2 comments about Time Out Boston (Time Out Guides).

1. Compact, informative, and useful, with a good balance between tourist info and the kind of thing you'd want to know if you were moving to Boston. The Times reviewer who called it "hip and culturally savvy" may have been revealing his own squareness -- I wouldn't say there's much truly countercultural about this book -- but it does cover everything from used record stores to gay bars, so it's not entirely stodgy, either. The maps are great and the book is small enough to keep at hand while exploring. A good choice.



2. I am a fan of "Time Out" publications. So I purchased their guide to my hometown with high expectations. Like other TO publications, I find its advice mostly accurate and hip. But I do find an underlying bias against the The Hub throughout. Here are a few of many examples:
   
   "With more than 100 restaurants packed into just a few blocks, the North End..." (p. 84). Trust me, these >100 restaurants are closely spaced, but found over dozens and dozens of blocks of a great neighborhood.
   
   "...Theatre District. You can find almost any sort of entertainment within this block." (p67). Again, Boston's Theatre district doesn't compare to Broadway but with its Wang Center, Opera House, and Shubert, Wilbur, Colonial, Paramount, Charles, and Cutler Majestic Theatres--its not a single block either
   
   "That's because Boston is a mid sized American City with an outsized global reputation..." (p 40) TO's book cites Boston repeatedly as mid-sized. It is not. Its America's sixth largest metropolitan area. Sixth largest television market. If you limit Boston to its city limits (i.e. 43 sq. miles & half million population), yeah, it is mid-sized. AND the City of London is officially a single square mile and among UK's smallest cities.
   
   Time Out should continue its fine publishing, but please consider a more balanced tone about Boston in future editions.

No comments about Massachusetts Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities, & Other Offbeat Stuff (Curiosities Series).

No comments about Cheap Eats: 52 Real Deal Meals in Greater Boston (Cheap Eats: Dining Deals in Greater Boston for 52 Weeks).

1 comments about Picnics of New England.

1. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Picnics in New England. It made me feel as if I were actually in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, wherever. I loved the paintings, and I especially enjoyed the authors original and witty way of presenting the recipes.

No comments about CROMWELL'S WAR MACHINE: The New Model Army 1645 - 1660.

No comments about A New-England Tale; Or, Sketches of New-England Character and Manners (Early American Women Writers).

No comments about Hikes & Walks in the Berkshire Hills, Third Edition (A Berkshire Outdoors Series Guide).

No comments about Historic Coastal New England: People, Places, and Attractions from Greenwich to Kennebunkport.

1 comments about The Boston Massacre (New England Remembers).

1. New England Remembers Series Editor Robert J. Allison has taken on in extremely few pages an integral moment in both Boston and American history in his new book, The Boston Massacre. Combining his novelesque readability, biting dry wit, and impeccable research abilities, Allison succeeds in a mere 70+ pages where many (with the exception, perhaps of Zobel) have failed, in succinctly encapsulating not only "the horrid, bloody massacre" itself, but the political and social ramifications of the event in the following years both in Tory and Sons of Liberty circles.
   
   The exciting tale of the massacre and its aftermath is sprinkled with interesting facts surrounding the event as well, including the prominence of Crispus Attucks in the riot, Governor Hutchinson's and Peter Oliver's honest attempts at seeing justice served, wax papered propagandistic messages illuminated in Paul Revere's North Square windows, and the celebration of March 5, not July 4, as a day to celebrate our break from England in the early days of the Republic.
   
   The Boston Massacre is an excellent read for novices and professional historians alike. The only dangers in reading it are that you might actually start looking at the Patriots as radical, and you might feel just a touch of sympathy for the British.

No comments about God, Are You Really There?.