KBH Gets USPS Award for Postal History
Pleased to announce that The King’s Best Highway has received the 2012 Moroney Award for Scholarship in Postal History, given by the United States Postal Service. Glad to be among some great company. You can read more about the award, including a list of past winners, here.
KBH in Boston Globe
Sunday’s Boston Globe recommends The King’s Best Highway as one of 14 books good for curling up in the armchair this winter:
In “The King’s Best Highway’’ (Scribner, $27.50) Eric Jaffe has performed a valiant rescue of the scattered stories of the Boston Post Road, which he boldly calls “the route that made America.’’ The original, of course, is really two main routes between Boston and New York — one that follows the coast and another that heads due west to Springfield, then follows the Connecticut River to the coast. In writing about either fork, Jaffe can send shivers down a reader’s neck by evoking the early years when the post road was little more than a barely beaten wilderness path.
See the others here.
Talking BPR at the Smithsonian
In late November I gave a brief history of the Boston Post Road to an audience at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, in Washington, D.C. The talk was webcast live but there were some technical difficulties, so I haven’t been able to post the video until today. Please excuse the rather abrupt transition after about the first five minutes — we were forced to re-record the opener, and experienced some predictable hiccups. Otherwise, enjoy:
KBH on NPR
This morning I talked King’s Best Highway on the Connecticut NPR show “Where We Live,” hosted by John Dankosky. You can listen to the show at the WNPR site, and download it there too.
I was joined by a great panel of Post Road voices, including Diana McCain of the Connecticut Historical Society; Chris Donnelly, Connecticut’s Urban Forestry Coordinator, who led an effort to plant trees along the road; Bryan Bentz, who’s exploring Post Road mile stones in Stonington; and Gary Denton, who is currently blogging about his post road travels.
I had the great pleasure to meet Gary a few nights ago when I spoke at the Boston Public Library, and corresponded with Bryan shortly after the publication of the book. Both are very knowledgeable about the post road — and I encourage readers to visit their sites.
KBH on WICN New England
Last week I discussed The King’s Best Highway with Mark Lynch for his “Inquiry” program on WICN New England. You can download the 30-minute interview or listen to it online.
Mark has a soft spot for the canal craze that swept across New England in the early 19th century—in particular, the disastrous Blackstone canal that connected Worcester and Providence—so a lot of our chat is about Nathan Hale’s successful mission to convince Boston to embrace an alternative, frightening, then-unproven form of transportation: the railroad.
Well played, Nathan.
KBH in Connecticut Post
Frank Juliano of the Connecticut Post has a nice write-up of my recent talk in Milford:
Eric Jaffe, the author of “The Kings’s Best Highway,” said in a recent lecture that the road known variously in this area as the Post Road, the Boston Post Road, the Old Post Road, Main Street and even King’s Highway was once, and for more than 200 years, the most important thoroughfare in America.
Two items of note: Juliano mistakenly calls the route through Durham and Middletown the “third” or middle Post Road, when in fact this was a branch of the main, inland highway that went through Hartford and Springfield en route to Boston.
He also writes that I said Teddy Roosevelt traveled the Post Road from Boston to New York in 1902; in fact, I pointed out that Roosevelt became the first president to travel in a motorcade while visiting Hartford.
KBH in Boston Globe “Ideas”
I recently helped the Boston Globe “Ideas” section prepare an illustrated graphic of the Boston Post Road’s influence on the region over time:
To trace the Post Road through its history is to witness how important one connective thread can be to a growing region — and how it can still determine the shape of the city and state hundreds of years later.
The page ran in Sunday’s issue. See the interactive panels here and read the introduction here. (Javier Zarracina did a great job with the graphics.)
KBH on NYT “Wheels” blog
Forgot to post this last week—there was a nice summary of The King’s Best Highway on the New York Times “Wheels” blog. I spoke to long-time transportation writer Jim Motavalli for the post:
Mr. Jaffe notes with chagrin that the Boston Post Road has never enjoyed the iconic status of Route 66 or the Oregon Trail. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t be famous, but it’s not widely known outside the Northeast,” he said.
Read the rest of the post here. (I should note that Levi Pease actually began his stagecoach service in fall of 1783, not 1785.)
Interestingly, Jim was one of the first people I interviewed, way back at the start of reporting the book—although not for his knowledge of transportation but rather for what he knew about the history of Bridgeport, Conn.
KBH in New York Times
Joseph Berger of the New York Times offered some kind words for The King’s Best Highway in his review Sunday:
[W]hen Jaffe hits his stride, the result can be illuminating and entertaining. … In a delightful final chapter, Jaffe cruises the road’s remnants in a Mini Cooper like an archaeologist, seeking old taverns and milestones. As Jaffe observes in a graceful passage, landscape features like the Boston Post Road end up “not so much a place one can visit but the idea of a place, the idea that something special took place, here.”
Read the rest of Berger’s thoughtful review, here. For more reviews, click here.
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.
Bookshelf
Copyright 2010 E. Jaffe. All rights reserved.
"Kings Highway" image by Elissa Curtis.
