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.

Book Log 2010 #17 and #18: Satan in St. Mary's and The Crown in Darkness by PC Doherty

These are the first two books in a mystery series featuring Hugh Corbett, a government clerk in the time of Edward I who is tasked to investigate events that touch upon the safety of the crown (in these cases, a plot against the king led by apparent Satanists and the suspicious death of the Scottish king, respectively). 


The stories are both good, though the first book (the first in the series) is a little too obvious with some of its clues and the second book keeps us a bit too much in the dark. We do get the basics on Corbett - he's very professional, a bit dour (due at least partially from being a widower) and has, for the time, some strange notions of hygiene (he likes to wash every day!).

If you're looking for a new series to start you could do worse. Or you could choose from one of the four or five other series that Doherty has going.

Book Log 2010 #16: The Burning Land by Bernard Cornwell

The latest in the Saxon Tales series featuring Uhtred Ragnarson, the English-born but Dane-raised warrior who, in this book, decided to finally break from Alfred and retake his ancestral home, usurped by an uncle in the first book. His plan is derailed when Alfred's daughter, to whom he pledged his loyalty, asks him to return to fight for the nascent kingdom of Wessex.

Another solid entry in the series, a bit better than the last one I think.

Book Log 2010 #15: The First Fall Classic by Mike Vaccaro

Joe Posnanski mentioned this book about a hundred times on his blog (Vaccaro is a friend of his), and so I felt compelled to pick it up when I came across it at the library. It's a very entertaining recounting of the 1912 World Series between the Red Sox and the (then) New York Giants, a rematch of sorts as the teams were slated to play in the 1904 World Series that never happened (there's a pretty good book out there about that, too, which I think I read pre-Log). There's a fair bit about that in this book, of course, and it also gives a bit of a prelude to 1919, between the appearance of gamblers like Abe Rothstein and the team-owner tensions that run throughout the series.

My only quibble is that the book tries to take the Devil in the White City approach by juxtaposing a big criminal case of the time against the subject. In this case it was some sort of police-involved murder trial that I'd never heard of but was apparently a big deal to New Yorkers in 1912. It perhaps merited a mention for color, but wasn't of any particularly good use as a running theme.

Book Log 2010 #14: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

During his tenure with the Arizona Cardinals, coach Dennis Green went a little crazy after blowing a lead and losing to the Chicago Bears, noting (among other things) that "they are who we thought they were." That's pretty much all you need to say about this book, as it's exactly what you thought it would be. Perhaps 10 percent less credulous than The DaVinci Code, but otherwise just the sort of conspiracy-lite mumbo jumbo with sides of unlikely plot twists, coincidental timing and random other crap that you get from Dan Brown. It will make a splendidly awful movie.

Book Log 2010 #13: Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson

I don't expect to jump into the e-reader market any time soon - I like actual books too much, and I'm too cheap to buy a Kindle or an iPad - but did find myself in need of an e-reader when I was commuting in via the Orange Line during the Hockey East tournament. This led me to downloading Stanza, a free e-reader for various platforms, iPhone included. And because I'm too cheap to actually buy books, I downloaded this title from Project Gutemberg. I was somewhat familiar with the story and knew it would lend itself to commuting reading based on it being more of a collection of short stories than a typical novel.

I did find some of the stories interesting, but the one overwhelming feeling I had during the course of the book is that George Willard was smart to get out of town when he did, because staying in Winesburg apparently makes you crazy. That or the water is tainted. Those are the only explanations I could come up with for having such a concentration of eccentrics and characters in one midwestern town. The book never quite came together for me, either. It was just a string of events that just kind of ended when George left.

The reading experience on the iPhone wasn't as bad as I expected, but the small display size required frequent page flips, which got old quickly. No complaints about the way the iPhone displayed text, and Stanza was very easy to use. I've not read another book on the phone, but it's nice to know the option is there if it's needed.

