves whose trajectory takes them from bondage to farm ownership, is both the story of the struggles of all settlers in the north frontier during the Indian Wars and that of a brave African American couple establishing a life together and raising a large family against seemingly insurmountable odds. Told against the story of how, through painstaking research, the author and her husband were able to piece together the details of the Princes' lives (an adventure in itself), the book blends two fascinating narratives into one. As the narrative interweaves the moving story of the Princes with that of the two researchers indefatigable following every lead, the book lovingly evokes the past and present of a broad section of New England. The result is an extraordinary story of historical recovery and contemporary detective work that displays what couples working together can accomplish through hard work and determination. It is simply impossible to put the book down.



2. The story of Mr. and Mrs. Prince is incredible. I didn't know anything about them or their legend status until now. Gerzine has done something that few writers have done---seamlessly weave the historical narrative with the actual experience of researching the material. I was drawn in by the dialogue and the meticulous research. Through this book, the author counters our longstanding views of slavery in America during the 18th century. At other times the details provided are in line with the traditional historical records of slavery in America. I couldn't put the book down and often woke up in the middle of night to read another chapter or two and go back to bed. Buy the book, read it, and pass it on to someone else. The story of the Princes' is one that should be read by everyone.



3. 
   I applaud the author for attempting to write a book about Mr. & Mrs. Prince, whose lives certainly seem worth chronicling, but the thing is there's not enough information provided in the book to actually flesh the characters out . . . to make the reader connect, even a little bit.
   
   And yes, I do understand that the author did try to get information, and she details all the sources she pored through to find out more about this remarkable couple, but records back in that day simply didn't have too much information about free blacks.
   
   The result? A worthy attempt, but with so little meat I think this would have been a much better long magazine article than even a short book.



4. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina is a wonderful writer, & I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the amazingly creative ways she & her husband were able to interpret the sadly spotty record of Abijah & Lucy Prince's lives. But what was lacking was much context. How much did their experience as free blacks differ from their white neighbors'? Did other families in western New England at the time face many of the same personal & financial hardships?
   
   Yet while more historical background would have benefited the book, Ms. Gerzina tended to be repetitive, as if she felt she needed to pad her material.
   
   In spite of that "Mr. & Mrs. Prince" is well worth reading.



5. I love the book, however I agree with the reviewer who mentioned the "creative" context used by the author, and with the reviewer who believes there's just not enough information from the available records to try to create such a full story. It is a WONDERFUL story of Mr. and Mrs. Prince of Massachusetts who were able to move out of slavery by hard work and a little help from others in their lives. The problem I have with the book is that the author fills in a lot of the blanks about how Mr. and Mrs. Prince "must have" felt about their lives. There's just no way the author can fill in those blanks. To do that from where we sit today has no basis in the reality of a life lived then. The story is wonderful, it should be told, but the author really has no business judging 18th century lives and the "possible feelings" of the central characters based on today's intellect. I highly recommend reading the book, it is well written and obviously was a labor of love for the author and her husband. The story is good enough to tell it like it is from what is known, don't embellish with fiction.

1 comments about A Short History of Boston.

1. I purchased this book to get a little more connected to my adopted home. The book is crammed full of information in its slim 128 pages. Space does not allow any topic to be reviewed in full detail. But, on many pages I found myself saying, "Wow, that's really interesting. I'd love to read more about that." A Short History of Boston is a great launching pad to more study of Boston's nearly 400 years of history.

5 comments about Diary of an Early American Boy: Noah Blake 1805 (Dover Books on Americana).

1. I read the other reviews before I bought. I guess this wasn't for me. I love diaries but this wasn't really a diary.



2. Like the previous reviewer, this book was not what I was expecting. Thinking that most teenage boys hundreds of years ago are just like teenage boys today, I was very surprised to find a published diary of a kid who was willing to write down his thoughts on life. With many entries consisting entirely of one or two words like "Plowed today." and "Do." (ditto), this book does little to offer the reader insight into the thoughts of this boy. The diary portion of the book is disappointing, and is used as a jumping off point for the author to explain in words and pictures about the technology of the early 19th century. The explanations are fascinating, the technology amazing. Anyone who has ever thought about how the pyramids could have been built by thousands of slaves should take a gander at how a covered bridge (that could hold the weight of oxen and a cart and it's load and driver) was constructed by a few neighborhood farmers. The illustrations are the backbone of this book and they are excellent. I wish the author would strike a deal with the publishers of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" series to draw and explain the machinery described in those books. I would recommend this book as a gift for anyone, kid or adult, who is interested in architecture or engineering, or who loves history.



