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Chapters: Geography of Boston, Massachusetts, Geography of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Geography of Worcester, Massachusetts, Quincy, Massachusetts, Long Island, Hopkinton, Massachusetts, Greater Boston, Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, Port of Boston, Lake Quinsigamond, Castle Island, Blackstone Valley, Rose Kennedy Greenway, Chestnut Hill Reservation, Boston Neck, Shawmut, Fort Point Channel, Quinsigamond State Park, Black Heritage Trail, Orient Heights, Shawmut Peninsula, Quincy Bay, Dorchester Bay, Chestnut Hill Reservoir, Alewife Linear Park, Sudbury Aqueduct Linear District, Indian Lake, Chestnut Hill Reservoir Historic District, Cambridge Common Historic District, Hubbard Park Historic District, Harvard Houses Historic District, Sowa, Old Cambridge Historic District, Kostachuk Square, Northpoint (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Constitution Beach, Woodland Street Historic District, Hammond Heights, Oxford-Crown Extension District, Lincoln Estate-Elm Park Historic District, Gray Gardens East and West Historic District, Southbridge-Sargent Manufacturing District, Lower Pleasant Street District, Wellington Street Apartment House District, Mechanics' Hall District, Elm Street Historic District (Worcester, Massachusetts), May Street Historic District, Ashmont, Massachusetts, Follen Street Historic District, Memorial Drive Apartments Historic District, Carson Beach, South Boston, Garfield Street Historic District, Shady Hill Historic District, Norfolk Street Historic District, Harvard Street Historic District, Upper Magazine Street Historic District, Bellevue Hill, Boston, East Cambridge Historic District, Ash Street Historic District, Hastings Square Historic District, Kirkland Place Historic District, Berkeley Street Historic District, Crystal Street Historic District, Salem-Auburn Streets Historic District, Old Cambridgport Historic District, Maple Avenue Historic District (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Avon Hill Hist...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=5685 ... Read more

