Books : History : United States : State & Local : New Hampshire

In the shadow of the fallen Old Man of the Mountain, on a lonely stretch of mountain road, two men lay dead. A spasm of violence that took only a few minutes to play out leaves a community divided and searching for answers.

Bad Blood is the riveting account of the long-standing feud between Franconia, New Hampshire, police officer Bruce McKay, 48, and Liko Kenney, 24. In May 2007, Kenney shot and killed Officer McKay, following a dramatic chase that began with a routine traffic stop. Kenney, cousin of ski legend Bode Miller, was then shot and killed by a shadowy passerby. Almost immediately, the tragic incident revealed deep tensions within this otherwise quiet community in the White Mountains with charges that Kenney was a hell-raiser and mentally unstable and counter-charges that Officer McKay was a rogue cop who dispensed justice as a way to settle personal scores. Striving to get at the truth of the story, the author uncovers a complicated mix of personalities and motivations. Local and statewide interests clash while regional and national media-- and even YouTube viewers-- supply ready stereotypes to fit their agendas. Amid larger questions of the meaning of individual freedom we are, ultimately, helpless witnesses to an inevitable clash of characters.

This guide to over 100 waterfalls in the White Mountains of New Hampshire tells the best tmes of year and vantage points from which to view them, and also gives suggestions for further hikes, swimming holes, and uncrowded picnic spots. Excursions range in length from a short strill from the car to a hike of nearly 20 miles across the Presidential Range. Each chapter includes complete hiking information: distance, dificulty, altitude gain, and trail directions; as well as a map, essays on local history and lore.

The official guide to the 330 miles of the Appalachian Trail between Grafton Notch (Maine 26) in Maine and North Adams, Mass., covering the highly popular route across the White Mountains of New Hampshire and down the spine of the Green Mountains of Vermont (both in national forests). This guidebook, in modern unidirectional format, comes with a set of eight detached, GIS-based topographical maps (four sheets, printed on both sides), scaled at 1:63,360 with 100-foot contours and including elevation profiles, shelters and other features, and water sources.

Seahawk is a history of a championship New England town hockey team composed of WWII veterans, and a memoir of a boy's lifelong connection to hockey. At the age of fourteen, the author became the Seahawks' goaltender. The Rye, NH Seahawks were a dominant club, and played for a New Hampshire Class B state championship and a New England Class B championship in the venerable Boston Garden. Explores aging while playing contact sports.

Acclaimed naturalist David M. Carroll guides readers through the yearly cycle of the freshwater turtle. With lyrical yet factual prose observations, Carroll also includes more than 100 of his carefully executed full-color drawings.

Enjoy days of pleasure exploring the flatwater lakes and ponds of New Hampshire and Vermont. Great for paddlers of all ages and abilities, this updated and expanded guide offers detailed descriptions of more than 90 scenic destinations - including 55 new paddles.

Special features include: detailed descriptions of each lake and pond, with paddling routes, local flora and fauna, and seasonal highlights; driving, parking, and put-in instructions; safety tips; local picnicking and camping spots; equipment choices; advice for padding with children; low-impact travel tips; illustrated sidebars on New England's fascinating waterside wildlife.

An evocative history of a World War II German POW camp in New Hampshire, where friendships among prisoners, guards, and villagers overcame the bitter divisions of war.

Taking our understanding of political antislavery into largely unexplored terrain, Jonathan H. Earle counters conventional wisdom and standard historical interpretations that view the ascendance of free-soil ideas within the antislavery movement as an explicit retreat from the goals of emancipation or even as an essentially proslavery ideology. These claims, he notes, fail to explain free soil's real contributions to the antislavery cause: its incorporation of Jacksonian ideas about property and political equality and its transformation of a struggling crusade into a mass political movement.

Democratic free soilers' views on race occupied a wide spectrum, but they were able to fashion new and vital arguments against slavery and its expansion based on the party's long-standing commitment to egalitarianism and hostility to centralized power. Linking their antislavery stance to a land-reform agenda that pressed for free land for poor settlers in addition to land free of slavery, Free Soil Democrats forced major political realignments in New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Ohio. Democratic politicians such as David Wilmot, Marcus Morton, John Parker Hale, and even former president Martin Van Buren were transformed into antislavery leaders. As Earle shows, these political changes at the local, state, and national levels greatly intensified the looming sectional crisis and paved the way for the Civil War.

Illustrated. Thomas Bailey Aldrich attracted a lot of attention in his day with his writing style. An Old Town by the Sea captures the spirit of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, region at the end of the 19th century, and the illustrations add to the mixture.

The White Mountains, solid and ageless peaks of granite, rise up across the landscape of northern New Hampshire. Their natural beauty has inspired visitors to the state for centuries. Generations of visitors to the mountains have found something new and meaningful for themselves and for the culture in which they live.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the region's magnificent and varied scenery attracted tourists and artists from around the country as well as from Europe. More than four hundred artists are known to have painted White Mountain scenes before 1900. Artists who visited New Hampshire during the second half of the nineteenth century interpreted White Mountain scenery in ways designed to appeal to and attract tourists and to serve as souvenirs of their mountain visits. Hotel owners encouraged painters to work and to take up residence in the White Mountain hotels. Paintings enriched the tourists' sensibilities and enhanced an appreciation of the landscape, even as a growing middle class was gaining cultural as well as economic power. Merchants, bankers, and attorneys, along with their families, embraced gentility by acquiring, displaying, and contemplating paintings. For some these paintings remained mere symbols of their own rising economic status. For others these objects and images were of more spiritual than economic value.

Each painting included in this book presents a compelling and unique perspective of a White Mountain locale. All thirty-seven paintings featured are reproduced in full color. The artworks are organized geographically, following routes nineteenth century travelers took while touring the White Mountains. The reader will be able to explore the key sites that attracted tourists and inspired artists, beginning and ending with a visit to North Conway, home of the earliest White Mountain artists' community.

Thirty-three authors from many different disciplines have contributed to this publication. Approaching the subject from a variety of perspectives, they reveal the story and significance of White Mountain scenery, of the nineteenth-century artists who depicted it, and of the people (consumers) who acquired, owned, and cherished White Mountain art.

A gorgeous tribute to the White Mountains in pictures and words.

This is a field guide to the diverse flora of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont states. It comprises descriptions of both commonly encountered and rarer, protected species. The keys are set up to direct the reader easily to major groups based on flower colour and other physical characteristics.