While procrastinating last night I wound up looking over the copy of my great grandfather's citizenship paperwork (made a while back when we were being all genealogical). He'd listed a Boston address as his residence at the time, but the location - Whitney Street - didn't ring a bell. What did look familiar was the Tremont Street address of one of his witnesses, as the house number is not all that far away from where I work.

So I did what anyone would do and typed "Whitney Street Boston MA" into Google Maps. No hits for Whitney, but I did get a South Whitney - located about a block from my office.

I then tried to look online for old maps and street indices, and while there is some good information out there (Tufts has a nice site of old Boston street maps and related information), I couldn't quite pin down if there was a relationship between the two streets.

Thankfully, at some point in the past someone at Wentworth decided to honor the history of our neighborhood and hang a series of old maps down the hall from my office. It was there, on the map for what was at the time Ward 22, that I was able to confirm that South Whitney is all that's left of Whitney Street. Most of the road was covered up by a large apartment building, which I've actually been in (there's a post office on the ground floor).

I'm a little bummed that the address is no longer available for me to visit, but I do find it sort of amazing that after more than a century I've kind of come full circle.

Book Log 2010 #24: The State of Jones by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer

I remember hearing quite a bit during high school American history about copperheads, Northerners who wanted to end the Civil War. We did not hear much about Confederates who were against secession, if anything.

This book looks at one man, Newton Knight, and members of his family, who opposed the Confederacy, to the point where they deserted from the CSA army and, on occasions when the government tried to exert some authority over their corner of Mississippi, resort to violence.

The book reads very easily for a history, due I think to its creation as an offshoot from a movie project on the subject. And, as would also befit a book based on a movie (even a planned one), it likes to paint people into bright moral corners and not worry so much about factual nuances. There are plenty of places in the book where supposition has to take the place of actual events due to gaps in records, and the more I came across them the less enthralled I was with the book.

If you're really interested in the subject, I'd suggest finding one of the other books written about Knight and similar resisters. But if you want the overview without having to deal with grey areas, this might be OK.

I have been to exactly 100 of the 1000 places to go in Massachusetts, though I have to admit that it's been a while since I've been to some of them (for example, my lone visit to the Wenham Museum came as part of a grade school field trip). I will spare you a recounting of the other 99, other than to say I've not made it to two of the Beverly sites and one of the Manchester sites, which I should probably rectify at some point.

I will say that knocking off the other 900 sites seems like just the sort of thing I can torture current and future children with. It will be a sad Monday when they tell their school chums that they spent the weekend marveling at the likes of the Worthington Historic District.

Book Log 2010 #23: Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky

The Federal Writers Project, part of the Works Progress Administration, had as one of its planned projects a work called America Eats, which planned to look at American foodways in each of five regions (based on the Census). Each region was to have one major essay supported by some smaller pieces, all put together from primary accounts submitted by project writers. Except this never happened, as the project eventually shut down during World War II.

Enter Mark Kurlansky, who brought together the source material for America Eats and put together this book, which uses the same regional structure but allows the source material to stand on its own. This allows for a more direct recounting of what American food was like in the 1930s, when food couldn't help but be regional and seasonal. It can be a little discordant, with pieces ranging from longer essays to recipies to lists, but it's also often fascinating, given the great differences between food at that time and food today.

It can also be a little racist, as Kurlansky has opted to keep pieces in their original language, which can include some descriptors for people that are no longer considered appropriate, as well as dialog put into a regional/racial "dialect" which went out of style with Amos & Andy. As jarring as that might be to modern readers, I think it was the right call to leave this sort of thing in, as it gives a more complete picture of the time the pieces were written.

And the book can also be unintentionally hilarious, as evidenced by the poem Nebraskans Eat the Weiners. 

It's not the easiest book to read from front to back, and you may find that a state you wanted to read about gets scant coverage due to a lack of source material. Still, if you're into food history this is certainly worth a browse at least.

Book Log 2010 #22: Cowboys Full by James McManus

As much a study of how poker influences American society as it is a history of the game, this is a sprawling look at the game, starting with its European roots (both in game play and in the cards used) and continuing through its insinuation into American life to its current status as a home, casino, TV and online favorite.


It's not perfect. It is way too long, and would have benefited from spending less time either in the 19th/early 20th century or in trying to shoehorn poker metaphors into various non-poker walks of life. It's not as interesting as his earlier book Positively Fifth Street, which benefited from having two specific stories (McManus' run in the 2000 World Series of Poker's main event and the Teddy Binion murder) to work from. But it's certainly worth a look, if just to browse some of the more entertaining anecdotes.

Book Log 2010 #21: The Many Deaths Of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen

A pair of Depression-era robbers wake up after a job to discover that they are in police custody - sort of. Rather than being locked up, both are on slabs in the morgue, and have clearly taken enough punishment that waking up shouldn't have been an option.

So starts this tale that sees the pair criss-cross the Midwest to figure out just how they died (the first time). They also have to sort out contacting family and loved ones, all of whom have heard of their demise.  We also get a fair amount of back story, complete with a bit of a family mystery that helps explain how the brothers became wanted men.

It's an entertaining story, with a good amount of period color as you'd expect. Worth the read.

Book Log 2010 #20: The Pontiff in Winter by John Cornwell

Written shortly before his death, this book seeks to set the terms to John Paul II's legacy, weighing the positive and negative aspects of his papacy against each other while also showing how his formative years helped to shape JP's complex, and sometimes contradictory, personality.

Generally, the argument is made that JP, by working to reduce the influence of Vatican II while consolidating power in Rome, forced the church to lose the benefit of local input and governance. This helped to exacerbate conflicts, from the strict orthodoxy required on certain teachings to the lack of local response when the sex abuse crisis first broke. On top of this there's a more personal issue where JP saw himself as a pivotal figure for the church, a viewpoint developed from his earlier study of mysticism, a devotion to Mary, the assassination attempt against him, and the secrets of Fatima.

All in all it's a fairly even-handed treatment, I think, and pretty readable to boot. I don't know that I agree with Cornwell in all things, but he does make a decent case that the benefits of JP's papacy may be outweighed over time by the conservative structure and strict adherence to orthodoxy that he left behind.

Book Log 2010 #19: City of Silver by Annamaria Alfieri

Set during the heydey of silver mining in Potosi, Bolivia (then part of the Viceroyalty of Peru), this mystery concerns the mysterious death of the elder daughter of the city's mayor, which occurs just as the King of Spain is sending investigators to look into the city's coinage, which is apparently less than 100 percent silver. Thrust into both issues is the Grand Inquisitor, who sees these events as a way to gain power over the city's lax bishop and potentially destroy an abbess who isn't Catholic enough for his tastes. It's up to the abbess (with help from her nuns and other Potosi residents, mostly women) to determine how the girl died while at the same time trying not to get convicted of heresy.

Pretty enjoyable mystery, between the usual plot twists and turns and the unique setting. I'd have liked to have seen the mystery around the coinage get a bit more attention (being a nerd like that), but overall no serious complaints.