Genres

Massachusetts

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The Daring Ladies of Lowell by Kate Alcott

Call the Darkness Light by Nancy Zaroulis

Lowell Mills

56 books — 8 voters

Atlantic Zone

92 books — 13 voters

Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center

Books Set in New England

244 books — 125 voters

Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey

Boston Books

338 books — 287 voters

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

Historical Fiction - New England

118 books — 28 voters

I Survived the Great Molasses Flood, 1919 by Karen De La Vega

What Was the Great Molasses Flood of 1919? by Kirsten Anderson

The Great Molasses Flood by Charles River Editors

The Great Molasses Flood - January 15, 1919

10 books — 1 voter

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I Love the…’90s! A Throwback Reading List for the Decade

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“ The chief care of the legislators [in the colonies of New England] was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the community: thus they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and there was scarcely a sin which was no subject to magisterial censure. The reader is aware of the rigor with which these laws punished rape and adultery; intercourse between unmarried persons was likewise severely repressed. The judge was empowered to inflict either a pecuniary penalty, a whipping, or The chief care of the legislators [in the colonies of New England] was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the community: thus they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and there was scarcely a sin which was no subject to magisterial censure. The reader is aware of the rigor with which these laws punished rape and adultery; intercourse between unmarried persons was likewise severely repressed. The judge was empowered to inflict either a pecuniary penalty, a whipping, or marriage, on the misdemeanants; and if the records of the old courts of New Haven may be believed, prosecutions of this kind were not unfrequent. We find a sentence, bearing date the 1st of May, 1660, inflicting a fine and reprimand on a young woman who was accused of using improper language, and of allowing herself to be kissed. The Code of 1650 abounds in preventive measures. It punishes idleness and drunkenness with severity. Innkeepers were forbidden to furnish more than certain quantities of liquor to each customer; and simple lying, whenever it may be injurious, is checked by a fine or a flogging. In other places, the legislator, entirely forgetting the great principles of religious toleration which he had himself demanded in Europe, makes attendance on divine service compulsory, and goes so far as to visit with severe punishment, and even with death, Christians who choose to worship God according to a ritual differing from his own. Sometimes, indeed, the zeal for regulation induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same code which prohibits the use of tobacco. It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and vexatious laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested in them, and that the manners of the community were even more austere and puritanical than the laws.... These errors are no doubt discreditable to human reason; they attest the inferiority of our nature, which is incapable of laying firm hold upon what is true and just, and is often reduced to the alternative of two excesses. In strict connection with this penal legislation, which bears such striking marks of a narrow, sectarian spirit, and of those religious passions which had been warmed by persecution and were still fermenting among the people, a body of political laws is to be found, which, though written two hundred years ago, is still in advance of the liberties of our own age. ...more ”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

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“ At least when I get on the Boston train I have a good chance of landing in the South Station And not in that part of the daily press which is reserved for victims of aviation. ”
― Ogden Nash, Hard Lines

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