3. I echo what everyone else has written here - an excellent book. Noah's diary is very terse, but Sloane fleshes it out with fascinating details of what living on a farm must have been like for Noah.
   
   Sad thing, though... as I was reading this I wondered if Noah and Sarah Trowbridge, whom he frequently writes about (it's clear he was attacted to this girl) ever married. Alas! I can find no mention at all of Noah Blake or his parents on any online genealogical database. Other than via Sloane's book, Noah Blake seems to be unremembered... but that's sufficient, I guess. (I can find a Sarah Trowbridge born in 1791, but it might or might not be the right one. Not enough genealogical details in Sloane's book.)



4. I've used DEAB (Diary of an Early American Boy) in my fourth grade Science curriculum for a few years now. It's amazing how Noah and his father are able to craft so many tools (and bridges, mills, and homes) using such "archaic" technology. Students are given a first hand glimpse at wood-working, pulleys and levers, and splitting and heating using wood (many of my students actually still heat their houses using wood!).
   The budding romance between Sarah and Noah is an added little perk! :)



5. My 9-year old daughter and I are reading this together. She's not very interested in reading yet, but she likes this book a lot. We're using it as part of a science curriculum about "how things work" and it gives a good perspective on simple tools and machinery from 1805. The illustrations are wonderful.

4 comments about Vermont Covered Bridges Map & Guide.

1. On medium-weight, stain-resistant paper, this beautiful and durable map folds out to approximately 2 feet by 3 feet. On one side is a three-color map of Vermont placing all 107 of the state's covered bridges, interesting facts about bridges and their designers, separate indices for bridges and places, and labelled watercolors of 23 of the bridges. The reverse side shows a county map, line drawings of various types of bridge trusses and a list of all the state's covered bridges by town. Each entry gives the date the bridge was built, information about its design and construction, and directions to the bridge.

   This is a beautiful and informative map, and what a bargain!




2. Just returned from a week in Vermont and this map/guide saved me a lot of time and effort in tracking down the covered bridges I wanted to see in Northern Vermont.



3. I found this map of Vermont covered bridges only moderately helpful. The map has a symbol for covered bridges on it and directions to each bridge are located on the back of the map by region, along with a very brief history. I found having to flip the map over for directions very user unfriendly while trying to navigate.



4. This product is exactly what it's supposed to be: a comprehensive map to covered bridges in Vermont.

5 comments about Stone by Stone: The Magnificent History in New England's Stone Walls.

1. When I picked up this book I thought: "How can an entire book be written about stones walls?" As it turns out the author did not write an entire book about stone walls.

   The author gives us the hisory of stone walls starting with the formation of the earth, through formation of rocks, the ice age and finally American history. There is actually more about geology that stone walls themselves, although the author tried mightily to write a few hundred pages about them.

   The geology and history is well-written and interesting. I learned quite about when walls were generally built and how the stones came to be that comprised them. However, the last third or so of the book - that part devoted to the walls themselves was often redundant. It seemed the author was searching for words to fill the pages and stretching - like the last pages of a term paper you know should be eight pages but you have to make the assigned ten pages.

   A chapter on builders and technique would have been more useful than the stretched parts.

   There are pearls of interesting history and I am not sorry I read the book. I just wished it had been shorter by an excision of the redundancies and "stretches".




2. "The stone walls of New England stand guard against a future
   that seems to be coming too quickly. They urge us to slow down
   and to recall the past."

   This is only one of the many observations that Professor Thorson
   concludes his marvelous book with. I must admit that his final,
   summarizing chapter actually brought a tear to my eye - hardly
   to be expected from a book on geology and regional history
   mixed with, amongst other topics, some anthropology.

   In other words this book has enough of everything to satisfy
   every curiosity you might have about those tumbled down rows
   of stones found in just about every New England forest and
   suburb. A surprising wealth of information on numerous topics.
   Fascinating scientific and cultural and historical background -
   far more than one would ever expect to encounter considering
   the topic. And Professor Thorson's writing style is commendably
   clear and readable, with a poet's affection for his topic.

