Boston

I was simply disappointed. This is the first book about the molasses flood, and instead of telling what happened and why the author seems to put thoughts into the participants heads, and makes all kinds of maudlin announcements. David and Goliath. Yer breakin' my heart. There is no attempt to understand what happened technically. There are some silly false pronouncements which any 2nd year engineering student could have corrected. It is good to give the social and political background but the author seems to have consulted with everyone except those who could have explained what happened technically. Good guys and bad guys that's what the book is about. But reading the previous reviewers that is apparently what some people seem to want. Sad. And the author seems to find a need for a hero - Colonel Hugh W. Ogden - fighting the forces of evil. And he was a war hero - he won the war in Europe for America - as a lawyer. Gimme a break. Why did it take Ogden 18 months after final testimony to write a report? Silence. Did he get paid for his 5 years of time interupted by many trips to Europe while all those poor slobs waited for some kind of compensation. Not a word. What really happened? That is what such a book should try to determine.

This book is SWEET!!!! It prompted me to build a miniature molasses tank in my backyard. The reinactment didn't go so well though. Suprising! I used to love molasses as a kid strictly for the taste of it, but this book made me see it in an entirely different light. I will never take molasses for granted again!

Dark Tide does a wonderful job of placing the molasses flood in its proper historical perspective. No historical event is fully understood until it is seen against the backdrop of its context, and Steven Puleo does a great job of telling the reader about the munitions business during WWI as well as the anarchist scare of the time period. From relating the personal accounts of victims to profiling the personalities of the judge and attorneys involved int he case, this book is detailed enough for the armchair historian yet written well enough for the casually interested reader.

THE LATE GEORGE APLEY is a departure from my habitual choice of biographical reading, which is usually limited to real-life individuals who've stood astride human history. And George Apley of (merely) Boston is fictional.

Author John Marquand has invented a make-believe chronicler named Mr. Willing to tell the story of the latter's life long friend, George Apley (1866-1933). The biographer's source material is comprised primarily of his own recollections and numerous letters exchanged between Apley and friends and family over the decades. Willing begins with a brief account of George's ancestry, then proceeds through his subject's birth, boyhood, and years at Harvard and law school forward to his marriage, the birth of his children, then his sojourns in middle and old age.

The trouble with this novel is that it seems Marquand didn't have a clear vision of the point he was trying to make. On one hand, Willing's biography is sympathetic. He obviously admires Apley for being a loyal friend, loving husband and father, fair and considerate employer, principled gentleman, and patriotic American. Willing doesn't condemn his friend's gradual alienation from his children and a changing society as he ages. (What a surprise!) And his generally favorable bias doesn't prevent him from mentioning Apley's low opinion of the Irish, Catholics, and Jews, but he doesn't dwell upon these flaws - perhaps because he was of like mind. Taken at this face value, the book is a simple tribute to a good and upstanding life however unprepossessing it may have been.

On the other hand, without any obvious malice, Marquand (through Willing again) manages to convey the fact that Apley takes himself, his family name, his privileged class, and Boston way too seriously. Anything beyond the Boston city limits is held in a frank disregard verging on contempt. He fails to heed the words of an uncle who found it necessary to counsel: "Most people in the world don't know who the Apleys are and they don't give a damn." Also, Marquand attributes to his fictional subject no great achievements on the national or world stage. Rather, George spends a lifetime attending the board meetings of charities, participating in "intelligent discussion" groups and clubs, dabbling in the minutiae of local politics, and dispensing unheeded advice to his offspring. Because of all this, I've decided that THE LATE GEORGE APLEY is, in the balance, more of a gentle satire than anything else. The thing is, it's too subtle for this 21st century reader. (Perhaps it was more appreciated in the year first published - 1936.) It's as if Marquand didn't love or hate the type of man or social class his subject represents with sufficient enough fervor to be truly effective at either.

At the very best, THE LATE GEORGE APLEY is an interesting description of the evolution of a gentleman and society of that time and place. I liked it to that extent, but was left with the nagging regret that my time would've been better spent reading a contemporary account of a real individual whose life had made ripples in a pond bigger than that of the city he or she lived in. Hmm, now where's my unread biography of Captain Kangaroo?

