5 comments about Relocating to Boston and Surrounding Areas: Everything You Need to Know Before You Move and After You Get There!.

1. An excellent book. In the tradition of Mr. Gaffin's reknown website Bostone Online, the book is enlightening for those of us from far off lands on the true culture and language of Boston. A true guide to bean town. Well recommended.



2. Entertaining a move to Boston, I bought this book on a whim. It's a nice guide and will give you a general overview, but I wanted more meat. I suppose I'd be in a better position to judge had I actually moved at this point. It does give some nice information by neighborhood, so you could theoretically find a dry cleaner/coffee shop/hardware store your first week in town if you needed to. A little too much of the book (for my taste) was devoted to moving basics...like a packing timeline, etc. I already know this stuff or would consult UHaul if I didn't...I would rather have had more Boston info in the book. The writer clearly loves the city and is proud to share it, and isn't afraid to discuss the city's foibles (traffic, parking and high -- really high -- cost of living). If you're looking to move to Boston, I'd buy this in tandem with another book or two -- just to make sure you're getting everything you need.



3. 
   [Those of you born and raised in Boston, feel free to just skip to the last two paragraphs]
   
   The book advertises itself as "everything you need to know before you move and after you get there!" That's quite ambitious. There can't be too many places more challenging to move to than Boston, the single most passive-aggressive city in the world. Everything about Boston is charming and quaint from a distance and hostile in the here and now. For example, you can use no logic or intuition to find your way around if you get lost. None of the normal rules apply. Streets veer off on such subtle and off angles, intersecting with each other three to five at a time in intersections with no known corresponding geometrical shape with which to describe them. Several streets have the same name, like Beacon, which starts and stops in several places having nothing to do with each other. The best illustration of this is the fact the Tremont intersects with itself. It's true, there is an intersection of Tremont and Tremont, as denoted by a couple demure little street signs that you will see if you already know they're there. You feel like you've slipped off the space-time continuum. You can drive for miles without seeing a street sign, unless a street has a commemorative sign, being named after a local politician you've never heard of. And the endless arrays of completely arbitrary one-way streets (why not just alternate?). Then you have the round-abouts. These traffic circles are actually kind of fun once you get how to do it, but they are not kind on newcomers. Nor are the other drivers, who drive worse than New Yorkers, worse than many urban third-world cities for that matter.
   
   But you've gotta love those beautiful, quaint cobblestone streets. Nothing like rolling your ankle on those pseudo-aged bricks while the MBTA bus driver races off feigning obliviousness. Which takes me to the citizens, those wonderful Mass masses. Once you get to know them, they are just like people anywhere, you can make great friends. But they'll let you sweat about two years trying to break the ice. If you smile and say Hi to a stranger on the street, you'll be greeted with suspicion at best (especially jarring if you come from the mid-west). And don't bother trying to tell someone from Boston that there are other places around the country that are also nice to live.
   
   And the accent. You gotta be kidding me. Dropping the R's is one thing, but when they start putting the R's on the end of words that end in vowels, then you know they are just messing with the rest of us, you have to be doing that on purpose (although it is fun after a while). Even the revolving doors are passive aggressive. They move automatically, but then stop suddenly and freeze, let you sweat a little bit, the voice, "Please!" the voice of an angry, middle-aged, jilted, life-long cigarette smoking, nickel-slot playing woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, "please! Please step forward. Please do not push the door." And wait to you hear what the landlords are charging these days for a 600 square feet, where you have to move your tandem parked cars the whole day on garbage day despite a two-hour limit on street parking.
   
   Still, despite the near impossible ambitions of this book, making moving to Boston a pleasant experience, it is a handy little book to have. There are tons of books for sight-seeing, weekend getaways, and great restaurants, but I'd wait until you get a feel for your new budget to look at those. What you need when moving there, especially if you haven't spent much time there, is the real skinny on the neighborhoods. Which cities or towns are on their way up, which ones are on the way down. They actually have pie graphs breaking down the neighborhoods by ethnicity, gender, and age (stuff you want to know but don't necessarily want to ask your creepy realtor) median home and condo sales (which need to be extrapolated if you get an edition more than a year old), crime, income, parking, the type of government, and the commute.
   
   It would have been nice however to also have a word or two about the public school systems in each of the neighborhoods, although there many neighborhoods in which it would be difficult to craft a non-offensive honest description. To their credit, they do include the numbers for the Boston Fair Housing Commission and other resources that are useful to have on hand as soon as the landlords start to try and rip you off.
   
