Showing posts with label History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label History. Show all posts

Sunday, December 22, 2019

Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England

Landscape is much more than scenery to be observed or even terrain to be traveled, as this fascinating and many-layered book vividly shows us. Etched into the land is the history of how we have inhabited it, the storms and fires that have shaped it, and its response to these and other changes. An intrepid sleuth and articulate tutor, Wessels teaches us to read a landscape the way we might solve a mystery. What exactly is the meaning of all those stone walls in the middle of the forest? Why do beech and birch trees have smooth bark when the bark of all other northern species is rough? How do you tell the age of a beaver pond and determine if beavers still live there? Why are pine trees dominant in one patch of forest and maples in another? What happened to the American chestnut? Turn to this book for the answers, and no walk in the woods will ever be the same. 60 black-and-white etchings and illustrations
Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England

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Stone by Stone: The Magnificent History in New England's Stone Walls

There once may have been 250,000 miles of stone walls in America's Northeast, stretching farther than the distance to the moon. They took three billion man-hours to build. And even though most are crumbling today, they contain a magnificent scientific and cultural story―about the geothermal forces that formed their stones, the tectonic movements that brought them to the surface, the glacial tide that broke them apart, the earth that held them for so long, and about the humans who built them.
Stone by Stone: The Magnificent History in New England's Stone Walls

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Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo




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Monday, January 15, 2018

The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919



Molasses, Flood, Boston, Distaster


 On January 15, 1919 a large storage tank containing molasses burst in Boston's North End unleashing a huge wave of sticky destruction. A small plaque on Commercial Street commemorates the disaster.

Molasses, waist deep, covered the street and swirled and bubbled about the wreckage. Here and there struggled a form — whether it was animal or human being was impossible to tell....

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