About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
James Sullivan
Positive Portland Press Herald Sullivan can have a great way with words. His descriptions can be tellingly evocative ... He also deftly uses the naval vernacular...inherited from his interviews, adding color without sounding phony. At times, though, the writing is strained, if not clunky ... But then a pure, almost poetic, sentence slips out ... [The] last chapter is as moving as the one preceding it was gut-wrenching.
Heather Cox Richardson
Rave Portland Press Herald Richardson is interested in big ideas. On more than one occasion, I could have used a bit more about how a specific cause had its effect. But getting into the weeds is not her goal. Rather, she is a surgeon who opens an unobstructed view of the arteries of history that have fed, and still feed, the American heart ... In theory, the Civil War saw the triumph of democracy over oligarchy. Richardson argues, powerfully, that it didn’t really turn out that way ... Richardson hammers home her points over and over again. This is no criticism ... And this is not mere repetition. It is as beautifully (and relentlessly) organized as a Bach fugue. Quite simply, How the South Won the Civil War should be required reading for everyone.
Seth Rogoff
Positive The Portland Press Herald The mere act of reading the book gives pleasure, even when the story line is perplexing, sometimes seemingly arbitrarily so ... Rogoff has the ability to limn a character, as it were, at second hand. All the reader knows about Abel Prager comes from his disjointed literary output ... Rogoff slyly underlines Prager’s emotional immaturity with his collection of quotes that are among the Sage of Walden’s most self-inflated ... savor the beguiling uncertainty.
Porter Fox
Mixed Portland Press Herald Each section breaks down into a colorful tapestry of history, geology, culture and happenstance ... Throughout his journey Fox weaves together a fascinating history: of the original people and their different tribes; of the first explorers, especially the French; of the surveyors who laid out the border bit by bit throughout the 19th century. His encounters with the men and women who currently populate the northland are well drawn ... At the end of the line, something about the book doesn’t quite click. Despite his statement at the beginning that, \'There was no time line,\' there are occasions when the reader feels he travels from stop to stop like the much-mocked birdwatcher searching just to check off a species on his life-list ... For this reader, Fox’s \'arcadian concept\' felt too much like a self-conscious construct, with more than a hint of Game of Thrones.
Robert Moor
Rave The Portland Press Herald ...a wonderfully rich and human book. It is a trail all on its own, marked by the procession of internal contemplation and idea-spinning that a long solitary walk in the woods can produce. Moor is interested in everything, with a knack for communicating that curiosity to the reader, and he has lined up a chorus line of experts that are as one-of-a-kind as their various specialties ... Thru-hikers be warned: you’ll be ditching some essentials to make room for On Trails in your pack.