Sightseeking : clues to the landscape history of New England

How does one read a landscape? With infectious enthusiasm and wit, Lenney guides the reader through a historical and cultural examination of how New England's artificial landscape - placenames, boundaries, townplans, roads, houses, and gravestones - came to be. The author makes sense of the placename suffixes that dot our maps - the -fields, -tons, -hams, and -burys that append themselves to our life and land, and forces the reader to reconsider the shape of the village green and the unique hybrids of architecture, to wonder why old roads go where they go, and to question why (good neighbors and Robert Frost notwithstanding) we build stone walls. By pushing us beyond mere sightseeing to sightseeking, Lenney dares to fundamentally alter the way we experience and interpret the New England landscape.… (more)