Synopsis
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.
About the Authors
JON GILBERT FOX has been taking photographs professionally for over thirty years. His photographs have been published in such diverse venues as U. S. New & World Report, the New York Times, House and Garden, Playboy, Vogue, Scholastic Magazine, Vermont Life, Scientific American, Focus, the Washington Post, and Conde Nast Traveler. He is the author/photographer of Intimate Vermont (UPNE, 2005). A professor of English at Dartmouth College, ERNEST HEBERT is a well-known New Hampshire novelist. Hebert's critically acclaimed The Old American was hailed b Kirkus Reviews as "a brilliant work" and by Alan Cheuse on National Public Radio as a "deeply appealing novel." Earlier Darby novels--The Dogs of March, Live Free or Die, and The Kinship (a one-volume edition of A Little Moe Than Kin and The Passion of Estelle Jordon)--are available in paperback from Hardscrabble Books/UPNE. His most recent Darby novel is Spoonwood (UPNE, 2005).
JON GILBERT FOX has been taking photographs professionally for over thirty years. His photographs have been published in such diverse venues as U. S. New & World Report, The New York Times, House and Garden, Playboy, Vogue, Scholastic Magazine, Vermont Life, Scientific American, Focus, The Washington Post, and Conde Nast Traveler. He is the author/photographer of Intimate Vermont (UPNE, 2005). A professor of English at Dartmouth College, ERNEST HEBERT is a well-known New Hampshire novelist. Hebert's critically acclaimed The Old American was hailed by Kirkus Reviews as "a brilliant work" and by Alan Cheuse on National Public Radio as a "deeply appealing novel." Earlier Darby novels--The Dogs of March, Live Free or Die, and The Kinship (a one-volume edition of A Little More Than Kin and The Passion of Estelle Jordon)--are available in paperback from Hardscrabble Books/UPNE. His most recent Darby novel is Spoonwood (UPNE, 2005).
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