No comments about The Berkshire Book: Great Destinations, Eighth Edition (Berkshire Book).

5 comments about Consummate Connecticut: Day Trips with Panache.

1. We love this book. My husband and I are life-long Connecticut residents residing now in Cheshire. We just got the book and have already discovered things about our own town that we never knew! When the weather cools we are going to go see the waterfall. We love to take day trips, particularly in the Spring and Fall -even the winter- and this book is perfect for that. It's well organized and jam-packed with all the information you need to make a last-minute day trip with panache. I HIGHLY recommend this book for anyone living in the tristate area or who plan on coming to New England for vacation. It should definetly be in the personal library of all Connecticut residents.



2. CONSUMMATE CONNECTICUT: DAY TRIPS WITH PANACHE BY STACY LYTWYN MAXWELL Even reading this delightful book from far away (Texas ) made me want to pick up the phone and make reservations for a trip to Connecticut now! Stacy has a fresh personable way with words and entices you not only with beautiful descriptions of the sights, but also with t he aromas and the feel of the places she describes. Her extensive research into history and customs, festivals, and fun is a wealth of information, and her recommendaitons can be trusted because she has not received payment from any of t he businesses mentioned. For any resident of Connecticut, this book should always be in your car! For any visitor to the area, day trips or longer stays, the book should be your first consultant in planning your trip.



3. What an accessible guide to touring Connecticut. There are so many ways to choose your trip for the day: there's the alphabetical index for a quick check on a restaurant, museum or whatever; the more detailed index by town, listing specific details such as annual events; a table of contents listing the towns by region and county; and a thorough introduction on how to find your way around the book. Historical questions at the beginning of each town pique your interest, and the events in each town are listed by month. It couldn't be an easier or more interesting and delightful guide, in fact it's a tour by itself.



4. Whether you are interested in the history of Connecticut or in its vistas you will find this book of uncommon value. Champion shoppers and gourmets will delight in the listings and the descriptions of malls and shoppes found within. Well resarched and written, this book will appeal to longtime residents of the state as well as casual tourists.



5. How could you pick up this intensively researched labor of love and not want to run on up to Connecticut or go exploring in your own backyard?It's ALL in here -- the leafy byways, eccentricities, history, the quirky and remarkable places, people and traditions that give this southernmost New England state that is also tied to NYC, a short train commute away,with its unique character. As the owner of ConneCTions Receptive Tours - out of the ordinary tours for groups in CT, I thought I knew it all, but I was wrong. I've been happily telling my tourism industry colleagues about this remarkable resource.

1 comments about Garrett County (MD) (Postcard History Series).

1. As a new resident of Garrett County, one of many who fell in love with the quiet beauty and peaceful idyllic life the region embodies, I had a vauge sense of the history that built this area. As you travel the streets and survey the landscape the feeling of history is palpable; towns, streets, buildings, bursting with stories to tell. This book tells those stories. In Garrett County, a Postcard History Series, you are taken back through time to the beginning of the trek west that opened the mountain region that we know today. Every picture post card gives you a glimpse into a view that in many cases are still standing. The photographs, with snipets of life captured in the words on the back printed underneath, take you to a time and place that we can usually only imagine. Oddly enough many of the towns today retain the same look and feel of the postcards, and my children and I spent an enchanting Saturday driving through Oakland, Mountain Lake Park and Deer Park looking for the places depicted in the book. My whole family found the book to be an entertaining and educational visual stroll through history. Definitely perfect for a rainy afternoon curled up by the fireplace with a cup of tea book. I will keep a copy at my lake house for visitors and encourage all who have ever been to Garrett County to get a copy of your own.

No comments about Michelin Travel Guide New England (Michelin Green Guide: New England English Edition).

No comments about Rand McNally streets of New Haven.

No comments about Away for the Weekend with Kids! New York: Great Destinations and Day Trips for the Whole Family in New York, New Jersey, a nd Connecticut (Away for the Weekend, Northeast).

No comments about Night Boat to New England, 1815-1900 (Contributions in Economics and Economic History).

5 comments about Haunted Rhode Island.

1. An excellent book about the haunted happeneings in RI. Once I picked it up I could not put it down. Look forward to more!



2. As a lifelong resident of Rhode Island, I have always been interested in our colorful history. The stories in this book bring the reader into dark corners of the ocean state, that most history books don't dare to mention. Mr. D'Agostino has written an incredibly compelling book that not only aims to entertain, but also to challenge the reader. By not only re-writing famous ghost stories but sharing his own experiences with these stories, D'Agostino encourages the readers to investigate the legends for themselves and come up with their own conclusions. By doing so, he has certainly set the bar higher for other authors of this genre. I certainly look forward to any other books Mr. D'Agostino has up his sleeve!