Book Log 2010 #12: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Known for writing thrillers, this marked a departure for Follett, as he wasn't someone who would be expected to write a cross-generational historical novel about the building of a cathedral. But that's exactly what he did, releasing this book in 1989 to moderate fanfare but strong word of mouth, building up to become his best-selling book of all time, helped by being named an Oprah's Book Club selection... in 2007.

I'll admit to having some reservations going in, as I wasn't sure how a thriller writer could realistically portray a story based around a 13th century building project. But what I didn't consider was that Follett's abilities as a story teller would allow him to create solid story lines from which he could develop the historical and architectural aspects. Because, really, it's not a book about building a cathedral but rather a book about the people involved with building the cathedral and how their lives intersect as the project starts and stops over the decades.

The only real complaint I have about the book is length - it clocks in at 976 pages, which really pushes the boundary between epic and tome. Otherwise, it's certainly recommended for anyone into historical fiction. There is also a sequel, World Without End, that I've not tackled yet due in no small part to it crossing the 1000 page threshold. I suppose I'm saving it for a time when I'm stuck in bed for a month.

Book Log 2010 # 11: Scratch Beginnings by Adam Shepherd

Fresh out of college, Adam Shepherd decides to do something he's been considering since high school - with only a small amount of personal gear and cash, he goes to a city he's never lived in before to see if, within a year, he can build himself up to having a job, a car, a place to live and future prospects for school or starting a business.

With that, Adam jumps a train and gets off in Charleston, South Carolina, and after a rough first night finds his way to a homeless shelter, and from there starts on his plan in earnest. Along the way we get to meet other residents of the shelter, co-workers and employers who both help and hinder Adam as he works towards self-sufficency.

There's a lot to like about a young guy who does something like this, and manages to write about it reasonably well to boot (the conclusion notwithstanding, which is pretty disjointed). But a couple of points did strike me as off. First, he looks at this as a rebuttal to books like Nickled and Dimed, which paint a much less rosy picture of getting out of the lower middle class, but I'm not sure it's as much of a rebuttal as he thinks it is. In this case, we have a young guy who is in good shape, no dependents and no debts, all very advantageous if you want to work your way out of the shelter. His results would not have been the same if he were a woman (and thus less likely to get the labor-intensive jobs he gets), had a child to support or past bills to pay.

Adam also claims that he's not going to use his education or contacts to help him, but I don't think that's something you can quite turn off. While he doesn't overtly use these things, it's not hard to see how his education (and his stable family life) give him an advantage over people who didn't have the same start, and thus didn't develop the same habits or traits that Adam has.

With those limitations, though, I did still enjoy the story, and think it has motivational potential for anyone who just needs a push to get out of present circumstances.

Quick housekeeping update. As you may have noticed, I finally got around to updating my links, as most of the people listed over there haven't written a new blog post in over a year. They've been replaced with links to some of the blogs that I read regularly, bringing me up to about 2006 in standard blog practice.

Anyway, your guide to the changes, as if you couldn't just click on the links to see what they're about:

538 is a political blog from the same people who bring us the Baseball Prospectus. As you'd expect, their main stock in trade is in applying quantitative analysis to elections and issues. The folks behind it are clearly to the left, but they're at least not of the shrieking, Michael Moore/Keith Olbermann school of discourse.

Adventures in Snack Canyon is a movie blog I contribute to, which is funny given how infrequently I go to the movies.

Jon Couture's link is no longer to his personal blog but to the one he does while covering the Red Sox for the New Bedford Standard-Times, the finest fishwrap on all of the South Coast.

Charlie Pierce comes to us via the Boston Globe, which I take as a small step towards apologizing for the decades of inflicting Dan Shaugnessey on the public. You may know Pierce from his contributions to NPR shows like Only a Game and Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me!

