A pocket-sized book describes points of interest and recommends hotels and restaurants in the city

Boston: A Rough Guide, First Edition (Rough Guide Pocket)

Travel

Grant, Anthony

Fagundes, David

United States

Rough Guides

Rough Guides brings a breath of fresh air to this intrinsically American region. The Rough Guide recaptures New England's rich history with in-depth coverage of authentic fishing ports, Shaker Villages, lighthouses, and literary landmarks; then jumps ahead to Boston and today's vibrant college towns; and takes in the timeless beauty of New England's diverse scenery. Features extensive coverage of hiking, skiing and other outdoor activities. With 51 maps and 8 pages of color photos.

Thr Rough Guide to New England

Tarrant, Paul

INTRODUCTION 
Boston is as close to the Old World as the New World gets, an American city that proudly trades in on its colonial past, having served a crucial role in the country’s development from a few wayward pilgrims right through the Revolutionary War. It occasionally takes its past a bit too seriously – what might pass for a faded relic anywhere else becomes a plaque-covered tourist sight here – but none of that detracts from the city’s overriding historic charm nor its present-day energy. Indeed, there are plenty of tall skyscrapers, thriving business concerns and cultural outposts that are part-and-parcel of modern urban America, not to mention excellent mergers of past and present, such as the redeveloped – and bustling – Quincy Market, a paradigm for successful urban renewal. No other city gives a better feel for the events and personas behind the birth of the nation, all played out in Boston’s wealth of emblematic and evocative colonial-era sights. But the city’s cafés and shops, its attractive public spaces, and the diversity of its neighborhoods – student hives, ethnic enclaves, and stately districts of preserved townhouses – are similarly alluring, going some way to answering the twin accusations of elitism and provincialism to which Boston is perennially subjected. 
As the undisputed commercial and cultural center of New England, Boston is the highlight of any trip to the region, truly unmissable as almost every road in the area leads to it (indeed Boston was, until the late-1700s America’s most populous and culturally important city). It’s also the center of the American university system – more than sixty colleges call the area home, including illustrious Harvard, in the neighboring city of Cambridge. This academic connection has also played a key part in the city’s long left-leaning political tradition, which has spawned a line of ethnic mayors, and, most famously, the Kennedy family. 
Today, Boston’s relatively small size – both physically and in terms of population (it ranks eighteenth among US cities) – and its provincial feel actually serve the city to advantage. Though it has expanded since it was first settled in 1630 through landfills and annexation, it has never lost its core, which remains a tangle of streets clustered around Boston Common that can really only be explored on foot. Steeped in Puritan roots, local residents often display a slightly anachronistic Yankee pride, but it’s one which has served to protect the city’s identity; indeed, the districts around the Common exude an almost small-town atmosphere, and, until recently at least, were relatively unmarred by chain stores and fast-food joints. Meanwhile, groups of Irish and Italian descent have carved out authentic and often equally unchanged communities in areas like the North End, Charlestown, and South Boston. Even as Boston has evolved from busy port to blighted city to the rejuvenated and prosperous place it is today, it has remained, fundamentally, a city on a human scale.

The Mini Rough Guide to Boston, 2nd Edition (Rough Guide Pocket)

INTRODUCTION 
The six New England states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine often regard themselves as the repository of all that is intrinsically American. In this version of history, the tangled streets of old Boston, the farms of Connecticut, and the villages of Vermont are the cradle of the nation. It’s a picture which has some truth to it, however, and, although nostalgia plays a big part in the tourist trade here, and innumerable small towns have been dolled up to recapture a past that can occasionally be wishful thinking, the appeal of New England is undeniable. It is the most historic region of the United States; its towns and villages are often rustic and pretty, with white-spired churches sitting beside tidy greens and colonial churchyards; and its landscape can get surprisingly diverse – ranging from some of its stark coastlines to its green rolling hills and mountains further inland. Like most regions that have a well-developed tourist industry, though, the trick is to find the unspoiled corners, and to distinguish the bogus from the authentic. 
Above all, New England packs an enormous amount of variety into what is by American standards a relatively small area. There are the region’s literary connections – with well-visited shrines to Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton, to name just a few New England writers. There is no shortage of inviting places to ski, hike, boat, or just watch the leaves change color and drop from the trees – which phenomenal numbers of people come to do each fall. And there are the historic sights, which manage to catalog all manner of New England architecture and design, not to mention Yankee pride and ingenuity. Boston especially is celebrated as the birthplace of American independence – so many of the seminal events of the Revolutionary War took place here, or just outside, in Lexington or Concord; and, although the genteel seaside towns of Massachusetts and Rhode Island can seem a far cry from the first European settlements in New England, plenty of traces of those early years remain. This is, after all, the stretch of the United States where the Pilgrim Fathers and other religious sects put down their stakes, their survival aided by groups of Native Americans who themselves were eventually displaced, though their legacy remains, too, in place names throughout the region. Later, as the European foothold on the continent became more secure, the coastline became increasingly prime real estate, lined with grand patrician homes, from the Vanderbilt mansions of Newport to the presidential compounds of the Bush and Kennedy families. Inland, the Ivy League colleges of Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth and others still embody New England’s strong sense of its own superiority, and contribute to accusations of provincialism and snobbishness; in fact, the region’s traditional role as home to the WASP elite is due more to the vagaries of history and ideology than to economic realities. Its thin soil and harsh climate made it difficult for the first pioneers to sustain an agricultural way of life, while the industrial prosperity of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is now but a distant memory. Indeed, New England has pockets, in Vermont and the other more northerly states, that are as poor as anywhere in the US; and the southern states have all the problems that are normally associated with long-established urban conglomerations. 
Despite the apparent gulf between its interior and coast – and, too, its northern and southern halves – New England is compact and well defined, and quite easy to get around; only Maine, New England’s biggest and most rural state by some way, takes any real time and effort to navigate. Most of its states offer the same mix (to differing degrees) of picturesque small towns and villages and at times dramatic landscapes, though each has its own distinctive character. When you’re working out where to go, plan to include coverage of at least parts of two to three states, in order to pick up on some of that difference. The southern states of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island are more urban and historic and, where nature intervenes, it is usually along the region’s spectacular coastline. Here, the tourist facilities are aimed as much at weekenders from the big cities as outsiders – Cape Cod, the Berkshires, Martha’s Vineyard, all are convenient (and very popular) targets for moneyed locals. Further north, the lakes and mountains of Vermont, New Hampshire, and particularly Maine, offer wilderness to rival any in the nation.

The Rough Guide to New England (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

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Books by Fagundes, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fagundes, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Boston: A Rough Guide, First Edition (Rough Guide Pocket)

Thr Rough Guide to New England

The Mini Rough Guide to Boston, 2nd Edition (Rough Guide Pocket)

The Rough Guide to New England (Rough Guide Travel Guides)