Archive for July, 2010
KBH on Forbes.com
Ben Clymer at the Forbes.com “Booked” blog discusses The King’s Best Highway:
Eric Jaffe’s freshman book, The King’s Best Highway, is a look at the Post Road as more than an early passageway that connected New York to Boston. As Jaffe, 29, explained in a public reading last month, it was no less than a central player in this nation’s formative years.
Read the rest of the post here. For more reviews, click here.
KBH in Providence Journal
I recently spoke with Rick Massimo of the Providence Journal about The King’s Best Highway. Rick writes:
[Jaffe] reveals that the road sprang from the consolidation of several Indian trails and details such developments as railroads and canals, as well as bigger highways to accommodate the explosion of the automobile in popularity, including present-day Route 1.
Jaffe calls it “An outsider’s insider’s history … the history that I would have wanted to know, not being from the Northeast.”
As a sometimes-journalist myself, I was impressed with how Rick made our conversation feel like one I’d have with my editor, or someone deeply familiar with the book.
Read the rest of Rick’s piece here. For more news coverage, click here.
KBH in Boston Globe
A thoughtful review of The King’s Best Highway in the Boston Globe:
Jaffe’s paean to this roadway, which began as a series of Indian paths and over time became a pair of US highways, offers not just a history of an important Northeastern thoroughfare but represents a kind of lens through which the reader can follow the development of America over four centuries.
Read the rest of the review here. (For more reviews, click here.)
I should point out that the Globe reviewer mistakenly calls Mathias Nicolls the country’s first post rider. Actually, Nicolls administered the “Oath of Fidelity” that this rider—whose name I never discovered—took upon leaving Manhattan for the first time, in January 1673.
As I state in the final chapter, the name of America’s first mailman may have been “Edward Messenger.” Messenger is mentioned in a 1673 letter written by John Winthrop Jr., the colonial governor of Connecticut who guided the first post rider during his inaugural journey.
BPR Today
The latest news along the old road…
The great blog “Boston 1775″ published a guest post of mine about Ben Franklin and the mail system.
A bank in Guilford, Conn., bought a 170-year-old historic house on BPR to convert into a new branch.
Metro-North’s New Haven line shut down this weekend, affecting 1,500 passengers.
Former Providence mayor Buddy Cianci remains a major political force on the radio.
Larry David was spotted “just off the Bowery” filming for the new season of “Curb”:
(via DNAinfo)
KBH in Westchester Guardian
Amanda Jane reviews The King’s Best Highway in the July 8, 2010, Westchester Guardian:
On its face, the history of a road hardly seems an engaging topic for a book. Eric Jaffe makes it fascinating.
Can’t argue with that. For more of Jane’s review, download the full issue of the Guardian here. For more reviews, click here.
KBH in NY Post
The July 4 issue of the New York Post included a brief piece of mine about how Manhattan’s first highway led the way toward Revolution:
In Revolutionary days, the Boston Post Road was Manhattan’s main highway. This mail route began at the island’s southern tip, ran along today’s Park Row and Bowery, zigzagged up the east side, entered what’s now Central Park around 97th Street, and followed parts of St. Nicholas Ave. and Broadway toward The Bronx. From there it continued to Boston through New Haven, Conn.
Click here to read the rest of the piece online. (The online version is slightly longer than what appeared in print.)
KBH on Leonard Lopate
Last Thursday I discussed the Boston Post Road on the Leonard Lopate radio show, on WNYC. The show’s site lets you download or listen to the conversation, here.
I was also on the Jim Scott show in Cincinnati earlier today, and will be on Hartford radio tomorrow, bright and early. Links will be posted soon.
Bookshelf
Copyright 2010 E. Jaffe. All rights reserved.
"Kings Highway" image by Elissa Curtis.