   By the way, don't let my portrayal of the harrowing transition fool you, I love this city. Great restaurants, great libraries, nice parks, great museums, a world class orchestra, good sports, and as Gaffin observes in the section on "What's Around Town," with all the colleges, lectures, bookstores, second-run cinemas and art theaters "you won't want for intellectual stimulation in Boston." And the people are great. They take forever to warm up, but once they do they are loyal friends. Plus, there are enough people in Boston who also aren't from Boston to water down the East Coast snobbiness. Yeah, I'll enjoy it more when I can afford it more, but I'm having my fun as it is.
   
   Plus, if the people of Boston care about their sports, they will make every effort to keep me here. I won't go into all the statistics here, but everywhere I've moved, the local sports teams have experienced a significant upsurge in their fortunes. I'm not kidding. And it's no coincidence. I'll give you the numbers if you want them, you can construct your own chi square and see. Highly significant. So make it worth my while people (that also goes for people in other cities who might be interested in recruiting me to see their fortunes turn around).



4. I am finding this book to be very helpful because it really focuses not only on Boston, but also on overall moving tips and timelines. Some people may not need this section at all if they are avid movers. I would have liked to see more detail in the surrounding neighborhoods. The "Outer Suburbs" were really generalized which was not helpful to me as I will be relocating to a western suburb of Boston. The publishing date is also 2002, so it does not include all of the latest antics with the Big Dig, etc. Still, I find it helpful overall.



5. We bought this book prior to moving to Boston. We have never been to Boston and did not know a soul here when we moved. It has a good description of the neighborhoods and helped us pick a neighborhood to live in. It also having moving tips, which I wasn't interested in and things to do in Boston an surrounding areas. Also has a section on annual things/celebrations in Boston which is nice to know what to look for. Has a "What's Around Town" section on Museums, Galleries, parks, restaurants and things to do and even branches into the surrounding states. I think it is a well rounded book for someone who doesn't know the area at all. I would buy it again.

5 comments about 50 Hikes in Vermont: Walks, Hikes, and Overnights in the Green Mountain State, Sixth Edition.

1. The fifth edition of this book, written by two members of the Green Mountain Club, covers hikes everywhere in the State. To no one's surprise, the majority are located along the Appalachian trail and the area with the least hikes covered is in the Northeast Kingdom.

   The authors offer a very good "At A Glance" section in the beginning with hike name, location, and so forth-- many of the things also covered in the individual hikes, but what stands out in this secion is whether or not each hike has a view, good for kids, nearby camping, good for winter, and my personal fav, notes that state whether the hike is good for x-c skiing, snowshoeing, waterfalls, historical interest, etc. The book also contains a "hiker's" guide to trail map symbols, safety, what the pack and more.

   There are no surprises in the write-up for each hike. The authors have not left anything out: distance, hiking time, vertical rise, difficulty rating, pictures and topographical maps.

   You won't find a better book about hiking in Vermont for this reasonable price.




2. I liked this book - easy to read and informative. The only problem was it didn't have very specific information on things like shelters, camping, etc. - it's more of a day-hike book. I phoned the Green Mountain Club (the authors) to get more info, and it turns out that they have written a book of their own called "The Long Trail Guide")that is much more comprehensive and they recommend it more than this one. I would check that book out before you get this one. But if you just want a good book for day hikes, I like this one fine.



3. This book does provide good trail descriptions for a reasonable number of hikes in Vermont. I've hiked about a dozen of the trails listed in here, of those 10 there were:

   2 in which the directions to the trailhead listed the wrong forest service road to take.

   3 in which I saw other trails at junctions that weren't mentioned in this book leading to nearby attractions (without giving full descriptions it would be nice to mention alternatives for longer hikes available).

   1 in which the directions led to a difficult hike, but it turned out talking to people at the top that a much easier hike was available to reach the same destination from the same trailhead.

   Having said that, this book does give the visitor an easy way to plan some hikes in Vermont. The Falcon guide looks to be similar, so it might be useful to read both before planning your hikes.




4. Living in California, I don't get a chance to hike in Vermont as often as I would like. But when I do, I always take this lightweight guide along in my car and in the pack. The best part about the guide is that hikes are described in detail and directions to each trailhead are given in exhaustive detail. This is especially important for out-of-towners who aren't familiar with the back country roads. The authors have hiked each of the trails and they offer pithy comments on trail conditions, the possibility of seeing wildlife and other pertinent information.

