No comments about The Boston Chef's Table: The Best in Contemporary Cuisine.

5 comments about Hatch Guide for New England Streams.

1. This little book is unique. It combines high quality photos of most of the New England streamside insects trout love to eat with examples of imitations we hope they'll try. The author, a professional photogapher, avid fly fisherman and amateur entomologist, has devised means to capture the appearance of these tasty bugs in perfect detail as they develop from their origins on the stream bottom to their emerging stages in the biologic drift to their mature forms, winged and mating on and above the surface. This book fits in a zip lock sandwich baggy in your hip pocket, and paired with your curiosity on the water, you will get streamside bug savvy and catch more trout.



2. This guide will helps the newbies as well as the expert! Mr. Ames packs it full of info for a 6x4" guide, waisted no space and can easily fit in a vest pocket!



3. Arrived in great shape and very quickly. My grandson loves it. Thanks.



4. My husband found this book to be a big help. It shows all the flies you should be using at given times and places.He calls it his bible!!!



5. An awesome book with great descriptions and full-page color photos. Probably not for a first-year fly fisher due to the technical nature of the book. I keep it near my fly-bench in the winter, and in my gear bag all summer.

No comments about Novel About My Wife.

1 comments about Pharmacy Law: Textbook And Review.

1. I have been using this book and the Reiss/Hall pharmacy law book and have to say, this one was not as useful. The questions in the back are not really similar to the kind of questions you get on the MPJE (in my opinion) and there was an entire section in the CSA section that was completely contradictory to the information on the DEA's website...for example, this book says that oral prescriptions are permitted for schedules III-V ONLY in emergency situations...then goes on to cover the same thing that CII oral "emergency" prescriptions require. When I looked this up in the other book and on the DEA's website of prescription requirements, it is stated that all III-V substances may be communicated orally, in writing, or by facsimile to a pharmacist, and may be refilled if so authorized on the Rx or call-in, without the stipulation of an "emergency situation." Due to this type of misinformation I would not recommend the book to anyone. They even have some answers in the back that are completely incorrect.

1 comments about Writing on Stone: Scenes from a Maine Island Life Photographs by Peter Ralston With a Foreword by Philip W. Conkling.

1. This book is beautifully written and describes parts of island life from a summer resident's point of view, in addition to the deep feelings caused by the loss of a son who is now buried on the island and has, thus, become part of the island's history. Amazingly, there is nothing sentimental about this book; just heartfelt. Highly recommended to anyone who shares an interest in Maine's island heritage, or summer residents' place in it, or how one family has coped with their personal loss and incorporated it into Maine island culture. Thank you for sharing these very personal feelings and stories with a larger audience.

3 comments about Connecticut Curiosities, 2nd: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff (Curiosities Series).

1. If you want to explore interesting things in Connecticut, this is the book to start with. My son and I often do interesting things on Saturday mornings. Part of it is just "bonding time", but part of it is that mom works every other Saturday, so those days we have special freedom to do interesting things. And we do. During warm months, an emphasis is on hiking and outdoor activities. During cold months, if we are not sledding, we try more indoor activities.

   Many of the things that we have done are in this book. I was pleasantly surprised. I bought this as a present for mom so that maybe she can join in more often (she does better if she has a picture in her mind and this book is full of pictures).

   Explore Connecticut by visiting "everyday" places you might not have noticed. These are the kinds of places that out-of-staters might ask "have you been there" but the residents do not even know they exist -- right next door. Definitely worth taking a look at.




2. Whether I am at home or on the road, books like this one provide this traveller with a lot to do without having to go very far. Personally, I view Connecticut as one of those often overlooked states which gets unfairly dissed because of its close proximity to NYC.
   In my case, I was abandoned by my husband who was attending a business conference. I wandered into a book store and found this little gem in the local interest section. On the way to Mystic Seaport, I checked out a few locations. Had a lot of fun and enjoyed myself thoroughly. My only regret was that I didn't have more time to cover all the locations cited in this book. However, even that was o.k. because I now have the impetus to return and check out other interesting places.
   Travel books like these are a real treat for locals as well as visitors because they educate and also provide a sense of familiarity to often strange and/or unfamiliar places. They provide a different way of looking at a specific state or region.



3. This guidebook to all the fun, out-of-the-way and quirky people and places of Connecticut is a great way to learn more about what makes the state so great. Even as a lifelong state resident, I learned new things; I use this as a means of picking fun daytrips.
   
   Pick up a copy; it'll make you wonder what else you don't know about Connecticut!

2 comments about A New World: England's First View of America.

1. Very well done, very informative, good attention to detail.



2. John White (c. 1540 - c. 1606), was an English artists who sailed with Richard Grenville in 1585 to the modern day coast of North Carolina. He made a number of watercolors of the landscape and the native peoples they encountered. These are the first and most informative illustrations of Native American society of the Eastern seaboard. They were later engraved by Theodore de Bry; all the surviving original paintings are now in the print room of the British Museum.
   
   A New World: England's First View of America is beautifully illustrated and reproduces in full the British Museum collection of drawings and watercolors. White's duties included making visual records of everything he encountered, including plants, animals, birds, and human inhabitants, especially their dress, weapons, tools, and ceremonies. The collection also includes White's watercolors of Florida and Brazilian Indians.
   
   Each work is reproduced in color and supplemented by engravings by Theodor de Bry and others. In 1590 Theodorus de Bry and his sons had published a new, illustrated edition of Thomas Harriot's A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (Rosenwald Collection Reprint Series) about the first English settlements in North America (in modern-day North Carolina). His illustrations were based on White's watercolor paintings. One interesting aspect of this fine book is seeing how significantly de Bry changed White's works; the engravings are very detailed, but lack the life of the paintings.
   