J.P. Marquand was well known in his day, both as a serious writer(The Late George Apley won a Pulitzer Prize) and for the Mr. Moto detective series (made into movies starring Peter Lorre as the title character). This novel makes skillful use of the device of the unreliable narrator; it is told from the point of view of a writer putting together a life of Apley who, like his subject, is thoroughly conventional, and thus does not realize that his portrait of Apley reveals the sterility of the latter's life. The novel is also a skillful depiction of a particular class in a particular place and time. I agree with the other reviewers that it is a shame that it is out of print.

John P. Marquand probably was one of the most successful authors of his day and this book, for which he won a Pulitzer prize was the start of his brilliant career. Unfortunately, with Marquand's death in 1960, he fell from favor with the academy who was itself enamoured with tales of life in a university and stories addressing issues of gender and sex. Marquand's stories about middle aged WASPs in Boston coping with trying to come to grips with their lives were no longer in fashion and sadly have not returned to the center place that they previously occupied.

This is a novel about manners and invokes the particular time and place of the WASP ascendency in America, just before the second World War. Marquand's hero is a representative of what used to be known as a "Boston Brahmin." Marquand handles Apley with a mixture of bemusement and foundness. He has clearly met George Apley's in his life and knows the type well. What would have been in less capable hands a mere characture, becomes a full portrait of what was at the time, a dying breed. Marquand sensed this and this provides the point of departure for the book.

"The Late George Apley is a bit of a pastische of privately printed books designed to memorialize a dearly departed loved one. This allows Marquand to use his frequently used flashback technique to describe the particulars of Apley's life. At times this provides Marquand with the opportunity to indulge in both high comedy and low drama, as is the case when Apley falls in love with a girl who is both Irish and Catholic. Although this enables some satire on the subject of the way Boston's elite viewed the Irish, it is also a source of regret that Apley, like so many characters in Marquand's books, did not make a different choice in life. Sentiments that as Jonathan Yardley has observed "are not just limited to the denizens of Backbay or Harvard Square."

After the exhiliration generated by Washburn's classic book on Denali, this one left me slightly disappointed. There are many exquisite photographs and a few truly great ones, such as the famous picture of climbers on the Doldenhorn (in the Bernese Alps). But on the whole there are just a little bit too many pictures of abstract geological features. These reveal a more scholarly side of Washburn's art: interesting to round out our view on this great artist, but less captivating than the epic mountain pictures. Also, there is an appendix with a detailed account of Washburn's career, with many little inset pictures of people he worked with (Barbara Washburn being the most prominent amongst them). I would have liked to see many more of these pictures and at a size more amenable to detailed study. A final point of criticism on this book concerns the interview with Washburn by the editor: it is very revealing but way too short! I would have guessed that Decaneas would have been able to extract much more material from all the conversations he has had with Washburn in the final years of his life. So, it's a nice book to have in the library, but Decaneas missed an opportunity to put together an absolute classic. Pity.

This book is a marvelous record of mountain exploration and photography with photos that span a period of almost 70 years. This small collection representing much less than 1% of Washburn's photographs is a remarkable record of photography rivaling Ansel Adams or Vittorio Sella. Although the photos were originally taken to support his geological or surveying research or to provide guide shots for climbers, Washburn soon realized that he had a knack for taking photographs as art that were as good as any being produced by other photographers.

This book may be a disappointment for those who want expedition photographs as few of the photographs include people. Indeed, having a few more pictures of people would have warranted five stars. Yet, many of the pictures are aerial photographs so the lack of people in many is not surprising. What makes it ultimately worthwhile is the crispness of the pictures, the attention to details on the ridges and valleys of the mountains, the patterns revealed in the flow of glaciers, and so on.

One other point of interest is that this book was the Grand Prize Winner of the 2000 Banff Mountain Book Festival -- the only pure photography book to win that award.

