Having the large Nelson is much better. Too large for pocket

Historical novelist Kenneth Roberts was a proud State-of-Mainer who found most of his inspiration in the exploits and quirks of his Maine ancestors. In late 1935, he was asked by Little, Brown and Co. "to write a book on Maine", and his diary records that on February 24, 1937, he "assembled material..., wrote the opening paragraph, and settled on a title."

The resulting effort, *Trending into Maine*, is an idosyncratic collection of articles and documents, most of them of a highly anecdotal nature, ranging from vignettes of early Maine colonists to a philippic against the defacement of the state by billboards in the 1930s.

At least half of the material in the book is not in Roberts' own hand, but consists in miscellaneous source documents, from letters of a sea captain's wife in the 1840s to eyewitness accounts of Maine exploits during the Civil War, all of them carefully edited and introduced by Roberts. Some of the figures portrayed in the book actually served as inspiration for characters in Roberts' novels, such as Mary Storer (the basis for *Arundel*'s Mary Mallinson), Mary Littlefield (the source for Phoebe Marvin) or Stephen Harding, who became Steven Nason in *Arundel* and *Rabble in Arms*.

Perhaps the most interesting piece for fans of Roberts' historical fiction is the chapter entitled "Road to the Past", a digest of the author's *March to Quebec*, in which, as an outgrowth of his research for *Arundel*, he had gathered all the extant journals of members of Arnold's 1775 expedition. If you ever contemplated retracing Arnold's footsteps, you should find all the information you need in this mini-travel guide.

The book also contains a chapter on Maine food and recipes, and evocations of two of Roberts' favorite hobbies, hunting and fishing, complete with a six-page list of the best fishing spots in the state- though some of the fish may have moved or died since 1938.

On a more serious note, *Trending into Maine* gives a few inklings of Roberts' political philosophy. From *I Wanted to Write*, I already knew him to be a staunch anti-communist and an opponent of the welfare state. Given his rather unphilosophical and concrete-bound character, I was curious to know what these political inclinations stemmed from, and in the chapter on "Seamen and Sea Serpents", I found the answer.

Roberts simply absorbed the popular wisdom contained in such maxims as "You cannot have your cake and eat it too", "Diligence is the mother of good fortune" or "A penny saved is a penny earned". And he saw Roosevelt's New Deal policies as a complete inversion of the good sense and sound morals they encapsulate, replacing them with "such warped maxims as... 'A government handout is better than a good name or riches'; 'Absence of competition is the life of trade'; 'You can eat your cake and have it too', 'Waste a lot in order to have business a lot'; 'Waste and laziness are the parents of good fortune'; 'What a man has, so much is he unsure of, and so much should he be made to disgorge by unsound laws'; 'Rome was created in a day by hasty and crack-brained legislation'; 'Leap first and look afterward' [the most concise summary of pragmatism ever]; 'Be sure you're wrong, then spend four billion dollars going ahead.'"

For those of you seeking to document the ruinous blundering of the Roosevelt administration, there is an excellent chronicle of the W.P.A.'s botched-up Quoddy Village project, which Roberts describes as "a relief measure that didn't relieve: a rehabilitation measure that didn't rehabilitate: a piece of New Deal planning set in motion by half-baked irresponsibles who had neglected to work out their plans." Roberts is at his most journalistic in this piece, and at his wittiest: commenting on the withdrawal of promised "federal" funds, he remarks: "Perhaps the White House thought it ought to have a monopoly on spending money improperly".

Roberts was not a consistent libertarian, though. At certain points in the book, for instance, he advocates or supports regulatory measures aimed at preventing behaviour he disapproved of, such as zoning measures to keep loud vacationers away from Maine or laws banning "the killing of ducks, geese and all other waterfowl", simply because the poor birds are too easy targets, as against the resourceful Maine partridge.

*Trending Into Maine* is too eclectic and uneven to feature among Roberts' greatest works, but if you have already read and reread the latter, and are looking for insight into the man himself, you might definitely enjoy this collection, which the Boston Herald once described as "an exhilaratingly lyrical book, with a warm glow over it, and a clean wind through it, and an unspoken challenge and invitation in it that sets a man's eyes gazing northward."

Kenneth Janken hads written a very informative book about Walter White. What's good about it is that it rectifies the dearth of good books that really delve into the gravity regarding the history of America's racial sickness. Walter White had a front row seat to this reality. He was able to investigate some of the most gruesome lynchings in American history because most people thought he was Caucasian. The extent of the racial pogroms detailed in this book is amazing. It dramatizes how throughout U.S. history African Americans have had to beg, borrow and steal our way to a modicum of respect. It is especially revealing with regard to the condecension displayed by Jews who called themselves helpful in advancing African American civil rights. And it shows how all people labled as oppressed minorities strive to join the majority group where ever they live. Yet African Americans are the sole group in U.S. society for whom a concerted effort has been made (and continues to be made) to keep on the outside. There are flaws to the book, however. For example, like so many Caucasians, Janken refuses African Americans any right to complexity. By that I mean that he denies us the right to class distinctions by chastising White for looking down his nose at African Americans at the bottom who didn't do their best to improve themselves. This is a common attitude amongst so-called liberal and leftists Caucasians, who seem to feel that all African Americans at the bottom are noble. Yet these same Caucasians do their best to identify themselves as "white," as in separate from African Americans, the implication being that racial distinctions that really aren't legitimate, indeed, are legitimate. Such people simply can't seem to accept the fact that ever since the end of slavery there has been a significant cadre' of African Americans at the bottom who have no interest at all in improving themselves. It is this "noble savage" element which continues to fascinate most Caucasian Americans, who just can't seem to accept any African Americans who seek assimilation and self-improvement as "true blacks." In addition, there is at least one error in the book. Janken discusses the struggle to build the VA hospital in Tuskegee Alabama at the end of World War I. In his discussion he erroneously states that efforts to ensure that the staff of the hospital was all Caucasian were temporarily successful. This was not true at all. From the very beginning, the president of Tuskegee, Robert Moton, and school physician John A. Kenney Sr., successfully resisted all efforts to staff the hospital with Caucasians. The other criticism I have of the book is that in many passages it is overwritten (example: "[White] was no Pollyanna, and he was the angry black soldiers' amanuensis." What the h... does "amanuensis" mean?). Too often Janken strives for words that make a reader run to his dictionary unnecessarily. In this he is like fellow historian, David Levering Lewis. Overall, I recommend this book for informativeness only.

This book has very colorful illustrations and some interesting bits of information, but the book is large for the for the number of knots covered and does have some misleading or wrong illustrations.

I was thoroughly disapointed with this book. The greatest problem with it was that it was not available for purchase. Shame gentleman, shame! - Z.B.Radaghas

Clearly these authors have never been in a classroom in the last ten years! Activieis are outdated; current research on constructivism lacking.

If you're getting this to help you understand the text book, look else where. This guide expects you to hunt for certain keywords in the text book and fill in the blank. It is formated exactly as the book and it is useless. None of them sample problems in this guide is solved, so you're left with wondering if you did the problems right.