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Cape Cod is known for its beaches, throngs of summer visitors, and the activities that accompany seaside living, but it is also home to many kettle ponds, which offer a more tranquil setting. Formed from glaciers breaking apart and so named due to a rounded shape that appears like a kettle, these waterways are home to a diverse array of wildlife, while remaining peaceful and even a bit hidden.

Big enough for a canoeist to feel solitude and serenity, small enough to not appear on large-scale maps, Centerville’s Long Pond (one of seven on the Cape that share this name), consists of fifty-one acres of crystal clear waters, fresh air, and the fish, turtles, waterfowl, ospreys, and otters that call this special place home. In A Moving Meditation, Stephen G. Waller offers an intimate look at the pond’s intriguing natural and human history; its abundant animal life, across the seasons; and the encroaching effects of climate change.

In 1812, New Hampshire shopkeeper Timothy M. Joy abandoned his young family, fleeing the creditors who threatened to imprison him. Within days, he found himself in a Massachusetts jailhouse, charged with defamation of a prominent politician. During the months of his incarceration, Joy kept a remarkable journal that recounts his personal, anguished path toward spiritual redemption. Martin J. Hershock situates Joy's account in the context of the pugnacious politics of the early republic, giving context to a common citizen's perspective on partisanship and the fate of an unfortunate shopkeeper swept along in the transition to market capitalism.

In addition to this close-up view of an ordinary person's experience of a transformative period, Hershock reflects on his own work as a historian. In the final chapter, he discusses the value of diaries as historical sources, the choices he made in telling Joy's story, alternative interpretations of the diary, and other contexts in which he might have placed Joy's experiences. The appendix reproduces Joy's original journal so that readers can develop their own skills using a primary source.

The first full-length biography of a consequential figure in twentieth-century American politics

In 1962, Edward W. Brooke (1919–2015) upended political convention by becoming the first popularly elected African American attorney general of Massachusetts. His victory was striking not only because Massachusetts was an overwhelmingly white state with a small Black population, but also because Brooke was a Republican and an Episcopalian in a deeply Democratic, Irish Catholic political culture. Navigating these contradictions, Brooke crafted a distinctive political style—measured, pragmatic, and quietly transformative—that reshaped civil rights politics in the North. In A Quiet Challenge, Jordan O’Neal Alexander offers the first full-length biography of Brooke, revealing him as a Black Republican whose carefully calibrated approach to race, law, and governance won broad white support while often distancing him from Boston’s Black community.

As attorney general, Brooke sought to uphold the rule of law while advancing principles of fairness, equality, and public safety, an approach that reflected both political constraint and moral resolve. Brooke again defied expectations in 1966 when he won election to the United States Senate, becoming the first popularly elected African American senator since Reconstruction. Serving two terms during the height of the civil rights movement, he emerged as a powerful national voice on issues of racial justice. He played a key role in blocking two Supreme Court nominees aligned with President Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy,” even as his support for school desegregation and busing during the Boston Busing Crisis contributed to his eventual political decline. Throughout his career, Brooke remained committed to building a society in which Black Americans—and all Americans—could fully participate and prosper. This volume demonstrates how Brooke’s restrained, yet persistent political strategy helped expand the possibilities for Black leadership within mainstream American politics. 

Above the Oxbow is a journey through the tangle of rich narratives surrounding Mount Holyoke, a locally cherished mountain in Western Massachusetts. It explores how visitors have forged connections with the mountain through various activities over the past two centuries. In an accessible blend of storytelling and scholarly analysis, Danielle Raad shows the significance of the landscape, historic sites, and material culture, revealing how cultural perspectives, community activism, collective memory, and personal experiences shape our understanding of a place. Situated at the intersection of public history and environmental history, this ethnography of place also discloses the curious stories of the Summit House, an erstwhile tramway, an airplane crash, and the local fight to conserve Mount Holyoke as a natural space and celebrates its myriad uses today. 

Author, collector, and historian Alice Morse Earle (1851–1911) was among the most important and prolific writers of her day. Between 1890 and 1904, she produced seventeen books as well as numerous articles, pamphlets, and speeches about the life, manners, customs, and material culture of colonial New England. Earle's work coincided with a surge of interest in early American history, genealogy, and antique collecting, and more than a century after the publication of her first book, her contributions still resonate with readers interested in the nation's colonial past.

An intensely private woman, Earle lived in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and four children and conducted much of her research either by mail or at the newly established Long Island Historical Society. She began writing on the eve of her fortieth birthday, and the impressive body of scholarship she generated over the next fifteen years stimulated new interest in early American social customs, domestic routines, foodways, clothing, and childrearing patterns. 

Written in a style calculated to appeal to a wide readership, Earle's richly illustrated books recorded the intimate details of what she described as colonial “home life.” These works reflected her belief that women had played a key historical role, helping to nurture communities by constructing households that both served and shaped their families. It was a vision that spoke eloquently to her contemporaries, who were busily creating exhibitions of early American life in museums, staging historical pageants and other forms of patriotic celebration, and furnishing their own domestic interiors.