Bradford Washburn roamed the globe for eighty years as a mountaineer, explorer, cartographer, and aerial photographer. In Bradford Washington: Mountain Photography, Tony Decaneas as assembled one hundred full-size landscape mountain photographs from the more than ten thousand images that Bradford made during his lifetime of photographic accomplishments. From the Grand Canyon to the Alps, from Mount McKinley to Mount Everest, these black and white landscape photos of mountain peaks and picture portraits of team members and colorful characters that are each of them museum quality visual images showcasing Bradford's photography as having risen to the level of fine art.

Robert B. Parker, Valediction (Delacorte, 1982)

One of the best things that can be said about Valediction is that it sets up the events in one of the best Spenser novels to date, A Catskill Eagle. That alone is enough to make it worth reading. It's also a little heaver on The Continuing Saga of Spenser and Susan than many Spenser novels; judge as you will and buy accordingly. Somewhere beneath all that, there's a mystery waiting to happen. In this case, Spenser is hired by one of his foster child's dance instructors to find said instructor's girlfriend, whom he believes has been kidnapped by a sect of religious extremists. The story sounds wonky from the beginning, but what seems a little off at first ends up being stranger than anyone involved ever imagined.

The cast list reads rather like a Spenser's Greatest Hits novel. Almost everyone in here has popped up before in a Spenser novel, from kids to hoods. The framework of the characters is already set up, and the plot pretty much writes itself. It's empty calories, the kind of stuff you'd never catch the main character eating. However, this book is less about the mystery therein than it is about Spenser himself and how his changing relationship with Susan affects his own outlook on life. It sets the book apart somewhat, and that, combined with the events in the next book it sets up, makes this one a worthwhile addition to the canon. ***

He rarely disappoints, and he rarely surprises. Parker is as dependable as they come, and so it is with Valediction. The premise in this one is that Susan is taking a break from Spenser, so Spenser is a tad more daredevillish -- but still, it's Spenser through and through. Patented wisecracks, cute self-deprecations, verbal jabs with Hawk, the formula that keeps going and going and going. Our favorite Boston private eye tackles cults in this novel, but don't expect anything deep or grandiose -- just expect to be thoroughly entertained.

If you're new to Spenser, you'll find this a great read. If you're an old pro, you won't be disappointed. And if you hate Spenser, well, why the heck are you reading it?

This book leads into my favorite spenser, A Catskill Eagle, but is excellent all alone. This time we see Spenser after Susan has left him and he's tortured by her absence, not really sure he wants to live anymore, he gets sloppy at his job. His dreams when he is under the knife are very powerful. There are many great Spenser novels in his thirty-year history but in terms of character development he changes more through Valediction and A Catskill Eagle than he does in the other 28 books combined. This book also has the best action/survival scene in the whole series when an attempt is made by five men on Spenser's life, his actions are CHARACTER-DEFINING in a way a million words of dialogue can't convey.

The novel has a complex plot with no winners. There are flashbacks to establish characters and relationships. Various sub-plots wind together to reach a conclusion, but it's not a complete conclusion, even with the epilogue. If you are looking for a clean, clear-cut case, with a hero prevailing, this is not the book for you.

The setting is Boston in the early 1960's. The story deals with the seamier side of life. There were still open racial prejudices, and police who kicked down doors and beat non-white citizens who they thought might be guilty of something, especially if they were in the wrong neighborhood. Drug dealers, informers, and police did their thing, with payoffs in both directions.

The main consideration was image. Things could be done to cover up potential scandals that might embarrass the government, the church, or high placed individuals and their families. You could get ahead by playing the game, or get trampled by going against the establishment. Spear carriers sometimes get sacrificed, like pawns in a chess game.

John Flood's Bag Men takes place in the Boston of 1965, post JFK assassination and pre MLK assassination. The old order crumbles to give way to the new. The Catholic church plans to conduct mass in English. The boys in blue who've always kept order with their fists are under scrutiny for the beating of three black choirboys on Christmas Eve. And on the streets, addicts die in record numbers from strange new synthetic drugs.

The book opens with the body of a murdered priest, found on a snowy runway at Logan Airport. Ray Dunn, assistant D.A. and son of a cop who was on the take, investigates the killing as his younger brother Biff joins up with the guys at Narcotics. In the background: the shadowy hand of the federal government conducting experiments on psychiatric patients.

