Prof's Choice

• William Cronon, Changes in theLand: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecologyof New England (Hill and Wang, 1983). The best book on how the arrival of Europeans affected the regions landscape. Cronon also provides a good introduction to native cultures before contact with the new arrivals.

• Kenneth Lockinge,A New EnglandTown: The First Hundred Years (Norton, 1970). In his study of Dedham, Massachusetts, from 1636 to 1736, Lockridge describes a successful Utopian experiment which eventually weakens under the accumulating pressures of population growth, declining religiosity, and the commitment to decentralization.

• Robert Albion, et at., New Englandand the Sea (Wesleyan, 1970, published for Mystic Seaport). Areal joy for New England buffs. Superbly illustrated, the book covers everything from original explorations to the"New England Playground" for yachtsmen and weekend sailors. In between occurred a "Golden Age" of whaling, overseas trading, and shipbuilding.

• Tamara Hareven and Randolph Langenbach, Amoskeag: Life and Workin an American Factory-City (Pantheon, 1978). Mainly edited interviews with former employees of the Amoskeag mills in Manchester, New Hampshire. The interviews are grouped to cover subjects like "The World of Work," "The Corporation," "Families," and "Strike and Shutdown."

• Sam Warner Jr., Streetcar Suburbs:The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900 (Harvard, 1969). Required reading for my Boston area students, recommended for others. A classic study of how changes in the technology of transportation helped transform an integrated "walking city" into a dispersed, segregated, and stratified metropolis.

• Oscar Handlin, Boston's Immigrants (Harvard, 1941). Another classic about Boston, this one focuses on Irish immigration in the nineteenth century. Handlin's study of what he calls "acculturation" helps students understand how New England has been affected by the arrival of other ethnic and racial groups.

• Harold Wilson, The Hill Country ofNorthern New England (Columbia, 1936; republished by AMS, 1967). A social and economic study covering the years 1790-1930. Wilson traces both the process of agricultural decline and the beginnings of modern tourism.

• Judson Hale, The Education of a Yankee (Harper and Row, 1987). A moving, seriocomic memoir by the editor of Yankee Magazine, who is also one of Dartmouth's better-known graduates (class of 1955). The memoir documents New England's reputation for harboring "characters" noted for their honesty, eccentricity, and idealism.

• Ernest Hebert, The Dogs of March (Viking, 1979). My favorite among the hundreds of novels set in contemporary New England. Witty, satirical, and sensitive, the book tells a powerful story of demographic change in a rural town. Hebert teaches creative writing at Dartmouth.