   There is a separate section on the magnificent Long Trail, the 260 mile hike which runs from the Massachusetts border to he Canadian border. My one slight criticism is the photos, which could be of better quality, but the text, route descriptions and ancillary material are of high quality.




5. I purchased this book when I first moved to Vermont to help me find my way around the trails here. It provides a decent cross-section of hikes, "rambles", and overnights throughout the state and across the entire spectrum of difficulties (from "easy (even with kids)" to "oh goodness, that was rough").
   
   If you are just starting out with outdoors activities, this is a good place to start because you are almost certain to find something near to you that is within your comfort zone (as far as challenge goes). However, if you are a more experienced hiker, you will outgrow this book too quickly. (And if that is the case, I would suggest the Green Mountain Club's "Day Hiker's Guide" instead.)

3 comments about Nantucket: The Quite Season.

1. Cary's pictures are always great, I have several of her books. I generally ignore the text as it can detract from the pictures at times. Cary - don't feel like you need someone's quotes....your pictures stand alone!!



2. As a professional photographer and writer, there are a select few who fit the bill of "really great" for me. In this case, there are three photos in this book that make the whole book more than worth while having. Maybe a little heavy on the Christmas photos, but in all a very sensitive and introspective look at one of my favorite islands.



3. This book is everything I expeced it to be....beautiful photos of Nantucket at a season few would experience. Magical about explains it. Just enough words to get you through. The photos say it all. Nice work!

3 comments about A Son of the Forest and Other Writings.

1. "A Son of the Forest and Other Writings," by William Apess, is an important resource in United States history and literature. The book is edited by Barry O'Connell, who also provides an introduction. Apess (1798-1839), of the Pequot Indian people, was a pioneer Native American writer. In addition to his 1831 autobiography, "A Son of the Forest," this volume also contains "The Experiences of Five Christian Indians of the Pequot Tribe" (1832) and his "Eulogy on King Philip" (1836).

   Apess' writing is dominated by his fervent evangelical Christianity, and also by his articulation of a Native American consciousness. "Son" is at times a very gripping autobiography. In it Apess writes about poverty, child abuse, alcoholism, ethnic identity and religious conversion: all topics that remain very relevant over the centuries. This volume contains, in addition to the primary texts, a useful bibliography and chronology. This book is an excellent choice both for the classroom and for the independent reader.




2. Four stars seem appropriate for an abridged edition of a work rating five stars for the complete version. For more detail, see my review of "On Our Own Ground" with the same date. The spectacle of Apess delivering his "Eulogy on King Philip" to the descendants of the Puritans who destroyed the Wampanoag leader should cause many Americans to rethink their image of our country's history.



3. This book does have some cultural/sociological worth, but if you buy it new, you've got gross emotional problems. Buy it used--as long as you can find a dependable seller, and it looks like there's a good one already up here, you'll be much happier for it. Trust me on this one--save the few dollars and the years of therapy.

5 comments about The Way We Cook: Recipes from the New American Kitchen.

1. I bought this book after reading a review of it. The recipes are simple and easy to follow. They do not use any ingredients that you cannot get at a regular supermarket. No recipe requires the cook to stand over the stove stirring or watching it cook. I highlighted all the recipes I want to try and easily have a month's worth of dinners. I'm so glad there's finally a cookbook for cooks who don't have time to cook!



2. The first cool crispness of fall sends many home cooks back to the kitchen, eager to cook something new and different. Julian and Riven, who write a weekly column for the Boston Globe's food section, understand this seasonal urge for something new to cook. Their first book is designed for "accomplished" and busy home cooks and features straightforward, unfussy recipes with plenty of room for variation and timing options.

   After "Salads" and "Appetizers" the book is organized around occasion. "When You're in a Rush" features weeknight meals like Ten-minute Bolognese Sauce, Pork Chops with Apples and Onion, and the five-ingredient Shrimp in Coconut Milk with Red Curry Paste, which takes longer to say than to cook. Not all of the dishes are so quick - Eggplant Lasagna requires assembly and baking - but they share a simplifying "one-pot meal" approach.

