Emily HiestandRecensioni

I read this book with bias because I love Boston. It is my favorite city when compared to New York, Denver or San Diego. Hands down, bar none. I love everything about Boston and I love it for everything it isn't. In The Good City Emily Hiestand and Ande Zellman compile essays from fifteen different writers who have or had a connection with Beantown. Some writers returned to the city with a change of heart, like Susan Orlean. Other have never left and staunchly stand by the historic city. It shouldn't be read like travel guide although, I admit, I jotted down notes for the next time I'm there: Isabella Stewart Gardiner's Museum, the Christian Science Center, to name two.

One of the book blurbs from our Press states this to be ‘the best travel book’ of the year. No, no, and no – it is far more than a ‘travel book’, it is instead several rich reading hours of travel, history, anthropology and environmental concerns and delights.

We do read of traveling in Orkney (Scotland) where the author was accompanied by her mother, a lady of botanical study, and of the Glades (with some funny education in house-boat handling) and wandering through Greece – a flow of history – and a charming portrait of Belize, an extremely underrated destination for the historical curious.

Constantly throughout the book and, obviously the through the author’s travel, ecological concerns, tinged with modern guilt arise, but never to the level where our admiration and interest are obstructed and always thought provoking.

A delightful read and I will watch the author’s web-site to see if any more “travel books” arise in the future.

Meh. I bought this as part of an effort to get a bit more of a literary, cultural, historical, etc view of my adopted home, and while there is a bit of that to be found here, it’s mostly writers grinding their personal sociopolitical axes, and also a bit too much fluff. Not that there’s anything wrong with a personal take, or a political one, or any angle whatsoever in the abstract, but in a collection ostensibly about the city, I would like the essays to be a little less tangential and narrowly focused.

Hiestand, Emily, 1947- > Journeys/Poets, American > 20th century > Biography/Voyages And Travels