   Kim Sloan places John White in his historical, cultural, and artistic contexts. Joyce Chaplin explores how White's contemporaries viewed his work and Christian Feest assesses its accuracy as historical documentation. Ute Kuhlemann examines the role of de Bry.
   
   I found this book a wonderful introduction to America as the English of the time must have seen it.
   
   
   Robert C. Ross 2008

2 comments about Boston on Fire: A History of Fires And Firefighting in Boston.

1. I loved this book. This is a carefully crafted and well researched collection of tales about fires out of control and what are very scary risks, even up to the present day.

   It starts from times when there were no machines to fight fires, dirt roads downtown, little or no water available, and nobody on the payroll. Stories cover fires in and around Boston that wiped out entire neighborhoods and changed hundreds of lives. The story of the famous Cocoanut Grove fire of late 1942 is right from the front line and for me, brought the recent Station Nightclub fire to mind.

   As a bridge to further study, it has detailed references to source material drawn upon, but I have to think that none of it can be more captivating than this compendium.....




2. A person would not expect to find a history of fire fighting in Boston to be a difficult book to put down. I bought this volume mostly because I had enjoyed the author's earlier story of the Cocoanut Grove Fire and I'm delighted I did. I had no idea of all the inovations in fire fighting that were first invented or applied in Boston. I happened to start reading the book at the back when I was thumbing through it and came across a description of the fire at the Vendome Hotel on Commonwealth Avenue. I'd witnessed that fire while passing by on my way to work. I then read the book from that point to the end before starting to re-read it from the beginning. It was amazingly accurate because I'd been alive and read about many of those recent fires at the time. The great fires from the past were even more fascinating.The author did a wonderful job of making what could have been boring, boring, boring, into a history that was riviting, riviting, riviting. It's a great read even for non-sparks and fire fighters.

5 comments about Maine: The Seasons.

1. I recently purchased this book as I am about to move to New England and I am a working photographer. I must say, Mr. Lester's photographs are wonderful and the writing accompanies the images very well, making this a very nice book indeed. I am continually amazed at the quality (and variety) of light in Mr. Lester's photographs - I think I'm going to like this place. I like this book and would recommend it to others who are interested in travel/photo books related to the Pine Tree State. If I had any criticism at all regarding this book, it might be with the title itself. There seems to be a heavy emphasis on images from Deer Island and Stonington and surrounding environs. The title of the book , "Maine: The Seasons" might suggest a broader area of coverage. Maine is a big state - and it's great to see a photographer working in his own backyard, so to speak, but a more specific title reference may have been appropriate as many areas of Maine do not make appearances here. But this point is minor, and I digress.... overall I found this to be a fine book and a solid purchase. Cheers!



2. On the recommendation of a friend, my wife and I stumbled into a photo gallery in Deer Isle, Maine, last week during our vacation (we are from New York) to see the work of Terrell Lester, not even aware Knopf had recently published this book. We were, in short, completely blown away by his photos, all of which, and more, are collected in this remarkable book, along with four essays of varying interest. Lester's photos are like fine art, to be specific, like the best of the Hudson River School of painters back in the 1800s who created such vivid landscapes, saturated with reds and blues and yellow (and that's just in the sky). His photos of islands, mountains, rocks, lakes, surf, trees and spectacular blueberry fields blazing red in autumn are rich with emotion. They deserve to be, and in fact are, on museum walls. For the most part, they are reproduced well in "Maine: The Seasons," but in this case, you can't tell a book by its cover-- a wonderful (but rather too typical for a Maine book) photo of a father and a son heading off to work in their lobster boat. You won't be disappointed.



3. While the photography is great, it was limited to only a couple areas of Maine. I was hoping for more small town, quaint images. The only town featured was one that's not even on the map.



4. Stunning photographs and poetic/romantic writing. Makes me wish I had gone to Maine (during the summer of course!) while I was in college in New Jersey. This is a special book and it left me wanting more.



5. The photography exhibited here is quite good - several vibrant images of the landscape of coastal Maine in each of its seasons. What I didn't like is, as another reviewer pointed out, it is limited in that it only explores a few areas of Maine (namely Stonington, Acadia National Park, and Deer Isle). What about Western Maine and Portland area? Not covered. Overall not a bad concept (the writing is average) but could have been a lot better.

1 comments about Exploring Stone Walls: A Field Guide to New England's Stone Walls.

1. The book, Exploring Stone Walls, A Field Guide to New England's Stone Walls by Robert Thorson is split up into eleven detailed chapters. From there it is distributed into three separate sections. The first section is divided into four chapters. Thorson mainly talks about how there are many different types of life in and or around a stone wall. Many different types of organisms live here including the smallest life forms such as lichens and bacteria to large mammals such as dogs and cats. Although Thorson doesn't give much of an overview about this section, it is highly detailed fact-wise. I found this quite interesting because even if you are not an in-depth stonewall observer, than you can still have an enjoyable time watching them if you also have other interests such as ecology or if you're a naturalist. During the course of this book, there was one small segment about how he talked about artificial stone being very abundant throughout New England. I feel like this had little reference to the rest of the topics that Thorson was explaining. But there was an extremely well-developed chapter that I felt helped me overcome the very puzzling question of "How do you know whether to classify stone as a wall or a pile?" Very challenging question. Or is it? There is a simple answer to this problem. If the wall is anything less than four times long than it is wide it is a pile and vice-versa. In chapter eight of the book there is a well thought of segment about how to determine a certain wall's age. If you like to have history tied in with reading than you'll like this book. I didn't enjoy the chapter about the terrain because it was too detailed and it barely even talked about the walls. But his best chapter was chapter eleven, where he described some of his personal favorite stone walls to visit. This is even more interesting if you love to travel and explore. Overall, Thorson is a very good author and many people will benefit reading this book.