A truly engaging treatment of a fascinating city. Neither a dictionary nor encyclopedia, but a book for general readers who want a handy source on Boston's history, its unique terms and quirks along with selected notable personalities, Boston A to Z is a singular volume in the literature on Boston, written in O'Connor's usual appealing style. There are histories and memoirs and books which treat individual buildings and neighborhoods but nothing like this book.
-- Lawrence W. Kennedy, author of Planning the City upon a Hill: Boston since 1630
Tom O'Connor has long been the dean of Boston history. Now, perhaps to celebrate his deanship, he has prepared a gift for us all: a kind of trot to Boston history and biography so that, at least, we can know something of what we all like to talk about.
-- Sam Bass Warner, Jr., author of Streetcar Suburbs (Harvard)
Boston A to Z offers a wonderfully eclectic introduction to that part of Boston's history still visible today. With trenchant commentary on everything from Sacco and Vanzetti, whose busts have recently been installed in the Public Library, to the Ancient and Honorables, the oldest military body in the Western Hemisphere, with memorabilia in Faneuil Hall, Thomas O'Connor infuses Boston's multi-faceted past into our present in this model guide.
-- Joyce Appleby, author of Inheriting the Revolution (Harvard)
From John Winthrop to Jordan Marsh, Boston A to Z is an encyclopedia of Boston lore, fascinating reading for Bostonians and visitors alike.
-- Jill Lepore, Boston University
Over the years, University Historian Thomas H. O'Connor had amassed enough anecdotes and yarns about Boston to fill Fenway Park...The result is his latest book, Boston A to Z, which features some 200 historical essays, legends and little known facts on Boston's people, places, politics and personality. Equally informative and entertaining, and intended for natives and newcomers alike, it is an affectionate look at the life and times of a city by its foremost chronicler.
-- Reid Oslin Boston College Chronicle
Thomas O'Connor, university historian and professor emeritus from Boston College, has done what all emeriti should do: made his vast learning available in a manageably brief and interesting form. In each several-pages-long entry, O'Connor paves the city with mini-biographies of its many historical figures, from John and Sam Adams to Quaker Mary Dyer (hanged on the Boston Common in 1660), to the outrageous jailbird-politician James Michael Curley. Institutions that characterize our town are detailed, including things Bostonishly proper (The Somerset and Chilton Clubs) and improper (sexily tawdry Scollay Square), as well as the many footprints on Boston's cultural and aesthetic landscape: the earth-colored Trinity Church or the lovably garish Citgo sign...Always, as the book shows, there has been a sort of fire-and-ice dialectic between a Bostonian staidness of style on one side, and rebellion, opposition and innovation on the other.
-- Mopsy Strange Kennedy The Improper Bostonian
Planning a trip to Boston?...If you want an insiders' view of the city, bring along Boston College historian Thomas O'Connor's entertaining new book, Boston A to Z. In eclectic essays arranged dictionary style--from Abigail Adams to the Zoo--O'Connor offers up nuggets of trivia that are informative and funny.
-- Atlanta Journal-Constitution
At its best, Boston A to Z is neither revisionism nor hymn. It contrasts Boston's shameful parochialism with its very generous contributions to American life...Bostonians will want this book at hand, to answer inquisitive visitors and to know the minutiae of the city to which they are so devoted.
-- Mark Greif Times Literary Supplement
O'Connor has now, in Boston A to Z, written a book about everybody's Boston...The 174 entries that make up 'A to Z' are topics O'Connor feels 'are representative of the fascinating, distinctive, and unique character of Boston.' All the expected things are there--the Public Garden and Fenway Park, the Tea Party and busing--along with others that it is a constant delight to come upon unexpectedly, like the Brink's robbery, the Steaming Kettle, and the Watch and Ward Society of 'Banned in Boston' fame...That is what Boston is all about--a place to wander, encountering both the grand and the curious. And one could not have a better companion than Tom O'Connor--if not in person, than in Boston A to Z.
-- Michael Kenney Boston Globe
Like the city itself, [O'Connor's] book juxtaposes The Common and The Combat Zone, The Old North Church and The Old Howard, The Ponzi Scheme and The Pops. I came away from it with a fund of new and fascinating details about the hub of the solar system (so designated by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.)...I'm not going to reveal...these wonders...You'll have to look them up yourself. O'Connor makes no claim to comprehensiveness and freely admits that another writer might choose different entries. That's another reason it's so good: It's personal.
-- Geoffrey Elan Yankee