ABOUT BOSTON

Figurative and literal rambles around the city, old in tradition, history and personalities, this is a lyric recall of the best points of Boston's charms. Highways and byways in architecture, literature, customs, characters, streets, sections, in anecdotes and trivia of past and present -- all illuminating in a non-guide book manner. For the author's love affair with Boston is open to public view and, although he does admit, through the weathered centuries, her insularity and conservatism, he stresses the qualities that make her unique among and preeminent in American cities. An appetizer for the many other volumes he lists on Boston.