Product Description
This 258-page guidebook to Boston presents the city's highlights in a comprehensive but portable format. The following are its key features: The Best of Boston - presents an overview of vital information for visitors, including money- and time-saving tips and the most family-oriented attractions; Places - features district-by-district guide, with top attractions highlighted and cross-referenced with detailed local maps; Restaurant guide - includes a pull-out, pocket-size 'Z' map, with review listings of 60+ recommended restaurants and bars; Photo Features - contains magazine-style full-colour features on some of the city's most famous sights, from whale watching to the Museum of Fine Arts; Essay Features - contains incisive essays on history, people and culture; Travel Tips - includes practical listings, covering accommodation, entertainment, transport and more; and Street Atlas - contains colour maps of downtown Boston, with grid-referenced index. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Review of Insight Guides
Finally the summer has come and yet another long academic year has gone by.Exhausted from late night cram sessions and final taking, the thought of getting away for a bit and just relaxing enters the mind.Whether it is nearby or far away, traveling is a great way to explore new worlds, learn new things, and best of all to take a break from everyday life.But, there is a catch.Being a student, there is not much money to spare and not a lot of time to waste.So the best idea is to check out a travel guide to come across important information about where to stay, what to visit, and where to eat.Now all that is left is picking a location, checking out any old travel guide and being on your way, right?Wrong.Choosing the wrong travel guide might lead to an awful experience and a fear of future traveling.Luckily, Insight Guides provides tons of valuable information in a number of travel guides they publish, which can give travelers confidence in any of their explorations.
Insight Guides has almost everything and anything a visitor may need when planning a trip to a new place.Each guide is studied and written by natives of the respected location, so the information provided is authentic and practical.The travel guide has an easy to read, understandable text for teenagers and up.Most of the activities listed and locations suggested may seem geared more toward adults, but the guide also provides activities and local "hot spots" for young adults, such as clubs and musical venues.For students, this guide is helpful because it includes many historical locations and tourist attractions along with sufficient information on each.For example, the guide on the city of Boston includes a thorough two and a half page description on the Museum of Fine Arts.Therefore, students get the full experience out of their travels.
Insight Guides does a great job with informing, entertaining, and best of all - guiding.The guide's descriptions and language do the job of persuasion to draw in visitors to the attractions they provide.For instance in the guide on the city of Sydney, Australia, says in the beginning of one chapter:
After ticking off the quintessential Sydney sights - the Opera House, the Botanic Gardens, Darling Harbor - take time out to explore the less renowned aspects of city life.In the Kings Cross district, enjoy the decorous rows of terrace houses, many of which were once brothels but have now been converted into elegant restaurants, then enjoy a genuine Italian coffee in trendy Darlinghurst. (63)
The guide indirectly intrigues readers to explore and uses a variety of adjectives to add interest to the places noted.Near the back of the guide is a complete list of anything needed when in the city including their address and phone number, helpful for contacting a location when tightly planning a schedule.Things such as restaurants, clubs, transportation methods, hotels, shopping, and music venues are mentioned along with many others.For foreign travelers, essential information pertaining to climate, tipping, embassies and exchange rates are provided in this section as well.
Assisting these locations is a plethora of maps, from simple to detailed, of all over the city.In the guide about Boston, there are twenty-three maps of in and around the city.Street maps do make up for most of the twenty-three, but there are also maps of the subway and geography of the Boston area.Near the end of the guide, is a series of five key maps with forty two items in its legend and a grid system for locating places of interest with ease.For anyone who likes to plan out their trips with itineraries, this guide will be trouble-free to work with.To help visitors find their next stop on the map, Insight Guides provides a number of pleasant pictures of these locations of interest.
After flipping through the Insight Guide on Sydney a few times, a reader is overcome with the feeling that they had already visited the Sydney Opera House or Bronte Beach.There are the usual pictures of landscapes and tourist attractions, but Insight Guides also includes candid pictures of pedestrians, animals, and local sports events.There are almost as many pictures as pages in this guide, which is helpful for travelers become familiarized with the landscape before they even visit their destination.Each picture is full of color and brings out a different part of the city.The only downside to the photographs used is that in the Boston guide, there were many pictures taken during the spring, summer, and fall but none during the winter.Unfortunately, the winters in Boston are quite frigid and the change in temperature would change a traveler's ability to perform some activities provided by the guide.
For travelers, especially anyone who enjoys backpacking, these small guide books are about half the size of a piece of paper and easily can fit in any size backpack or bag.In addition to being light for a backpack, Insight Guides' books are also light on traveler's wallets.From a local Borders bookstore, a common Insight Guide city travel guide would cost about fifteen dollars, much less than Lonely Planet's travel guide of Sydney which costs about ten dollars more.However, do not let the size and the price of the guide give the wrong impression; these paperback books are crammed full helpful tips and useful information about traveling for not only backpackers but all types of travelers.Since the guides are paperback, they are comfortable to hold while walking and are quite flexible, great for travelers on the go.
Speaking of on the go, if hunger strikes out of the blue and one would prefer to find a cheap restaurant quick, just search under the restaurant list located in the back near the index.Insight Guides use a dollar sign key which easily signifies how expensive each restaurant is.For example, a café with $$ means, the price for an average three course meal would be between $50 and $75.The system of dollar signs is a much better than the star system used in other travel guides which combine the cost of the food with the quality.With Insight Guides, the quality of the restaurants is described in a small passage following its information while the price is stated first right after the name of the restaurant. This comes in handy if travelers, such as students, are on a tight budget and cannot spend too much money in one place.
Insight Guides is a well rounded travel guide beneficial for almost any type of traveler.The language used to illustrate each location is both detailed and convincing while the pictures give readers a physical image of the places described.In addition to Boston and Sydney, Insight Guides provides travel guides on a number of other cities such as: Amsterdam, Las Vegas, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, and Singapore.Although not every major city in the world is covered, Insight Guides prints about sixty new titles a year with updates to current guides already printed.The guides are created by research done by natives of each location, thus eyewitness accounts and interviews are unnecessary since the entire guide is created by eyewitnesses.Choosing an Insight Guides travel guide would be an intelligent move by anyone, especially students, who plans to travel and truly experience their visit.


