Massachusetts: A Photographic Portrait Book

This was a disappointment. It's partly due to the trade paperback size of the book, which meant that the photos necessarily had to be small as well, but since most of them were likely in color to begin with, printing them in black and white made them look muddy and ill-defined. The bigger problem, though, is that the photo selection is not very good. The Last Exit coffeehouse photo was taken from inside and was mostly a closeup of two random guys' faces, there's a shot of an amusement park that's nothing more than an aerial plat photo that probably came from the county property records, there's a photo of a pool table that's supposedly from a famous pool room but which could have come from anywhere. Humphrey also gets a number of facts wrong, misstating the location of the Hat 'n' Boots gas station, confusing Memorial Stadium with Sicks Stadium, and, if he didn't know when something closed down, he went with the all-purpose "early 1980s." And while of course not everything could be included, some of the omissions are glaring. No PI Building, Andy's Diner, Blue Moon Tavern? WTH. Worst of all is the cover photo of the Dag's on Aurora (or really, just the sign in its parking lot) instead of the far more interesting looking Dag's on 4th Avenue with the giant roating Beefy Boy cup on the roof. This is one time I should have judged a book by its cover.