Harbor Hill: Portrait of a House Review

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Harbor Hill: Portrait of a House ReviewHarbor Hill was one of the most spectacular mansions ever built in America. Designed by the iconic Stanford White and built to embody the MacKays desire to accend to the pinacle of NYC society. This book charts the rise of the MacKays and their ultimate demise, along with the similar fate of this great house. The mistress of the house was a real peice of work, but this beautiful showplace was really her creation, she knew what she wanted and Stanford White gave it to her, with Mr. MacKay's money of course. The book is well researched and it's an interesting read and the images are first rate. Honestly, it's tragic that this house no longer survives, you just wonder what kind of philstine could tear something like this down, unfortunitely this being America and not Europe, none of us should be surprised it was so uncerimoniously destroyed. Harbor Hills fate closely resembles the great Philadelphia mansion, Whitehall, and the MacKays are more than a bit similiar to the Stotesbury's, both thought they built their great estates to last for centuries and instead they barely outlived them..when you see the kind of grand mansions built today in places like Bel Air and Palm Beach, you can't help but notice how inferior they are in comparison to the great Gilded Age mansions like Harbor Hill, it's a shame we dont have more respect for beautiful architecture of the past, we inherited so much from the Europeans, but that unfortunitely was not one of them...too bad for Harbor Hill, now just a ghost, haunting old sepia stained images.Harbor Hill: Portrait of a House Overview

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Choices Review

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Choices ReviewChoices was a holiday gift to me in 1996 and I was surprised to discover a Southern writer who had written so many books that I'd not heard of. Then, once I read Choices, I was really amazed that I'd missed a writer of such quality with such a compelling story to tell. Because my books circulate to family and friends, this copy of Choices has been dropped in the ocean or bathtub or both and now bears a fair amount of tape.But it's battered condition shows the number of folks that have enjoyed it; each exclaims that this is such a good book.Choices Overview

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At Home: A Short History of Private Life Review

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At Home: A Short History of Private Life ReviewIs there anything Bill Bryson isn't interested in? He moves from one subject to the next with equal amounts of genuine enthusiasm. And we're not talking about just the really remarkable stuff - a lot of what gets Bryson going seems quite mundane. Mousetraps, for instance. Once he has you hooked, you too realize that even mousetraps are pretty fascinating after all.
There's no point looking for a theme to At Home, even though it's nominally a social history of the home, specifically Bryson's home, a former rectory in Norfolk, built in 1851. Going from room to room is just an excuse for Bryson to expound on whatever he finds interesting. It might be best to take the book as a series of loosely connected magazine articles or short essays. You can skip around without losing the thread, because there isn't one.
Most of the history is Victorian, but there are side trips to the prehistoric Britain, 19th century America, and the recent past. This is not an academic book, so there are no footnotes, which is a shame. Although Bryson usually credits sources within the text, now and then he makes an outrageous statement without attribution. One that had me scrambling for some supporting evidence was a claim that Elizabeth I admired, then scooped some silverware into her purse at dinner in a nobleman's house while on her annual royal progress. Even more remarkable was a statement that one third of all women in London aged 15-25 in 1851 were prostitutes. Really?! After browsing through the lengthy and excellent bibliography, I found the instruction to go to Bryson's website for notes and sources, but found only that they are "coming soon."
Chances are you won't be interested in everything that takes Bryson's fancy, but no worry. If you find your attention waning during a discussion of furniture varnishes, it isn't long before he's off to vitamins or Thomas Jefferson's wine collection or Ötzi the Ice Man.
I'll admit that I might have skipped this book if Bryson's name wasn't on the cover, and wondered if it could have been published at all without his name and popularity. His early works are still my favorites, more or less in the order they were written. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America still makes me laugh, so does Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe, and Notes from a Small Island, and I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away (Notes from a Big Country). I expect I'll continue to read just about anything Bryson writes, but I have to agree with some other reviewers who look forward to his travel writing more than his excursions into weightier topics.
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McKay's Bees: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction) Review

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McKay's Bees: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction) ReviewThis book reads as though it was written in a rush, or by a child. Very simple and sometimes somewhat disjointed. It lacked depth and was a disappointing read. I heard a book review on NPR and thought it would be much better. Should have cost $2.99 for the Kindle version and not $9.99!McKay's Bees: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction) OverviewMoving from Massachusetts to Kansas in 1855 with his new wife and a group of German carpenters, Gordon McKay is dead set on making his fortune raising bees—undaunted by Missouri border ruffians, newly-minted Darwinism, or the unsettled politics of a country on the brink of civil war.

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At Home: The American Family 1750-1870 Review

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At Home: The American Family 1750-1870 ReviewAt Home gives detailed descriptions of the daily routine "behind the scenes" for families and houses from 1750-1870. This book provides valuable background for understanding the lives of people who inhabited the historic homes that I take my interior design students to visit. We can appreciate the objects, furniture, and furnishings much more when we realize how they were used and how much work it took to maintain them!At Home: The American Family 1750-1870 Overview

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