Bell, Brian, Bill Scheller, and Kay Scheller, eds. Insight City Guide Boston. 3rd ed. New York: Insight Guides, 2009. Print.
Bell, Brian, and Jeffery Pike, eds. Insight City Guide Sydney (Book & Restaurant Guide) (Insight City Guides (Book & Restaruant Guide)). 5th ed. New York: Insight Guides, 2005. Print.

well written but a bit thin
I really like this book - BUT it seems as if they omitted certain landmark restaurants (like Abe and Louie's which every other guide raves about and IMHO blows away Morton's and any other steak house in Boston), hotels (Marriott Back Bay), etc. and I wonder if there was a reason (like sponsor money).That said the writing is really good!

Good guide to Boston
I recently attended the American Political Science Association meeting, held in Boston. This visit reminded me of how enchanted I am with this historical American city. To remind me of its many pleasures (historical sites, restaurants, sports, etc.), and to provide for advance planning the next time I take a relaxed few days in Boston, I purchased this volume.

I am rather pleased with it. While I think it gives short shrift to the multitude of fine restaurants in Boston, for instance, overall this is a valuable guide to the city and the surrounding area.

Some nice features: a series of maps of the city; a nice little insert with a summary of restaurants that one could put in one's shirt pocket to serve as a brief guide; a summary of "The Best of Boston" at the outset; description of a number of walking tours in different parts of the city and its environs.

After an introduction to Boston, there is a brief but useful history.Then, some comments about sports, art, literature, and the like. Following is a section by section discussion of the city--from Beacon Hill & Boston Common to Cambridge. For each area surveyed, there is a nice discussion of key sites, a brief summary of the best restaurants and bars.

Some sites that I would recommend: the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides is still pretty awesome); Paul Revere's house; the Art Museum; Quincy Market; Boston Common and the Public Garden (take a ride on the sawn boats!); Duck Tours; Bunker Hill; Harvard Yard; and so on and so on.

It is nice to wander around a city that has so much history. . . .Not too many places in the United States radiate such a sense of our past (others might include, by the way, Philadelphia and Charleston, SC).

Anyhow, this is a useful work for those who want some ideas about what to do, where to go, and where to eat in Boston.
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Customer Reviews (1)

revisar el libro
quisiera ver el contenido del liro para saber si es posible adquirirl ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Cities of the United States, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 163 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Provides a wide range of hard-to-locate data to answer questions concerning American cities. Includes thorough coverage of the area's largest or fastest-growing cities, or those with a particular historical, political, industrial or commercial significance. ... Read more

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Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, a nexus of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Notably, Cambridge is home to two internationally prominent universities, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 101,355. It is the fifth most populous city in the state. Cambridge is one of the two county seats of Middlesex County (Lowell is the other) ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Cities of the United States, brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 149 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.Provides a wide range of hard-to-locate data to answer questions concerning American cities. Includes thorough coverage of the area's largest or fastest-growing cities, or those with a particular historical, political, industrial or commercial significance. ... Read more

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United States Capitol Cities Fact Files
Boston


Too many people? Look it up here.
Average income, look here.
Poverty rate? It is here.
And so much more……

What do you need to know???