Bag Men fulfills its potential as a suspenseful read with an unguessable climax. Some of the secondary characters are a little weak, but the primary characters are interesting enough to keep the reader's attention on the story. One note: John Flood is the pseudonym of Mark Costello, a federal prosecutor in Boston and author of Big If. Bag Men is the more rough-hewn of the two books. So if you read Bag Men and enjoy it, do yourself a favor and read Big If as well.

Mr Flood's book is a very worthy first effort. Although meant to be a thriller, the emphasis is on character - where it should be. The early part of the novel does a good job of setting the scene and letting you get to know the main characters, Roy Dolan and Manning. Assuming that Mr. Flood, a pseudonym, practices anywhere in the Boston area, it was wise to keep his real name disguised. The picture he paints of offical Boston is not pretty. Granting that this is still a genre novel, the effect is convincing. Unfortunately, Mr. Flood places less emphasis on character in the latter half of the book and stresses action instead. This wasn't a surprise but it is a disappointment. At the end I wanted to know more about the characters

This is a nice piece of documentary photography to own. One can only wish that Andy Ryan had done the photos for its much weaker companion book, The Big Dig at Night. Buy this one for sure. If the other isn't on the remainder tables by now, it will be.

I just finished reading this book and I was pretty impressed. I am a civil engineering student and of course am interested in projects like the Big Dig. This book is a pretty easy read: the text is big and the sentence structure is simple. However, it is a very informative book and explains the project in terms that anyone could understand. I think it would be hard to read this book without going to Boston and seeing the construction site as the pictures are somewhat hard to follow. Other than that, a good book!

I don't love the Big Dig (does anyone?) but I love this book. It actually explains the project that's been holding us hostage for so long.And you don't need an engineering degree to understand it. Now that the bridge is almost finished and we can see what the city's new skyline will be like, people are getting more excited about what's going on. This book, which shows what's been going on for the past 10plus years, shows how we've gotten to where we are. It's worth it just for the pictures. I'll never look at the Big Dig in the same way again.

This is a competent, but not stellar overview of the 75 World Series. The problem is that it is not told from the standpoint of an objective chronicle of why this was such a great World Series, it is told from the narrow perspective of one fan, who feels the need to indulge in his narrower perspectives about things that have nothing to do with the subject I want to be reading about. I can put up with an overview from a Red Sox fan's perspective, but do I really have to read his tiresome (and for me personally offensive) digressions about Cold War politics? Or is this kind of arrogance that assumes I'm going to nod in agreement with his asinine remarks about Fidel Castro just so endemic to political liberals who write about baseball?

Enough of that rant though. I really can not fathom why the author can't do something as simple as provide a little background context to this World Series. There is no mention of Boston's drive to the pennant that season in terms of how they did it, and nothing about their stunning upset of Oakland (three time defending champions) in the LCS. Instead, the author just starts with the World Series and breaks down the games so narrowly, which ordinarily would be a nice thing to do, but the absence of some background in his earlier chapters explaining how we got to this point ends up creating a pretty poor narrative overall. The author in a sense expects us to be familiar already with the 75 World Series and the season that led to us, hence his justification for dumping us in the middle of a story with not enough perspective on how we got there in the first place. Without the smarmy political asides we would still have a book that aspires to be definitive, but in the end can be no better than a supplement.

The author is too passionate about the Red Sox to write an objective review of the great '75 Series. And the interviews he does manage to get from participants lack depth. I often felt, which the author admits, that he was watching the games on videotape and writing about what he saw. The title pulled me in, and i was disappointed.

This book brought back many memories of the '75 World Series. The author explained that he watched the series (attending one game) with his Uncle Oscar, and this stirred many bittersweet memories for me, of the games and the people with whom I enjoyed them.

The '75 Sox were a great team and a great collection of fascinating characters. The Reds were undoubtedly the better team, but the Sox played with great heart and pushed everything to the limit.

I highly recommend this book.

I read this book a little while ago, and it was great! The characters came to life, and I felt that I was there. I was a bit dissapointed in April Kyle's parents, how could they be so uncaring towards thier daughter. I will read Spenser again....