   "Dishes We Make All The Time" includes homey fare like Baked Meatballs and Tomato Sauce, Yankee Pot Roast with Caramelized Vegetables and Bow Ties with Pot Cheese and Peas. There's also a French Onion Soup made with roasted onions and Mussels in Spicy Tomato Sauce that can be served in bowls or over pasta.

   "New Classics" offers tweaks to the tried and true to reflect the modern tastes for leaner, more highly seasoned food, like Oven Fried Fish and Chips and Roasted Coq Au Vin with Sugar Snap Peas. "Good Enough for Company" features Beef Tenderloin with Red Wine Sauce, Chicken breasts stuffed under the skin with Ricotta and herbs, Roast Side of Salmon, Salmon and Mushroom Pot Pie.

   There's a chapter of stews and braises - Spring Garden Stew, Braised Beef in Balsamic Vinegar and another of side dishes like Harvard Beets, Sautéed Apples, and Noodle Pudding. "Rise and Dine" features Salmon Kedgeree, Warm Cheese Pie and Blueberry Muffins; a baking chapter focuses on cakes, cookies and pies and the book ends with Simple Fruit Deserts from Apple Crisp to Baked Peaches in Brown Sugar.

   Attractively designed, the book is a comfortable combination of the familiar and the new, with simple, practical advice for serving combinations, do ahead tips and variations. A book for cooks who like a relaxed feel in the kitchen, and who doesn't?




3. I don't even cook, but the photography motivates me to give it a try. These are fantastic looking dishes! I want to find more of this photographer's work.



4. `the way we cook, Recipes from the New American Kitchen' is written by two food writers / journalists in the Boston area, which gives this somewhat pregnant title the expectation that it is nothing more than a collection of `Boston Globe' food columns. If it were, I would dismiss it with three stars and little comment. The first clue that more is afoot here than culls from the Wednesday food section are the blurbs on the back of the dust jacket from Christopher Kimball, Anne Willan, and Steven Raichlen. Kimball I could expect, being a good old boy Yankee New Englander from way back, but Anne Willan is serious stuff.

   The chapter titles are a bit unusual, but they are exactly the range of topics you would expect to find in newspaper food columns. They are:

   Appetizers such as deviled eggs, liver pate, ceviche, crab cakes, eggplant caponata, toasts, crackers, etc.
   Salads such as Eggless Caesar, French Market Salad, Creamy Potatoe Salad, Fattoush, Greek Cypriot, etc.
   When You're in a Rush with Soups, Chicken, Tuna, Salmon, Bass, and Scallops, quick Bolognese, etc.
   Dishes We Make All the Time such as Vege Soup, Chili, Yankee Pot Roast, Meatball, Lamb Stew, etc.
   New Classics such as Corn Chowder, Oyster Stew, Boulangere, Baked Beans, Salmon Cakes, etc.
   Good Enough For Company with Rack of Pork, Leg of Lamb, Ossobuco, Duck Breasts, Roast Salmon, etc.
   Simmering Pots with lots of soups and stews such as Cuban Stewed Chicken and Beef Daube, etc.
   Sides such as Fresh Corn Risotto, Scalloped Tomatoes, Quick Couscous, Blue Cheese Popovers, etc.
   Rise and Dine with Frittatas, Muffins, Soda Bread, Quesadillas, Banana Bread, Blueberry Loaf Cake, etc.
   If You Love to Bake with Strawberry Shorkcakes, Carrot Cake, Pies, Tarts, Cookies, Gingerbread, etc.
   Simple Fruit Desserts with five recipes for apples, oranges, and peaches.

   The first thing which bumped my opinion up from three stars to four was with the description of how to cook hardboiled eggs. For starters, they recommended my preferred method of pricking a hole in the shell and dropping the eggs into just boiling water. Then, they gave the additional tip of rolling the just dropped eggs around a bit in order to center the yolk in the cooked egg. To cap things off, they gave a recommendation on how to crack the hot eggs to make them easier to peel when they cool.

   The next thing which warmed my opinion of the book was that I could not find any steps in any recipes which I would do differently. There are few fancy techniques called for in the recipes and almost all of them take no more than a page, but there were also no short cuts.

   The last thing which appealed to me was the lack of processed ingredients. All pie crusts are made from scratch and I detected no cans of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. I did find the directions for the pie crusts to be less than perfect, as it was lax in calling for very cold ingredients, combined in such a way to keep them cold and to leave bits of butter to fluff up the crust. But then, this is not a book on pie baking and I'm sure the technuque they give works well enough. Another less than ideal baking recipe was the carrot cake, which called for but a single layer. If I am going to the trouble to make a carrot cake with butter cream icing, I will make three layers for sure.

