By Paul Carrier
First, a warning. The Encyclopedia of New England does not make for very good bedtime reading. Not because of its content, but because of its heft. This oversize volume, which clocks in at 1,564 pages, is about 2 1/2 inches thick and weighs more than seven pounds. Drop it when you doze off and you’re liable to break a random body part.
Published by Yale University Press in 2005, the encyclopedia is somewhat dated on topics that have evolved over the last decade or so. But it’s a treasure trove of historical information about all manner of things in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, with entries by close to 1,000 experts.
Need a list of art museums in New England? The name of the guy who switched on the lights at the Boston Garden when it opened in 1928? The brewery that produced New England’s most popular beer following the repeal of Prohibition? It’s all here. “Finally, the most livable, civilized, and interesting part of the country can prove it without bragging,” documentary filmmaker Ken Burns (who gets his own entry) says in a dust-jacket blurb.
The book is not organized in a standard A-to-Z format, nor is it arranged by state. Instead, it’s divided into 22 thematic sections ranging from Agriculture to Tourism. Tucked in between those chapters are sections on such topics as Art, Education, Folklife, History, Literature, Politics and Religion, among others.
Each chapter opens with an introduction to the topic and, in some cases, an overview, followed by articles arranged alphabetically. Each section has a table of contents, which cross references related articles elsewhere in the encyclopedia. All, told, the 22 sections contain 1,300 entries and more than 500 illustrations and maps.
The section on Ethnic and Racial Identity shows how the format works. It includes an 18-age introduction, followed by more than 60 shorter articles on individuals (Crispus Attucks, Frederick Douglass), groups (Franco-Americans, Passamaquoddy Indians), and history (Amistad Case, Underground Railroad).
Abenaki, Jews, Portuguese and Vietnamese appear in the table of contents for the Ethnic and Racial Identity chapter because there is an individual entry on each of them there. Louis Francis Sockalexis is in that table of contents as well, but readers are referred to the Sports and Recreation section for an article on Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian from Maine who played baseball professionally in Cleveland.
Similarly, Maritime New England has a 14-page introduction, followed by more than 40 alphabetized entries ranging from Atlantic Slave Trade to Yachting and Recreational Boating. Here too, the table of contents sends readers elsewhere for some related articles. The Cape Cod National Seashore appears in the Geography and Environment section. Maritime Literature turns up in Literature.
In a work of this size, there are bound to be some editing decisions with which readers may disagree. William Lloyd Garrison, the famed abolitionist, is mentioned in several articles, but has none of his own. Fittingly, The Boston Globe gets its own entry, but publisher Isaiah Thomas and his Massachusetts Spy, one of the most prominent newspapers of the 1770s, do not. There’s a five-paragraph article on the Hartford Courant, but The Providence Journal-Bulletin (now The Providence Journal) only gets a few lines, in an entry on politics.
Although there are no state-by-state sections, the History section includes separate articles on each of the six states. So does the Images and Ideas section. Flip to Maine in the comprehensive index and you’ll find entries on Aroostook County, Baxter State Park, the forest fires of 1947, and Prohibition. The index also cites articles and tables in which Maine is mentioned at least in passing on such topics as agriculture, Catholicism, environmentalism, government, the lumber industry, Native American land claims, and newspapers.
An added bonus is that many, if not most, articles close with suggestions for further reading. The History section’s entry on New Hampshire lists eight books that explore the Granite State's past in more detail. Need more information on the Green Mountains of Vermont? That article (in Geography and Environment) recommends five books.
Two of the most entertaining chapters are Sports and Recreation (with articles on Red Auerbach, professional teams, candlepin bowling and Ted Williams) and Media, where you’ll find entries on Car Talk, Julia Child and Peyton Place. Readers learn that Rhode Island radio and TV legend Salty Brine (1918-2004) was on the radio for so long that a Providence Journal columnist once wrote: “Howard Stern? Salty Brine has socks older than Howard Stern.”
