Reviews for Hartford, Connecticut (Images of America Series), Vol. 2

The average rating for Hartford, Connecticut (Images of America Series), Vol. 2 based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-02-20 00:00:00 Jarkko Ranta The development of the city Lockport is tied, like all of Western New York, to the construction of the Erie Canal. In fact, you might say that the entirety of that state, up to the present day was fundamentally shaped by this monumental construction. Both physically and ethnically, as many of the laboring races (primarily Irish and Welsh) settled down in the places created by the canal. The city of Lockport itself was founded around the creation a double row of locks (one set for raising and the other for lowering) on the waterway. For those who don't know, a water lock is a method of raising and lowering boats between stretches of water of different levels on the canal. The distinguishing feature of a lock is a fixed chamber in which the water level can be added to or removed from. This allows a boat to be moved up and down treacherous drops. Essentially there isn't much to this story. Not much drama, just men planning an audacious project, on which the city was one stop. The author lets a lot of other people's work do the heavy lifting for him, and then stretches out the material as far as he could. The last fifty pages of text (not the appendixes) could easily be jettisoned. The reality is that there wasn't much to talk about. Even the two workers riots just didn't have enough documentation to add more beyond the fact that they occurred. The author tries to hard to dredge up some social justice relevancy in his findings. It's obvious he's grasping desperately around looking from some emotional racial foothold on which he can make a grand statement. But he can't find it, so he makes a lot of little snide remarks about the kind acts that other's performed back during the time of the construction, implying that they could've done more. Overall, it comes across as a lazy work on a topic of minor interest (even the locals of the city didn't care enough to buy the book).

Review # 2 was written on 2017-03-13 00:00:00 Andrew Galindo One of the best non-fiction compositions of day-to-day life of common people that I've ever read. A quick, informative read. I really enjoyed it.