   This is not a book for died in the wool foodies. Were I not reviewing it, I would not buy it myself, but for that very large number of people who need to make good meals at least three times a week and don't have time to wade through 800 pages of `The Joy of Cooking' or `James Beard's American Cookery', this book is just the thing.

   I think Steve Raichlen's comparison to Julia Child and Simone Beck is misplaced because the latter duo was doing an in depth survey of a very specific local cuisine while the current authors are collecting recipes originating from all over the world and presenting them for a particular audience. So, their emphasis is on a specific audience rather than a specific cuisine. Sorry Steve.

   This is an excellent book which accomplishes it's mission at a reasonable price. Just be warned that this is NOT low carb or low fat cooking, just very tasty cooking.




5. I love to cook.
   I like to try different books and see how their recipes are.
   
   This one is great, and the recipes are easy to follow and the
   ingredients are ones that you would have on "hand" in your home.
   
   I loved how their catgorized it-"meals for when you are in a rush" excellent idea.
   
   I would recommend this to someone who likes to cook but doesn't want to spend the day or the time looking for ingredients that are hard to find.

5 comments about The Abbess of Crewe.

1. I was about nine years old when the Watergate scandal broke, and I must confess that I don't know much about it beyond our national mythology of bugging, break-ins, erased tapes and G. Gordon Liddy. Is this satire fair to Nixon and his gang? I don't know, but I suspect that it is. At any rate, it remains a witty parable of hypocrisy in high places and, given the rate at which our technology is improving, its comments on surveillance are bound to keep this book topical for quite some time to come.



2. If this book were written in a serious tone, I fear it could be taken as very offensive slander. Instead, it is a brilliant send-up of Watergate and similar abuses of power. It centers on the election of a new abbess.

   Candidate 1 recites her favorite (Protestant) English poetry rather than the Psalms, supports a strong sense of societial class, and uses electronic eavesdropping as a mere extention of listening to convent gossip as a way to maintain proper order.

   Candidate 2 is compulsive regarding order in her sewing box, maintains an all-too-public liaison with a young Jesuit (outdoors rather than linen closets), and leads the sewing nuns to dreams of freedom.

   Add to this a missionary nun using Machivelli to deal with cannibal and vegetarian tribes, young Jesuits bungling break-ins, a nun cross-dressing to deliver hush money ... and you have an absolutely hilarious study in justification of means to insure one's "destiny".




3. -- unquote the most formidable of my university tutors, declining to follow up my recommendation that he should see The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie).

   I had the presence of mind to answer 'Well so have I' but not the gall to say to him 'How about you?' Really she only has a 'bad' mind in the sense we all have bad minds -- there are thoughts we do not lightly own up to. What makes Spark so unique is that the thoughts are so diverse and fanciful. She is all over the place in the best sense, she is as light-footed as a Mendelssohn scherzo, and there is never a demeaning touch in all her writing. I never really know where I am with her. She deals with senility (Memento Mori), satanism (The Ballad of Peckham Rye), fascism (Brodie), epilepsy (The Bachelors) and sexual situations too various to list (passim) like the shallop flitting silken-sailed in The Lady of Shalott. They never become issues, they never become themes and there is often an overlay of the outright fantastic, as when Mrs Georgina Hogg in The Comforters, who has no private life, disappears when she closes her bedroom door behind her.

   The Abbess gets 4 stars from me because it is one of her slighter efforts compared with the novels mentioned above and certain others. Anyone getting to know Spark's work could start as well with this as with those, or indeed as well with those as with this. If you can get her wavelength at all this book will not 'lose' you as The Hothouse by the East River might do. I have seen it described as 'a wicked satire on Watergate', a plonking, insensitive characterisation -- you do not pin Spark down like that. Any fool can see what might have suggested the election campaign for Abbess between the sewing nun and the electronics nun, and the repeated question to the foreign missionary nun when she rings in from various parts of the globe 'Gertrude, do you have a cold?' is an obvious reference to Kissinger but fantasy not satire. Dame Muriel was Jewish by birth and a convert to Catholicism, with which she is obviously fixated in her own strange way. I have never understood what its special attraction was for an author who has an affair going on between one of the nuns and a local Jesuit, but I don't think this author allows us that kind of insight into her thinking. This book is even more of a gossamer effort than usual and you will get to the end before you know it, at which point you will be hit out of the blue by the sudden and startling poetry of the last sentence.