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Frommer city guides offer value-conscious recommendations on hotels, restaurants and sightseeing. This edition also looks at the sophisticated nightlife and the universities in Boston, the city where modern American history began. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

VIRGIN ISLANDS TRAVEL GUIDES
Great book at fraction of original price.Really helped me out on my trip.Very informative. ... Read more

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Across the country, white ethnics have fled cities for suburbs. But many have stayed in their old neighborhoods. When the busing crisis erupted in Boston in the 1970s, Catholics were in the forefront of resistance. Jews, 70,000 of whom had lived in Roxbury and Dorchester in the early 1950s, were invisible during the crisis.They were silent because they departed the city more quickly and more thoroughly than Boston's Catholics. Only scattered Jews remained in Dorchester and Roxbury by the mid-1970s. In telling the story of why the Jews left and the Catholics stayed, Gerald Gamm places neighborhood institutions-churches, synagogues, community centers, schools-at its center. He challenges the long-held assumption that bankers and real estate agents were responsible for the rapid Jewish exodus. Rather, according to Gamm, basic institutional rules explain the strength of Catholic attachments to neighborhood and the weakness of Jewish attachments. Because they are rooted, territorially defined, and hierarchical, parishes have frustrated the urban exodus of Catholic families. And because their survival was predicated on their portability and autonomy, Jewish institutions exacerbated the Jewish exodus. Gamm shows that the dramatic transformation of urban neighborhoods began not in the 1950s or 1960s, but in the 1920s. Not since Anthony Lukas's Common Ground has there been a book that so brilliantly explores not just Boston's dilemma but the roots of the American urban crisis.Amazon.com Review
Boston's so-called white flight of the 1960s and '70s became anational symbol of the urban crisis. But what caused whites to move tothe suburbs in such great numbers? Common knowledge holds that aninflux of African Americans, assisted by the Boston Banks UrbanRenewal Group, pushed Jews out of their neighborhoods and into thesuburbs. In Urban Exodus, however, historian GeraldH. Gamm argues that the driving force behind suburbanization isnot race but religion.

Gamm studies two remarkably similar Boston neighborhoods, Roxbury andDorchester, and argues that, while the Jewish population left, theCatholics stayed because of religious rules--rules that "are real notbecause they are written down but because they are obeyed." Looking atcanon law and Talmudic guidelines, he separates issues of membership,authority, and "rootedness." In brief, Catholic congregations arebound by the geographical lines of their parishes and the physicalstructures of their parish churches, as established by Churchhierarchy. Jewish congregations, on the other hand, are moreautonomous, with the power to create and dissolve synagogues--andworshippers are not bound by geography and can attend the synagoguesof their choice. Gamm is quick to point out that he does not arguethat Catholics are necessarily more likely than Jews to stay in urbanneighborhoods, but that the Catholic parish is better able to sustainneighborhood attachments. He also notes that race is a newerissue--"only after the urban exodus had nearly run its course,emptying apartments and lowering rents, were blacks able to overcomelongstanding barriers to entry." Indeed, it was the growing populationof the automobile and automobile suburbs in the 1920s that pushedsuburbanization, as middle-class whites left still-white urbanneighborhoods. Urban Exodus is a thought-provoking look at theshifting populations in America's cities--and the role organizedreligion plays in those shifts. --Sunny Delaney ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

One of the Best Books about American Cities
Probably one of the best books about U.S. cities since Jane Jacobs. The analysis of Jewish and Catholic settlement patterns was so detailed and presented so well, it lead me to read a whole series of books on religion I wouldn't have touched otherwise.

While it touches on a potentially sensitive topic, Gamm's approach is strictly academic. He presents a lot of data without getting dogmatic or blaming or praising anyone. This is where the book's strength really lies.There is almost no finger pointing whatsoever, rather tons of data to back up a chronicle of events. He documents how the regional archdiocese had tremendous power, and required people to change churches if they moved. A Dorchester church couldn't just pick up and move to Newton, but without a powerful, central authority, a South End synagogue could very easily re-locate to Brookline, which many did. This issue of central authority was particular to Catholics, because Boston's original Puritans placed most of the organizing power in the congregation, similar to how the Jews did.