   Quite simply one of the best nonfiction books I think I have ever
   read (and I read quite a lot), for its perfect fusion of research, understanding and sentiment.

   Almost an answer to my prayers during so many long, wandering and wondering forest walks.
   I encourage you to read this book.




3. This is a wonderful book. It blends science, history and art to create an interesting perspective on the stone walls of New England. Thorson discusses the geological aspects of stone, the various types of stone walls and how they were built as well as the process of frost heaving and the disintegration of old walls. I hope this book causes people who have looked at stone walls and have seen only rocks to take a new, deeper look at them. They, and "Stone by Stone" are quite poetic.



4. Thorson's discussion of frost heave is so wonderful I no longer resent picking those damn rocks out of the garden. Well, I still don't like those damn cobbles and pebbles but at least now it makes sense. I lived on sand in Schenectady, NY for awhile and I almost forgot how easy mending that lawn was, you could dig without a shovel, but New England called me home and alas this is a land of rocks, but walking through the woods here in Massachusetts with its stranded rock walls, whose existence in trackless woods makes one wonder who built them, so long ago that the trees surrounding them are well over 100 feet high, humbles one, such a long history, so many generations gone, you can feel the hard labor that must have gone into hauling these tons of rock, these walls that run up and down hillsides through woods that haven't seen farming in over 150 years.
   
   I loved the soil talk, the geology, the history lesson, this is real history, the story of the people, explaining the reasons for the individual decisions of the many; the big history moves are the result of the many many little historical imperatives.
   
   If you live in New England or any other glaciated terrain, you should read this book, you will find your surroundings, your own neighborhood woods, a source of new fascination.



5. I became so angry at one paragraph of Mr. Thorson's book, that I decided to write a review attacking it. You may find the guilty paragraph on page 141, if you dare.
   
   In it, Thorson calculates the number of man-days needed to build New England's stone walls. His most obvious problem is with numbers. He writes that four rods equals sixty-four feet. Actually, it equals sixty-six. More impressively, Thorson mistakenly calculates that 240,000 miles is the same as 819,088,710 feet, instead of 1,267,200,000. He is off by about four hundred million feet. He should have noticed that his first estimate was accurate to the nearest ten thousand miles, his second to the nearest ten feet.
   
   Moreover, in his discussion of how many feet a waller can work in a day, Thorson reveals a lack of common sense. He writes that modern masons lay 20 feet of wall in a day, whereas modern British masons can only lay 15-18 feet a day. Those lazy Brits! One may wish to compare these two rates to that of old New England farmers. According to Thorson, these farmers could lay stone fence at 64 (or 66) feet a day, over three times as fast as those in modern times.
   
   In case we are befuddled by his leaps in logic, Thorson provides an endnote, which, alas, only further reveals his incompetence. First he notes that his calculation covers only the act of building a wall, not the act of carrying over the stones. Then why does he write that farmers needed oxen to help them build their walls?
   
   Next, Thorson writes that he needed three statistics to make his calculation: the number of hours in the work day of a farmer, the number of miles of stone wall in New England, and the average rate of construction. Why did he need to know the number of hours in a work day? None of his statistics were in hours! We turn to the only possible solution: perhaps, Thorson was given his statistics on wall-building in feet per hour and converted to feet per day. Let us examine the three groups he studied: old New Englanders, Brits, and Moderns, to see if this may be the case. For the New Englanders, Thorson quotes a source: "four rods a day;" no need to convert here. For the British, Thorson gives the statistic: 5-6 yards a day. If he had converted, it would have been from a source which wrote that Brits make walls at .675 to .75 yards an hour; no source would ever estimate in such terms. The only place Thorson could possibly have used the eight-hour-day would have been in calculating the labor rate of the modern mason. But in giving his statistic, Thorson does not cite anyone. If he used someone's statistic and then converted, he should have cited. If he did not use anyone's statistic, then there would have been no need for him to convert, and the eight-hour-day would have been completely useless. Thus, Thorson's third piece of "required" information, the eight hour day, is either not required, or indicative of academic dishonesty.
   
   This completes the critique. Admittedly, my judging a book by one paragraph is unfair. Yet, Mr. Thorson chose to include this paragraph in his book; it is indicative of him and his research. As such I do not trust either one.