New England.(Books about antiques)(The Encyclopedia of New England)(The Encyclopedia of New England: The Culture and History of an American Region)(Book review)

The Encyclopedia of New England has 1,564 pages, of which 12 are devoted to the contributors, three columns to a page. Thirty-one editorial assistants were helping out in the backroom. The editors set out a complex and ambitious approach to the six states that have always assigned themselves a lofty place vis-a-vis the rest of the United States. "The perception that American history began in New England is pervasive, enduring, and in many ways inaccurate, but the region has capitalized on that perception for a long time." This establishes the tension evident throughout this book, which is divided alphabetically into twenty-two large sections from Agriculture to Tourism. Each section is further divided, again alphabetically, into sometimes eccentric subsections. The excellent index is the only direct route to a specific person or event.

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The introductory essays and subsections vary widely in approach and quality, from abstract to specific. However, the editors never lose sight of the twin objectives noted above: to champion and denigrate the influence of New England. A particularly rewarding section entitled Folklife begins with an overview of the population from the Wampanoag Indians in Mashpee, Massachusetts, who met the Pilgrims on their arrival in Plymouth, to the Hmong, mountain dwellers of Laos, who fled to Providence, Rhode Island, in the 1970s. Immigrants gradually moved inland from the complex coast of the New England states, naming their settlements for what could be found in them, or who lived in them. Examples are Sin and Flesh Brook, Rhode Island; Bunker's Whore, Maine, where Captain Bunker's girlfriend drowned; and Brandy Pond, Maine, in memoriam for a quantity of brandy that fell through the ice and was lost forever.

Towns were laid out with shipping interests always in mind. The turns in roads, for example, were made very broad to allow huge masts to be dragged to the sea by thirty span of oxen. Widows' walks and cupolas offered a sea view for the women left behind, to get a first glimpse of their returning men--if their men returned. Then habit dictated cupolas and widows' walks on inland houses, with a view only of forests and fields.

Today, according to the Folkways essay, New Englanders are outnumbered by outsiders who are torn between wanting better roads and schools and living in a postcard. "A dominant culture no longer presides, but only an overarching myth of what New England is, still based on the Yankee stereotype."

The subcategories in Folkways include Clambakes, Dolls, Heroes and Villains, Hunting and Trapping (which contains a veritable encyclopedia of the traps used), Hunting Lore (including the tale of ...