I would like to see an update to this book now that many of the formerly Irish Catholic parishes in the city have become Latin American Catholic. I don't live in Boston anymore, but I know many Irish-Americans have moved out of Southie to southern suburbs from Quincy to Plymouth.

Whether you agree with Gamm or not, you learn a lot reading this book because it is filled with so much data and brings a whole new set of ideas on suburbanization you don't see with many urban planning books, which get caught up in blaming politicians and bankers without doing the sort of in-depth research Gamm did.

When "Common Knowledge" Goes Wrong
This is primarily a response to the previous review. The reviewer calls this book "provocative", which is to damn with faint praise. It is far more than provocative; it overturns what has become gospel truth for a generation - that the Jews were forced out of Boston byhidden, mysterious forces. Malevolent bankers, with their red pens, together with city fathers seeking to keep black residents away from Catholic neighborhoods, had funnelled African-American home-buyers into the solidly Jewish district of Mattapan. In his examination of the subject, the author tests this claim, and proves with many documented sources than the accepted story is false. There was redlining, but the districts redlined included many white, Catholic neighborhoods that did not see white flight during the same years. The previous reviewer claims that the Irish Catholics of Dorchester did leave, but that was only well after theredlining that is claimed to have driven the Jews out of Mattapan. In fact, the author documents that the flight of Jews from Mattapan began before redlining went into effect, and was led by Jewish neighborhoods that were actually outside of the redlined district.
Debunking an accepted story can be difficult when the story is so entrenched that no one sees a need to reexamine the original question. This may be the case here. Newspaper articles continue to be written based on the accepted version of history. The story of malevolant bureaucrats suits our time: Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Pharma all conspire against us. The accepted story of redlining in Boston protects us from having to answer the uncomfortable question: if redlining didn't cause Jews to sell their homes, what did? If the Jews had legitimate fears of crime from African-Americans, we blame the blacks. If the Jews didn't have legitimate fears of black encroachment in their neighborhoods, we have to ask whether the Jews were too racist to deal with black neighbors. Better we should keep blaming the bankers in their offices than reopen those old wounds.
Don't trust me - buy the book, or find it at the library, and make up your own mind.

book quite different from its title
The Book examines why white ethnics left the inner city of Boston which became almost exclusively minority. 50,000 Jews lived in the FranklinPark/Franklin Field Blue Hill Avenue area of Boston as recently as the 50sand today they are all gone.

The title suggests that Jews left andCatholics didn't. The author demonstrates that Jewish institutions such assynagogues were portable and that most of the major synagogues moved fromBoston to the suburbs. The author shows that Catholic institutions cannotmove and that parishioners must worship at the church where they live.However, the author shows that most white Catholics also left as theAfrican-American population expanded south. The churches remained to servea non-white Catholic population, particularly immigrants from Haiti andCentral and South America. The author does not address how it might havebeen possible to build a stable, multi-racial community in Boston. Heunderestimates the effects of the BBURG line, blockbusting, and redliningin the process of neighborhood transition here. He devotes inadequateattention to efforts at community building, crime watches and such thatwould have assisted in attacking the breakdown of order which impacted thechange in neighborhood.

The author does show that Jewish movement to besuburbs began as early as the 20s and that those remaining in Boston werelargely older and poorer. As the institutions moved out, anyone who couldmoved as well, to Newton and Brookline, or south to Sharon and towns aroundit. Catholic movement south out of Boston accelerated with the schooldesegregation decision in 1975.