3. What an interesting read! If you didn't know, 20 percent of the country's historic landmarks are located in Rhode Island (Rhode Islander's love old things) and as it turns out many of the historic residents are lingering in Rhode Island too. Buy this book for the illuminating and fascinating info that it contains, and then come visit the places it describes!



4. This was one of the most difficult books I have ever attempted to read. It is filled with misplaced modifiers, misused words, tense confusion, poor sentence structure, too-short sentences, repetition, dangling participles, and misspelled proper names, e.g., Edgar ALLAN Poe (not ALLEN as the author misspells it), interspersed with foolishness about orbs, EVP and EMF readings. Throughout the book, the author also confuses the words HISTORIC and HISTORICAL, misusing both.
   
   I kept having to read, and reread, paragraphs to figure out what the author was trying to say. Pure and simple, Mr. d'Agostino cannot write. Following is a sample of the author's prose (and believe me, I use the term loosely) taken directly from the book:
   
   The Sprague Manor is arguably one of the most haunted houses in the state of Rhode Island. Many tragedies have unfolded in this eighteenth century homestead. These tragedies have left vexes in the passing of time that now and forever reside in the former estate of the prominent yet tragic family. (Vexes? What the heck are vexes? Vexes, as everyone knows [well, everyone except the author] is a verb and verbs cannot be left in the passing of time or anywhere else. My 12-year-old niece can write better than this.)
   
   Another puzzling sentence:
   
   Nellie Vaughn's tomb is not the only landmark on the premises that has a peculiar allegation. (How can a landmark have an ALLEGATION? Another misused word. Mr. d'Agnostino is in desperate need of a dictionary!)
   
   In another story, he claims it is the only time in American history in which a spirit of the dead provided evidence in a murder trial. Obviously, Mr. d'Agostino is unfamiliar with a similar case in Greenbrier, West Virginia. Not surprising because he seems to be unfamiliar with just about everything.
   
   In another passage from the book, the author is at his amateurish worst, writing:
   
   In the Dexter House, the residents say many spirits roam the halls and basement. They are not frightening, just seemingly lost (the residents or the spirits?). This would seem more apt as the building was once a morgue. Maybe the entities do not know they are dead. (Maybe Mr. d'Agostino does not know he cannot write.)
   
   Mr. d'Agostino, who claims he has been investigating the paranormal for 23 years, drones on for approximately 155 pages (some pages aren't numbered), yet, omits one of Rhode Island's most intriguing ghost stories, and another associated with what is arguably one of the most recognizable houses in the US.



5. I thought buying a book on hauntings would be a bit bone chilling. This book was written like an encyclopedia. This book is short stories about famous hauntings in rhode island. Honestly I read 80% of the stories on-line. I wish i didn't buy this book.

1 comments about Great Ghosts.

1. There is not much substance in this book for anyone really interested in thrills or chills. Might be good to passify your very young child for a few days, but that's about it. It leaves you wanting more information and more facts.

1 comments about The Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from the New England Primer to the Scarlet Letter.

1. This unusual,lively work of scholarship explains the changing use (and appearance) of the alphabet--in U.S. pedagogy and also in American fiction--between the late seventeenth century and today. The initial presentation of the alphabet to young readers, Crain argues, says much about American notions of pleasure and privacy on the one hand, morality and good citizenship on the other. Separate chapters first consider early American primers, hornbooks, and alphabet books, proceeding then to images of reading and letters in Susan Warner's best-selling novel _A Wide, Wide World_ and Nathaniel Hawthorne's _The Scarlet Letter_, which (Crain notes) is, among other things, the letter "A"'s most notorious appearance in classic American fiction. An epilogue extends the discussion to our own day, considering the guest appearance of alphabet-letters as "sponsors" on _Sesame Street_ as well as the use of letters in the contemporary paintings of Edward Ruscha. Equally valuable as a learned resource on early reading pedagogy in the U.S. and as an insightful and crucial contribution to cultural studies and literary criticism, _The Story of A_ is also beautifully designed--copiously illustrated with pictures of hornbooks, "cross-rows," and later images. The icons from the _New England Primer_, Crain points out, combine sober religious emblems with robustly secular images from tavern signs; while those from nineteenth-century alphabet books suggest by contrast a moralizing, middle-class takeover of the alphabet that still may permeate stuffy American attitudes about literacy. Few books this original are this solid, mature, and well-researched. _The Story of A_ offers a very useful synthesis of learned scholarship and sophisticated, theoretically informed interpretation. The book has changed my thinking about literacy and pedagogy, but not by polemics--simply by its definition of compelling American contexts (literary and social) that I had never noticed before. One final merit: this preserves in its energetic and lively style something of the exuberance of its variegated and colorful source-materials.