New Hampshire

Waterfalls of the White Mountains: 30 Hikes to 100 Waterfalls

The Terrible Hours: The Greatest Submarine Rescue in History

May 23, 1939. Television was being advertised for the first time to American consumers. Europe was on the brink of war as Hitler and Mussolini signed an alliance in Berlin. These were the days before sonar and before the discovery of nuclear power revolutionized submarine design. Dependent on battery power, submarines were actually surface ships that "occasionally dipped beneath the waves." If a sub went down, "every man on board was doomed. It was accepted that there would be no deliverance."

Swede Momsen was, according to master storyteller Peter Maas, the "greatest submariner the Navy ever had," and he was determined to beat those odds. Momsen spent his career trying to save the lives of trapped submariners, despite an indifferent Navy bureaucracy that thwarted and belittled his efforts at every turn. Every way of saving a sailor entombed in a sub--"smoke bombs, telephone marker buoys, new deep-sea diving techniques, escape hatches, artificial lungs, a great pear-shaped rescue chamber--was either a direct result of Momsen's inventive derring-do, or of value only because of it." Yet on the day the Squalus sank, none of Momsen's inventions had been used in an actual submarine disaster.

In The Terrible Hours, Maas reconstructs the harrowing 39 hours between the disappearance of the submarine Squalus during a test dive off the New England coast and the eventual rescue of 33 crew members trapped in the vessel 250 feet beneath the sea. It's also the story of Momsen's triumph. Under the worst possible circumstances, Momsen led a successful mission and helped change the future of undersea lifesaving. Not only has Maas written a carefully researched and suspenseful tribute to a true hero, in the process he has salvaged a long-forgotten, riveting piece of American history. --Svenja Soldovieri

Like a tough old salt holding forth in a dockside pub, Kevin Conway narrates this riveting maritime drama in a raspy voice well-weathered by sea spray and Lucky Strikes. Chronicling the true story of 33 American sailors trapped aboard a sunken submarine just prior to World War II, author Peter Maas uncovered the unsung hero behind their attempted rescue, Navy officer Charles "Swede" Momsen. A deep sea visionary, Momsen's unorthodox theories and unproven inventions represented the lost men's only hope. "For someone whose formal education had shaped him for duty as a line officer in the US Navy, Momsen was getting into pretty deep water." Conway does an excellent job of portraying the various crew members without turning character into caricature and knots the nerve-wracking, claustrophobic tension of this ill-fated mission in the back of your throat. (Running time: 6 hours, 4 cassettes) --George Laney

On the eve of World War II, the Squalus, America's newest submarine, plunged into the North Atlantic. Miraculously, thirty-three crew members still survived. While their loved ones waited in unbearable tension on shore, their ultimate fate would depend upon one man, U.S. Navy officer Charles "Swede" Momsen -- an extraordinary combination of visionary, scientist, and man of action. In this thrilling true narrative, prize-winning author Peter Maas brings us in the vivid detail a moment-by-moment account of the disaster and the man at its center. Could he actually pluck those men from a watery grave? Or had all his pioneering work been in vain?

The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft and Conflict in Early New England

Town House: Architecture and Material Life in the Early American City, 1780-1830

In this abundantly illustrated volume, Bernard Herman provides a history of urban dwellings and the people who built and lived in them in early America. In the eighteenth century, cities were constant objects of idealization, often viewed as the outward manifestations of an organized, civil society. As the physical objects that composed the largest portion of urban settings, town houses contained and signified different aspects of city life, argues Herman.

Taking a material culture approach, Herman examines urban domestic buildings from Charleston, South Carolina, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as well as those in English cities and towns, to better understand why people built the houses they did and how their homes informed everyday city life. Working with buildings and documentary sources as diverse as court cases and recipes, Herman interprets town houses as lived experience. Chapters consider an array of domestic spaces, including the merchant family's house, the servant's quarter, and the widow's dower. Herman demonstrates that city houses served as sites of power as well as complex and often conflicted artifacts mapping the everyday negotiations of social identity and the display of sociability.

Stark Decency: German Prisoners of War in a New England Village

Stark Decency is a window into the events of two vastly different worlds: German combat veterans captured in North Africa and Normandy, and the small New Hampshire logging town which found itself hosting the prison camp. Each side was forced to confront its prejudices and fears, and examine the merits and flaws of its ideology. Then, an astonishing thing happened: in their rural isolation, sharing harsh weather conditions and the pinch of wartime rationing, friendships began to develop. Prisoners and their guards sometimes even worked together to meet the daily pulpwood quotas, and little handmade gifts to the local villagers cemented friendships that continue to this day.