Worth reading for a provocative thesis,even if I don't agree with most of it. Should be compared to Levine andHarmon's Death of an American Jewish Community which is a different take onthe same events. This is a sad description of the rather sudden end to aonce viable urban community. ... Read more

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High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Somerville is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, located just north of Boston. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 77,478 and was the most densely populated municipality in New England. It is also the 17th most densely populated incorporated place in the country. It was established as a town in 1842, when it was separated from the urbanizing Charlestown. Somerville was a 2009 All-America City Award recipient. ... Read more

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This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Historical Geography, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Fully one-sixth of Boston is built on made land. Although other waterfront cities also have substantial areas that are built on fill, Boston probably has more than any city in North America. In Gaining Ground historian Nancy Seasholes has given us the first complete account of when, why, and how this land was created.The story of landmaking in Boston is presented geographically; each chapter traces landmaking in a different part of the city from its first permanent settlement to the present. Seasholes introduces findings from recent archaeological investigations in Boston, and relates landmaking to the major historical developments that shaped it. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, landmaking in Boston was spurred by the rapid growth that resulted from the burgeoning China trade. The influx of Irish immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century prompted several large projects to create residential land--not for the Irish, but to keep the taxpaying Yankees from fleeing to the suburbs. Many landmaking projects were undertaken to cover tidal flats that had been polluted by raw sewage discharged directly onto them, removing the "pestilential exhalations" thought to cause illness. Land was also added for port developments, public parks, and transportation facilities, including the largest landmaking project of all, the airport.A separate chapter discusses the technology of landmaking in Boston, explaining the basic method used to make land and the changes in its various components over time. The book is copiously illustrated with maps that show the original shoreline in relation to today’s streets, details from historical maps that trace the progress of landmaking, and historical drawings and photographs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Great Resource
This book is a very amazing book about the history of made land in Boston. It is an excellent resource for anyone who is interested in the history of the city.

Fascinating history
If one lives and Boston and was curious about what the city looked like 100, 200, 300, or 400 years ago this is the book for you. I discovered that somewhere between 1837 and 1851 the street I lived in was filled and went from being underwater to land.
An incredibly well-researched history of how people altered the landscape of Boston.

A Spectacular Work.
Disclaimer: I was very fortunate to take the Harvard University class tought by the author, which uses this book as the class text.

This book is a spectacular work of research and writing. The author truly shows her passion for the subject.
The text presents a unique view of Boston history, with stunning detail and even intrigue. The historical and original maps are without equal, and the photographs and illustrations are superb selections.
Pardon the cliché, but truly I found myself unable to put this book down!

Her recent book Walking Tours of Boston's Made Land is also a must-have for anyone who wants to get close-up and personal with Boston history.

Gaining Ground
This is a wonderful book about how Boston changed in the last 200+ years. It is very readable, but I especially enjoyed the pictures and maps. It is an excellent book for anyone interested in the subject.

Encyclopedic, entertaining, extraordinary - simply the best!
Seasholes must have combed every archive and walked every inch of Boston to produce this monumental book. Not only is it exhaustive, but it is entertaining as well. Although this is a handsome book it is not a cooffe table enterprise. This is a book you will want to take with you as you walk the streets of Boston. This book is destined to become dog eared and underlined. It is simply a must for anyone interested in the history of this great city. ... Read more

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Since the 1960s, public attention has been drawn increasingly towards the thematic link between historic preservation and urban planning. Nowadays, the organized historic preservation movement in the USA is more than a mere "yearning for history": it represents an active and integral part of urban plannig in U.S. cities. In order to approach these planning, econimic and social issues in the field of historic preservation, this book analytically applies a variety of interdisciplinary methods focusing on four selected historic districts within the CBDs (Central Business Districts) of Philadelphia and Boston (in the North) and Charleston and Savannah (in the South). ... Read more

