Getting the low-down on Bean Town has never been particularly easy. Capturing the soul of this unique metropolis means that some compromises have to be made. Readers who want to wave the flag as they wander through Boston are not going to be thrilled to learn about its sordid racial tensions, while ethnic groups demanding that their leaders be placed just as prominently as the ol' white dudes must still contend with history. The author has done all sides a service by focusing on facts and ignoring wishes. His book may not please partisans, but for the rest of us, especially those who have not visited Boston before, the guide will provide a witty, balanced, well-researched look at the unique things that make up Boston. Readers will come away appreciate a writer who treats his subject and his readers with the same degree of respect. New England public libraries should buy several copies; other libraries will appreciate seeing just how a love song to a city is supposed to be written.DJospeh L. Carlson, Lompoc P.L., CA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Over the years, University Historian Thomas H. O'Connor had amassed enough anecdotes and yarns about Boston to fill Fenway Park...The result is his latest book,
Boston A to Z, which features some 200 historical essays, legends and little known facts on Boston's people, places, politics and personality. Equally informative and entertaining, and intended for natives and newcomers alike, it is an affectionate look at the life and times of a city by its foremost chronicler. (Reid Oslin
Boston College Chronicle )
Thomas O'Connor, university historian and professor emeritus from Boston College, has done what all emeriti should do: made his vast learning available in a manageably brief and interesting form. In each several-pages-long entry, O'Connor paves the city with mini-biographies of its many historical figures, from John and Sam Adams to Quaker Mary Dyer (hanged on the Boston Common in 1660), to the outrageous jailbird-politician James Michael Curley. Institutions that characterize our town are detailed, including things Bostonishly proper (The Somerset and Chilton Clubs) and improper (sexily tawdry Scollay Square), as well as the many footprints on Boston's cultural and aesthetic landscape: the earth-colored Trinity Church or the lovably garish Citgo sign...Always, as the book shows, there has been a sort of fire-and-ice dialectic between a Bostonian staidness of style on one side, and rebellion, opposition and innovation on the other. (Mopsy Strange Kennedy
The Improper Bostonian )
Planning a trip to Boston?...If you want an insiders' view of the city, bring along Boston College historian Thomas O'Connor's entertaining new book,
Boston A to Z. In eclectic essays arranged dictionary style--from Abigail Adams to the Zoo--O'Connor offers up nuggets of trivia that are informative and funny. (
Atlanta Journal-Constitution )
At its best,
Boston A to Z is neither revisionism nor hymn. It contrasts Boston's shameful parochialism with its very generous contributions to American life...Bostonians will want this book at hand, to answer inquisitive visitors and to know the minutiae of the city to which they are so devoted. (Mark Greif
Times Literary Supplement )
O'Connor has now, in
Boston A to Z, written a book about everybody's Boston...The 174 entries that make up 'A to Z' are topics O'Connor feels 'are representative of the fascinating, distinctive, and unique character of Boston.' All the expected things are there--the Public Garden and Fenway Park, the Tea Party and busing--along with others that it is a constant delight to come upon unexpectedly, like the Brink's robbery, the Steaming Kettle, and the Watch and Ward Society of 'Banned in Boston' fame...That is what Boston is all about--a place to wander, encountering both the grand and the curious. And one could not have a better companion than Tom O'Connor--if not in person, than in
Boston A to Z. (Michael Kenney
Boston Globe )
Like the city itself, [O'Connor's] book juxtaposes The Common and The Combat Zone, The Old North Church and The Old Howard, The Ponzi Scheme and The Pops. I came away from it with a fund of new and fascinating details about the hub of the solar system (so designated by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.)...I'm not going to reveal...these wonders...You'll have to look them up yourself. O'Connor makes no claim to comprehensiveness and freely admits that another writer might choose different entries. That's another reason it's so good: It's personal. (Geoffrey Elan
Yankee )