I'll be honest, I'd have to look up the word ceremonious to be truly certain of its meaning, but that's not terribly important here. In short, it's a great book! I saw the TV movie first which made me want to read the book. It may have been the first Spenser movie I saw, although I used to watch the series when I was a kid. Guess that dates me a bit. I am a big fan of the Spenser series, and this is one of my favorite Spenser books along with Early Autumn. I've read eleven, so I'm sure there are more favorites to come. I think I am so crazy about this one because the outcome is so unusual. Unexpected. Maybe I'm biased...Robert B. Parker is my favorite author, but he is for a reason, and that reason is Spenser, Hawk, and Susan (among others). They are good characters. They make for good books. This is one of many, but it is one I highly recommend.

I recently finished Spenser's latest, WIDOW'S WALK, and really didn't like it one bit. Thank goodness for CEREMONY, which reminded me of everything I love about the series. The story was complex and meaningful -- student April Kyle has a terrible homelife and turns to hooking. What is worse, what's more damaging to her still evolving psyche? Susan is serious and struggling with real issues. Hawk is a loyal, supportive presence. No extraneous subplots, no strained wise cracking. Just good storytelling. Highly recommended.

This isn't a particularly engaging book. It's not bad, but it's not great either - the book is extremely average in every respect. The characters and their motivations for doing things are not carefully crafted, the murder mystery plot wasn't that interesting, and the romance between the two main characters was weak. I kept waiting for this book to really 'take off,' but it never did. The writing remained stable, but there just wasn't enough action, suspense or romance to make this a great book. The author did her homework in terms of describing the location where the book takes place, and it appears she studied up quite a bit on mountaineering and military terms, but even those descriptions lacked feeling and that engaging quality that good writing evokes. The characters are not ones that you will remember after the book is done, and the writing just isn't strong enough to create visuals and place you alongside the characters. While reading this book, I was reminded of college professors with mundane, uninflected voices that seem to drone on and on. This book, and the writing, was very monotone.

This book is a follow-up to a story in a 3-in-1 book. This one follows the story of Carine Winters, sister of Antonia Winters. Carine finds a dead body and has to rely on Ty North to protect her. Ty North is the only man she has ever loved and he left her at the altar 9 months earlier. Now he is back and they try to figure out whodunnit while also trying to figure out where they stand with one another.

I definitely enjoyed this book- the romance was great and the action was thick. I just thought there were too many plots going on at once and it took away from the overall tone of the book. Still, a great read...especially if you read the first one and are a fan of strong characters, love a whodunnit and are a sucker for romance!

Carine had her heart broken bu Tyler North, and due to a hoffifying turn of events it seems he is the only one who can help her and protect her from a killer. Can Carine trust Tyler enough to let him?

This is a wonderfully written book that kept me up until 3 AM. I coudln't put it down. The characters are interesting, entertaining and very believable. The novel has a plenty of suspense and romance and keeps its biggest secrets until the end. This is a great read.

Jonathan Kozol's Death At An Early Age reveals the numerous failings of a poor segregated Boston school in the 1960s. Overcrowding, poor facilities, bigotry, and blatant insensitivity destroyed the learning and emotional environment for the school's young black children. Kozol's account explains the school's troubles, and it's devastating effects, with intelligence and sensitivity. However his wordy writing style and penchant for over-dramatictization dilutes the power of his story. A better writer could have taken Kozol's account and made it into a much more compelling story. I had to read this book in college, and if I used the passive voice as much as Kozol did my GPA would have been much lower.

This book, i havent read it all, i just started today, made me sick when i read the first couple of chapters. I knew that there were things that were horrific in the public school system. this was a good account of the racism and unequalness in the system. i admire kozol as he is an activist in this part of politics. read this book and his other savage inequalities, both are heartwreching but truthfull.

You may have heard of Kozol's other books, like "Savage Inequalities" and "Amazing Grace." If not, GO READ THEM NOW!! Anyway, this is Kozol's fist big book, the one that launched into fame and the life-long career of Social Justice Avenger. If you want to understand more about racism, Kozol's life, and how he got into the business of saving the world, this is your book. It's also a great read! You don't have to be a teacher to enjoy this, but if you are it should be required reading. Two thumbs up.