My Brave Boys: To War with Colonel Cross and the Fighting Fifth

Two thousand regiments fought in Union armies during the Civil War. None -- not one -- suffered more deaths in battle than the Fifth New Hampshire Volunteers. At the center of this regiment's searing experience is Colonel Edward Cross, a journalist and adventurer who infused the Fifth with his formidable personality. Concord Monitor editors Mike Pride and Mark Travis spent eight years digging for the story of Cross and his men in letters, diaries, memoirs, official records, and newspaper accounts. The result is a military history unfolded in human terms, as the men themselves experienced it.

As Walter Holden, a longtime student of the Fifth, writes in his foreword: "The reader will see how an outstanding regiment was formed and outfitted, how the men camped and marched, how they reacted to battle. Here are the deft personal touches that bring events to life. Here are the heroics but also the gripes and backbiting, the conflicts between leaders and the subjugation of the individual for the success of the group." This is a book for any Civil War buff or student of history, but it will be of particular interest in the state that produced this extraordinary regiment long ago.

Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil, 1824-1854

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.

Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City (Library of New England)

A Time Before New Hampshire: The Story of a Land and Native Peoples

In this masterful and elegant book, Michael J. Caduto tells the complete story of the land of New Hampshire--starting with the formation of earth 4.6 billion years ago and continuing with changes to its peoples and the environment through the seventeenth century. Part I offers a comprehensive look at every aspect of the ancient natural world--including geology, glaciology, botany, climatology, ecology, zoology, and paleobotany. It describes the formation of the land hundreds of millions of years ago as a result of major movements in the tectonic plates; chronicles the rise and fall of reptiles, mammals, birds, and plants and other life forms stemming from climatic changes; and explores the arrival of human beings during and after the relatively recent ice age.

The rest of the volume immerses the reader in the history of the human populations in New Hampshire, beginning with the Paleoindian period of hunter gatherers over twelve thousand years ago and continuing through the arrival of horticulture among the Alnobak (Abenaki) and beyond. Caduto explores the Alnobak's day-to-day existence, culture, and traditional tales as preserved by archeologists, anthropologists, historians, and living cultures. Emphasizing the beliefs, cultures, and practices of these native people, Caduto details the Alnobak's relationship to the natural world as he tells the story of coevolution between the land and people through time.

Caduto takes the reader on an exploration through New Hampshire's rich and diverse history--using first-hand experiences, re-creations of natural and human environments, journeys through historical landscapes and visits with the families of ancient people--to present a thorough profile of the early beginnings of the Granite State.

The volume features an epilogue by Charlie True, Member of the Tribal Council, Abenaki Nation of New Hampshire, and nearly one hundred photographs, illustrations, and detailed maps depicting past peoples, historical trails, and indigenous cultures and environments of New Hampshire.

New Hampshire Patterns

For most people familiar with New Hampshire, the Granite State has two distinct identities. New Hampshire is often depicted as a place of picturesque farms, mountains, forests, and postcard-perfect villages with pretty town commons and colonial era houses. Yet for most of the twentieth century, such New Hampshire cities and towns as Manchester, Berlin and Keene developed small-scale urban industrialized societies dominated by textile, woolen, and paper mills.

In the twenty-first century, New Hampshire's duality has given way to a far more varied identity. Radical demographic and economic changes have transformed entire regions. Some towns in Southern New Hampshire have doubled and tripled in size, serving as bedroom communities for greater Boston. Increased property development in the two lakes regions and the Upper Valley continue to transform small town rural life in unexpected ways.

This book offers two personal looks at a state whose venerable history stands in lively contrast to its changing times. Over a hundred full-color photographs by Jon Gilbert Fox capture the charm of small town parades and agricultural fairs, as well as the uniqueness of such traditional New Hampshire places as Franconia Notch, Strawbery Banke, and Canterbury Shaker Village. Fox also brings to vivid life more recent cultural phenomena, including the NASCAR races at Loudon and Laconia's annual motorcycle week.

Complementing Fox's visual appreciation of New Hampshire are ten essays by Ernest Hebert, one of the state's most beloved native sons. Hebert, a lifelong citizen of New Hampshire, weaves personal experience and family traditions into essays that include meditations on the (former) Old Man of the Mountain, New Hampshire politics, baseball, motorcycles, fly fishing, moose, yard sales, chopping wood, and more. Taken together, Fox's photographs and Hebert's text provide an elegant and richly textured salute to the Granite State.