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The Charles River Basin, extending nine miles upstream from the harbor, has been called Boston's "Central Park." Yet few realize that this apparently natural landscape is a totally fabricated public space. Two hundred years ago the Charles was a tidal river, edged by hundreds of acres of salt marshes and mudflats. Inventing the Charles River describes how, before the creation of the basin could begin, the river first had to be imagined as a single public space. The new esplanades along the river changed the way Bostonians perceived their city; and the basin, with its expansive views of Boston and Cambridge, became an iconic image of the metropolis.The book focuses on the precarious balance between transportation planning and stewardship of the public realm. Long before the esplanades were realized, great swaths of the river were given over to industrial enterprises and transportation--millponds, bridges, landfills, and a complex network of road and railway bridges. In 1929, Boston's first major highway controversy erupted when a four-lane road was proposed as part of a new esplanade. At twenty-year intervals, three riverfront road disputes followed, successively more complex and disputatious, culminating in the lawsuits over "Scheme Z," the Big Dig's plan for eighteen lanes of highway ramps and bridges over the river. More than three hundred photographs, maps, and drawings illustrate past and future visions for the Charles and document the river's place in Boston's history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Well Researched, Informative, and Presented in a Digestible Manner
Book is as described.Very well researched and documented, with excellent images/drawings/maps which aid tremendously in bringing to life the changes to the Charles River Basin over the past 300 years.

ASLA Award Winner
This book received an Award of Honor from the American Society of Landscape Architects Professional Awards Program in 2003.

Gorgeous, and so intelligent
This extraordinary book brings together a confluence of compelling themes: The history of a city and its self concept; the evolution of city planning and the politics of public space; visionary thinking and the implications of decisions on the future of urban living; and the visual record of 19th century Boston through historical photographs and maps. These ideas have been woven into a highly readable book, stunningly designed by Yasuyo Iguchi. For anyone who lives in or has lived in Boston, this book is the best history of the city's evolution. For others who may not be as compelled by the specific story of how the Charles River came to be or the significance of the Big Dig, this book is a fascinating and provocative exploration of the implications that face all cities as they envision themselves into the future. How should public space be used? Who decides what is the public good? Haglund cares passionately about these issues and has assembled a thoughtful, readable and provocative response to these important questions. Don't miss it. ... Read more

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Drinking a glass of tap water, strolling in a park, hopping a train for the suburbs: some aspects of city life are so familiar that we don’t think twice about them. But such simple actions are structured by complex relationships with our natural world. The contours of these relationships—social, cultural, political, economic, and legal—were established during America’s first great period of urbanization in the nineteenth century, and Boston, one of the earliest cities in America, often led the nation in designing them. A richly textured cultural and social history of the development of nineteenth-century Boston, this book provides a new environmental perspective on the creation of America’s first cities.

Eden on the Charles explores how Bostonians channeled country lakes through miles of pipeline to provide clean water; dredged the ocean to deepen the harbor; filled tidal flats and covered the peninsula with houses, shops, and factories; and created a metropolitan system of parks and greenways, facilitating the conversion of fields into suburbs. The book shows how, in Boston, different class and ethnic groups brought rival ideas of nature and competing visions of a “city upon a hill” to the process of urbanization—and were forced to conform their goals to the realities of Boston’s distinctive natural setting. The outcomes of their battles for control over the city’s development were ultimately recorded in the very fabric of Boston itself. In Boston’s history, we find the seeds of the environmental relationships that—for better or worse—have defined urban America to this day.

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Book about the Making of Boston
For any person who has ever loved or lived in Boston, this is a great book to help understand how Boston developed in the 19th Century to the great American city that it is today. Many of us who grew up around Boston know some of the basics of its physical history: it's transformation from a tiny ithsmus surrounded by shallow flats to a much larger metropolis, made possible by cutting down many of its hills and filling in its harbors and bays to create land. But "Eden on the Charles - The Making of Boston" goes much deeper, exploring how this physical transformation was influenced by evolving ideas about nature, class, the environment, the nature of water, and the tension between the city vs. suburb vs. country. Boston was one of the first cities to deal with such dramatic transformations, and quite literally had to invent new ways of thinking about nature. After reading the great chapters on the evolution of the Boston Common and the decades-long battle to bring water to Boston, I now look at the Common and take a sip of my municipally-supplied water from an entirely new perspective. Mr. Rawson is a great historian and writer, synthesizing complicated ideas and events into a very powerful narrative. I intend to give gift copies of the book to several of my friends and architects in Boston. ... Read more