New England

The Lioness of Boston

Emily Franklin

Emily Franklin's portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner traces a woman who defied Gilded Age convention to build one of the country's most singular art collections. Franklin captures both the collector and the city she left permanently changed, one visionary act at a time.

The North End: A Brief History of Boston's Oldest Neighborhood

Alex R Goldfeld

Alex Goldfeld traces nearly four centuries of history through Boston's oldest neighborhood, from the Boston Massacre to Paul Revere's ride and the waves of immigration that followed. It is a compact, layered portrait of how one small stretch of land came to hold so much of the nation's early story.

Revolutionaries

Jack Rakove

Jack Rakove traces the American revolutionary generation from 1772 to 1792, portraying both famous and little known figures as ordinary men who rose to an extraordinary moment. His research reshapes the founding era into something more human and less mythic than the version most readers grew up with.

Fenway 1912

Glenn Stout

Glenn Stout tells the story of Fenway Park's first year, from the long winter when locals poured concrete and built the park to a ragtag Red Sox team that reached the World Series while the paint was still drying. It is a close, detailed account of how a civic landmark came together by hand, under pressure, in a single season.

The Maine Woods

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau's account of three journeys into Maine's largely unexplored wilderness between 1846 and 1857 remains one of the clearest early records of the region's wild interior. His close observation of its rivers, mountains, and wildlife set a literary standard that New England nature writing still measures itself against.

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton, who wrote much of her later work from her home in the Berkshires, won the Pulitzer for this portrait of desire and betrayal set within Gilded Age high society. The novel captures the same rarefied world of inherited rules and quiet rebellion that Isabella Stewart Gardner lived inside a generation earlier.

If: The Untold Story of Kipling's American Years

Christopher EG Benfey

Christopher Benfey examines the four years Rudyard Kipling spent in Brattleboro, Vermont, a chapter of the India born writer's life rarely given its due. Benfey argues that Kipling's time in New England was central to how he deliberately remade himself into an American voice.

Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera

Ron Schick

Ron Schick draws on nearly twenty thousand photographs held at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge to reveal the meticulous staging behind Rockwell's famous paintings. It recasts the artist as a careful director of his own scenes, working from a small Massachusetts studio to build images that came to define an American ideal.

National Audubon Society Field Guide to New England

National Audubon Society

This comprehensive field guide covers the full naturalist's range of New England, from Connecticut's shoreline to Maine's north woods and every state between. It is the reference worth keeping close at hand for any traveler who wants to identify what they are actually seeing along the trail.

The Atlantic Coast: A Natural History

Harry Thurston

Harry Thurston surveys the geology, landscapes, and wildlife of the Atlantic coast from Newfoundland down through New England to Cape Hatteras. The illustrated survey traces how the same coastline that draws visitors today has shaped the region's fishing towns, harbors, and history for centuries.

Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn

Thomas C Hubka

Thomas Hubka takes the rhythmic children's rhyme of the title and unpacks what it actually describes, the four connected buildings that made up a working New England farm. It is a thoughtful study of vernacular architecture that still stands across the region today.

Frederick Billings: A Life

Robin W Winks

Robin Winks profiles Frederick Billings, a Vermont born lawyer who made his fortune during the California gold rush and then returned home to become one of the era's leading conservationists. His managed forest in Woodstock, Vermont is thought to be the oldest of its kind in the country.

Shredding Paper: The Rise and Fall of Maine's Mighty Paper Industry

Michael G Hillard

Michael Hillard traces Maine's rise to national leadership in paper production through the early twentieth century, and the slower decline that followed after the 1960s. It is a clear eyed look at how shifting political economy and labor relations reshaped an industry that once defined entire Maine communities.

The Maine Lobster Industry: A History of Culture, Conservation & Commerce

Cathy Billings

Cathy Billings traces the Maine lobster fishery from its first recorded catch in 1605 to the multibillion dollar industry it has become today. She introduces the lobstermen, boat builders, and bait dealers whose work still defines the fishery, from trap to plate.

The Mount Washington Cog Railway

Bruce D Heald

Bruce Heald tells the surprising story of the cog railway that climbs New Hampshire's Mount Washington, the second steepest rack railway in the world after Switzerland's Pilatus line. It began as one eccentric inventor's dream, and more than a century later, it still carries passengers up the same tracks he built.

The Vermont Country Store Cookbook

Andrea Diehl and Ellen Ecker Ogden

Andrea Diehl and Ellen Ecker Ogden gather five generations of the Orton family's recipes, stories, and archival photographs into one collection. The book is as much a history of a Vermont institution as it is a cookbook, fresh from the farm cooking that carries the best of New England's past into its present.