Finally, there's Joe Posnanski, who is now on staff at Sports Illustrated after his most recent stint for the Kansas City Star (which, between him and TV writer Aaron Barnhart, should have made it the pop culture newspaper of record). For the blog Joe writes about pretty much anything that comes to mind, from his love of Bruce Springsteen to a fascination with Snuggies. With apologies to his previously mentioned colleagues (save Shaughnessey), I'd say he's currently the best sportswriter in America. Sadly, he's moving from a self-named location to SI's website, trading in his very pleasing minimalist layout for one that's busier (though, thankfully, not as nightmarish as your average page at ESPN.com).

Book Log 2010 #10: The Women by T. C. Boyle

Very engaging fictional history/bio of Frank Lloyd Wright "written" by a former apprentice but told through the relationships between the architect and three women in his life (two wives and a lover). In each case, we see Wright for all of his gifts and faults, and it's easy to see why each of these women would fall both in and out of love with him, often more than once.

The book did remind me a bit of Riven Rock, another historical novel set around a genius (this time certifiably mad) and his wife. Both look at relationships strained by the husband's mental gifts (and deficits), the line between genius and madness, and how people dealt with the prevailing social mores of the times (in Wright's case, the issue of free love comes up quite a bit, while the wife in Riven Rock becomes involved in the women's suffrage movement). Both are worth reading, though The Women is the better of the two.

Book Log 2010 #9: The Way Through the Woods by Colin Dexter

The case of a missing Swedish student, thought to be cold, heats up again when a cryptic letter is published in the newspaper. Inspector Morse, on a forced vacation, sees the letter, and gets himself back on the case, with the usual results.

This is the best novel in the series to this point, and it hits on all of the usual themes we've come to expect from Morse mysteries. There's also a neat little twist at the end that underscores just how unique Morse is as a detective.

Book Log 2010 #8: Searching for Whitopia by Richard Benjamin

This book chronicles Benjamin's adventures living in three of what he calls whitopias - locations that are whiter than the national average and have experienced greater than average population growth over the last 10 years from white people moving in. His interest is to find out why people are moving to these areas and what the advantages (and disadvantages) of living in a pocket of paleness.

Adding to the adventure is the fact that Benjamin is black, making him an obvious outlier in the communities he chooses (one each in Utah, Indiana and Idaho). And while he does experience some obvious racism, for the most part he finds his place in each community without too much trouble. Coupled with the discussions he has with residents, it becomes clearer that the whitopias aren't as much about race as they are about class and a perceived difference in values.

And that's where Benjamin is concerned. As much as the new residents feel comfortable and safe in their whitopia, the increased homogeneity of the community means less diversity in thought, culture, etc. How these places will fit in with the national community, which is growing more diverse, is an open question.

As much as I liked reading about Benjamin's experiences, I did feel a bit lost with the social science aspects of the book, especially at the end. Not sure if that's my fault or Benjamin's, but it does suggest that it may be just beyond the point of being a good commuting read (unless you can focus better than I can while on the train).

Book Log 2010 #7: The Paris Vendetta by Steve Berry

This latest installment in the Cotton Malone series has our intrepid State Department agent turned bookseller on the trail of a lost treasure amassed by Napoleon. Also looking for it is a French plutocrat who is forming a cartel of Europe's richest people, with an eye towards manipulating financial markets for the group's personal gain. I'm still not quite sure if there's supposed to be a connection between the two, other than showing the leader's avarice.

This clash also involves Henrik Thorvaldsen, Malone's benefactor, as the leader of the cartel is also indirectly responsible for the death of his son (which Malone witnessed but was unable to stop). Thorvaldsen involves himself with the group as well, ostensibly to help Malone, but really to avenge his son's death.

While still not as good as his earliest books, this entry in the series is less dopey than some of the more recent ones. There is one major event that will shake up the series, and I like that Berry had the guts to do it, though it is offset by the potential addition of some younger characters who are pretty annoying.

Bottom line, it's worth reading if you've stuck with the series, but that's about it.