For the fifth year, a generous anonymous donor has once again pledged a 2-to-1 match for our Regional Books Fund, which supports books about New England as well as our Bright Leaf imprint.
Through October 31, each dollar donated to our Regional Books Fund will become three dollars! Your gift will allow us to engage with readers throughout New England, promote our books, and keep prices affordable. Please make your donation to support terrific books about New England.
Here, we highlight some of the many regional books that are supported by the regional books fund! Featured titles include: Malcolm Before X by Patrick Parr, The Innermost House: A Memoir by Cynthia Blakeley, Testing Education: A Teacher’s Memoir by Kathy Greeley, Food Margins: Lessons from an Unlikely Grocer by Cathy Stanton, Conifers of the New England–Acadian Forest: A Cultural History by Steve Keating, and more!
“A breathtaking act of intellectual reconstruction and a sublime literary achievement.”——Michael Eric Dyson, author of Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X
In February 1946, when 21-year-old Malcolm Little was sentenced to eight to ten years in a maximum-security prison, he was a petty criminal and street hustler in Boston. By the time he was paroled in August 1952, he had transformed into a voracious reader, joined the Black Muslims, and was poised to become Malcolm X, one of the most prominent and important intellectuals of the civil rights era. While scholars and commentators have exhaustively detailed, analyzed, and debated Malcolm X’s post-prison life, they have not explored these six and a half transformative years in any depth.
“Salt air and the limits of memory animate this heartrending debut. . . . Readers will be captivated.”—Publishers Weekly
Raised in a nineteenth-century saltbox house in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, Cynthia Blakeley was both surrounded by generations of immediate and extended family and isolated by the mysteries locked inside her affectionate yet elusive mother and short-fused father. While she and her sisters and cousins roamed the Outer Cape—drinking in the dunes, swimming in kettle ponds, and dancing in Provincetown—Blakeley also turned to the inner world of her journals as she contended with her own secrets and memories.
In Testing Education, Kathy Greeley recounts the impact of education reform from a teacher’s point of view. Based on a teaching career spanning nearly forty years, Greeley details how schools went from learning communities infused with excitement, intellectual stimulation, and joy to sterile spaces of stress, intimidation, and fear. In this ultimately hopeful memoir, Greeley asks us to learn from the past to reimagine the future of public education.
In a food industry shaped by the abundance, cheapness, and convenience that giant corporations can offer, small-scale ventures struggle to survive, as anthropologist Cathy Stanton discovered when she joined the effort to save a small food co-op in a former mill town in western Massachusetts. On the margins of the dominant system, Stanton found herself reckoning with its deep racial and class inequities, and learning that making real change requires a fierce commitment to community and a willingness to change herself as well. Part memoir and part history lesson, Food Margins traces the tangled economic and political histories of the plantation, the factory, and the supermarket through the life of one New England town.
Why did white pine help spark the American Revolution? How did balsam aid the development of germ theory? What does hemlock have to do with making leather? In Conifers of the New England–Acadian Forest, microbiologist Steve Keating explores how conifers influenced the course of human history, writing in a style that is both scientific and accessible. Keating’s study focuses on one of the most forested and wild ecoregions in North America, which extends into New York, New England, and Canada and includes Acadia National Park.
The wild and rural landscape of southern Vermont offers a true bounty of great trail-running opportunities, from out-and-back (or pointtopoint) runs on popular long-distance routes, such as segments of the Long Trail or Appalachian Trail, to quiet, little-known loops hidden away in the woods. This helpful guide is just the resource needed for trip planning or for a spontaneous run in a beautiful place. Local expert trail runner Ben Kimball offers a range of suggested route options, sometimes even several at the same site, for runners of all skill levels.
Big enough for a canoeist to feel solitude and serenity, small enough to not appear on large-scale maps, Centerville’s Long Pond (one of seven on the Cape that share this name), consists of fifty-one acres of crystal clear waters, fresh air, and the fish, turtles, waterfowl, ospreys, and otters that call this special place home. In A Moving Meditation, Stephen G. Waller offers an intimate look at the pond’s intriguing natural and human history; its abundant animal life, across the seasons; and the encroaching effects of climate change.
The lyceum movement gained momentum in the decades preceding the Civil War, presenting members with the opportunity to participate in literary life and engage with the issues of the day. In rural New England, ordinary men and women, farmers and intelligentsia, selectmen and schoolchildren came together to write and perform poetry and witty parodies and debate a wide range of topics, from women’s rights and temperance to slavery, migration, and more. Wit and Wisdom takes readers inside this long-forgotten tradition, providing new access to the vibrant voices, surprising talents, and understated humor on display on many a cold winter’s night.