4. Muriel Spark's The Abbess Of Crewe (1973) is a brief comic meditation on the forms and abuses of power in the Anglo Saxon world. Partially inspired by the events and the political repercussions of Watergate, The Abbess of Crewe transposes the narrative to a Catholic convent in England, where a small cabal of elitist nuns, blinded by power and a foolish faith in their own impervious superiority, has seized control of the abbey through a startling and inventive series of Machiavellian maneuvers. The novel is complexly shaded, and thus mischievous Alexandra, the abbess of the title, and her scheming cohorts, Walburga and Mildred, are the novel's protagonists despite their gross cruelty and self-centeredness.
   
   Looking forward to today's world of continuous public video surveillance, Alexandra and her inner circle have, regardless of the fact that the convent observes medieval standards, wired the entire facility so that there is no place in which the other nuns cannot be eavesdropped upon or monitored. Hilariously, the abbess and her inner circle enjoy pate and champagne in their sumptuously decorated observation room, while the rank and file members of the order, whom they privately hold in gleeful contempt, endure meals of hot water, boiled nettles, and cat food without complaint or awareness. Spark is unsparing in her depiction of both Alexandra's sense of superiority, which approaches the predestined, and the mindless idiocy and gullibility of the common nuns in the pew, who clearly represent the average man, ripe for manipulation, exploitation, and programming.
   
   Like Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1962) and The Takeover (1976) among others, The Abbess of Crewe is another extraordinarily deft examination of political and personal power struggles and the methods in which politics really operate within ostensibly gentile, mannered, and "correct" hierarchies. Alexandra and her confidantes are blissfully aware that they are capable of the very vices they publicly decry in the "vulgar" "common" nuns; but serene deportment, assured speech, personal charisma, and effortless presentation are, in their eyes, inherent manifestations of individual and spiritual nobility, and not only take precedence in all situations, but firmly override the possibilities of sin and wrongdoing in the elect. Alexandra's outrageously barbed and salty language behind closed doors--"A Jesuit, or any priest for that matter, would be the last man I would elect to be laid by. A man who undresses, maybe; but one who unfrocks, no"--is one of the highlights of The Abbess of Crewe.
   
   Interestingly, the corrupt and delusional Abbess appears to lose control of both "history and mythology" as the narrative winds to a close, going so far as to throw her co-conspirators to the wolves when the need to do so arises. But Alexandra never loses her regal bearing or quiet sense of self-justifying divine grace and privilege, and, Spark hints, probably never will.



5. Spark said this was a dig at the Bush Administration, but read it now for a new perspective. The line-tapping nuns of Crewe feel just as much like Bush's NSA as Nixon's plumbers.
   
   Who's Alexandra? Personally, I think Bush is the model for Winifrede... Read this for some laughs and some razor-sharp cuts at the "paranoid style" of government that Richard Hofstadter warned us of 40 years ago-- boy oh boy, did he know what he was talking about....

2 comments about The Wilson Farm Country Cookbook: Recipes from New England's Favorite Farm Stand.

1. I love this cookbook. I have had it for over ten years. It has the following sections: Appetizers, Soups, Quick Breads, Salads and Relishes, Vegetables, Main Courses and Desserts. It has great fruit pie recipes. The Blueberry Pie, Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie, Raspberry and Cream Pie, and Apple Pie are some all time favorites. The Broccoli Quiche is delicious as is the Double Corn Muffins. Most recipes have a comment from the author which I always enjoy. I highly recommend this cookbook. I got mine directly from the Wilson Farm Stand in Massachusetts.



2. This book is filled with homey recipes with great old fashioned flavor. Featuring mostly traditional type recipes without hard to find gourmet ingredients, this is the kind of cookbook you can use everyday. There are recipes for just about anything you grow in your vegetable garden. Our very favorite is the beef stew, but we also regularly enjoy the pesto, tomato casserole, beets in light vinegar sauce, and many of the desserts, such as carrot cake, blueberry pie, and strawberry-rhubarb pie. Great home cookin'!

No comments about The Martha's Vineyard Cookbook, 4th: Over 250 Recipes and Lore from a Bountiful Island.

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.

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