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ROUTE 128

Name: ROUTE 128
Author: Susan Rosegrant
ISBN: 0-465-04639-8

LESSONS FROM BOSTON'S HIGH-TECH COMMUNITY

by Susan Rosegrant & David Lampe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 17, 1992

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A funny thing happened to Lamp and Rosegrant (both former Business Week reporters) on their way to writing a book about the so-called ``Massachusetts Miracle''—a two-decade economic expansion sparked by high-tech enterprises clustered along Route 128, which encircles Boston. When they began their reporting in 1985, the Bay State's business activity was nearing a cyclical peak; by 1988, though, the regional boom had become a bust with national implications. Undaunted, the authors persevered and produced a thoughtful appraisal of what has made this New England enclave a hotbed of innovation. To gain perspective, Lampe (now assistant director of MIT's Industrial Liaison Program) and Rosegrant (now a free-lance writer) examine the interactive forces that have helped shape Route 128's high-tech community over the better part of a century. To begin with, they point out, eastern Massachusetts has an education/research infrastructure second to none; its extensive network of world-class universities, hospitals, laboratories, and related facilities remains a magnet for talented students, professors, and scientists eager to test their mettle in demanding environments. No one set out to create a high-tech mecca in metropolitan Boston, the authors insist; it simply evolved as a result of fruitful alliances among local industry, federal agencies, and indigenous institutions before, during, and after WW II. Critical mass was reached during the early 1970's (with the dawn of the minicomputer age), and Route 128 now sustains itself (via start-up or spin-off firms, for example) while supporting a wealth of service providers—patent attorneys, venture capitalists, et al. Nor did state government play a substantive role either in triggering the onset of the Massachusetts Miracle or in cushioning the impact of its recession, the authors observe, concluding that the system seems to work best when not overmanaged. An expert audit of Silicon Valley East, highlighting the contributions of entrepreneurs like Digital Equipment's Ken Olsen and of scholastic promoters like MIT's Vannevar Bush.

Pub Date: June 17, 1992

ISBN: 0-465-04639-8

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1992

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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A LITTLE HISTORY OF POETRY

by John Carey ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 21, 2020

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.

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A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.

In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.

Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.