Rating: 
Summary: Surprising. A great read.
Review: A beautifully written book. The author has a wonderful ear for the language, a delicious sense of irony, and a craftsman's pride in the turn of her sentences. To judge from the evidence at hand, she is also a storyteller of the first order and a skillful interpreter of the past.This is the story of New England, a land whose modern form is the product of repeated innovation in the face of ecological crisis. As all humans, New Englanders are in the habit of multiplying past the point that the land can support; when they did, Muir writes, they had to innovate in order to survive. Thus the successive evolution of New England's inhabitants from hunter-gatherers to farmers to piecemeal manufacturers to assembly line employees. While the author obviously harbors a deep love for nature, the book remains firmly on apolitical ground, and in so doing, argues its point all the more convincingly. This, of course, is characteristic of the best non-fiction: a true story told well is a thousand times the teacher fiction or argumentation will ever be. It is also a thousand times more enjoyable to read. Oh, and a final word: Though the topic is serious and complex, the narrative is eminently enjoyable, peppered with colorful tales of New Englanders and New England and skillfully told by an author who clearly has no use for the stilted language or overwrought proofs in which academic historians delight.
Rating: 
Summary: Of Indians, ships, shoes, wood pulp, steam and oysters
Review: Author Diana Muir resides on Bullough's Pond in Newton, Massachusetts, a few miles west of the Boston city center. From this vantage point, she's written REFLECTIONS IN BULLOUGH'S POND, a history of the manner in which the human residents of New England have exploited their environment, first for simple survival, then economic gain, from the time of the paleo-hunters 10,000 years ago to the present. In hardcover, REFLECTIONS is not a particularly thick volume - exclusive of Notes and Index, only 258 pages. However, the print is small and the scope large. There are also a large number of maps, charts, graphs, drawings, and b/w photos to break up the text and give the reader's eyes some variety. The list of topics is the roadmap of the region's economic development, diversification, and spotty decline: the evolution of farming from hunting/gathering, the native Indians' use of forest and fauna, the arrival of the Europeans and the extermination of the area's tribes by disease, Yankee shipbuilding and ocean commerce, land shortages, and the advent of sawmills and shoemaking. Further into the book, one reads about itinerant peddlers, ice exports, the expansion of roads/canals/railroads, machines that make other machines..., the production of charcoal, and the disappearance of indigenous animal species.... Then, as the Industrial Revolution takes firm grip, one learns of cotton mills, steam power, the grinding-up of the forests by the paper mills, the rise and fall (due to water pollution) of oyster harvesting, and the fishing industry, especially King Cod. Finally, Ms. Muir laments the deleterious changes in the ecosystem brought on by acid rain, the increase in greenhouse gasses, and the losses of topsoil andozone. ... Diana has produced a scholarly, excellently researched book that's consistently informative and interesting. (It's also only rarely entertaining in the sense of being fun, so, if that's the requirement, perhaps the latest potboiler from Grisham, King or Cornwell is a better choice of the moment.) As I recall, it was an email from Ms. Muir that brought REFLECTIONS to my attention. She'd read another of my reviews on Amazon, and thought her book might appeal to me. Thank you, Diana, for your leap of faith.
Rating:
Summary: New England As Seen Through Bullough's Pond
Review: Diana Muir has written a thoughtful and well-researched book about the history of the eco-systems of New England through the lens of her life and experiences at Bullough's Pond. Lest the reader suppose that this book is related in some way to a famous predecessor also written from the viewpoint of a life by a pond, let me allay those prejudgments right here and now. Walden was a philosophical tract while Diana Muir has penned a rather enjoyable history of the ecology of New England and how it was changed (not necessarily for the better) by each wave of human settlers. She finds the habitat fragile from the start, due to the climate and location. Each wave of human settlers has changed the environment. As the population of the first settlers, American Indians grew past what the land was able to sustain, deforestation and agriculture began as maize and beans became important sources of food. Fishing was also a way of life, particularly oyster harvesting. When settlers arrived from Europe they found land friendly to agriculture, but over-farming and poor land management doomed the thin topsoil. Fishing would later join agriculture on New England's endangered list; even the oyster was soon gone, a victim of overfishing. But Ms. Muir's story is also one of pure Yankee inventiveness. Industry soon took the major role and, helped by waves of immigration from Europe, made New England a major player in America's economy, providing the manufactured goods needed by the North to win the Civil War. And it was New England's ecology that supplied the backbone for the industrial revolution through the use of water power. The price New England paid for that was the polllution of these very power sources, making them unfit for drinking, or life. As the rest of America caught up with New England, new technologies emerged to give her a new foothold in America's economy, but the ecological problems remained the same. Her solutions, as seen from her foothold in Bullough's Pond, are not new, but are based in thoughtful reflection, unlike some other solutions I have seen, and bear reflection. Except for the chapter on the waterways, where she descends into a jeremiad, stating the all-too-obvious, this is a restrained book that lets the facts speak for themselves. Especially delightful, and to the point, is her description of the dredging of the pond by the county due in large part to Winter run-offs. One note of warning: the writing style is such that once you pick it up, you'll find it hard to put down.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Diana Muir makes history fun to read. Here is a history of New England that begins at the end of the last ice age and ends at present day. The book has all the facts and figures that you would expect from a history book but the material is presented in a very easy to read, enjoyable style. Ms. Muir not only tells us what happened and when it happened but explores the relationships between the peoples, the geology, the plants and animals that existed throughout the history. All these things evolved in relationship to each other, so the land evolved as a result of the agricultural demands which in turn caused the people to turn from agriculture to industry which in turn caused more changes to the land etc. etc. The whole thing is a dynamic process that began with the first human footsteps and the first seedlings sprouting on the ground so recently vacated by the retreating glaciers and continued through the European migration right up to the present. The ecological limits of the area are explored. The farming the land can sustain, the fishing, the logging. How much factory waste can go in a stream before the fish die and people become sick from drinking the water downstream. Of course all these limits were exceded but it is interesting to note where we could have stopped and sustained all these things. But these excesses are a fascinating part of the story. Overpopulation in an agrarian society was a factor in the industrial revolution, but only one. It also took the right amount of poverty (not too much and not for too long a period) to spark people to leave the farm and go into the factory. The immigrants had to come from an area in the old world that was not poor for so long that they were rooted in poverty or affluent enough that they were not hungry to achieve more than their parents. Bullough's Pond is fact filled and enjoyable to read. Anyone into New England history,US history, Colonial development, antropolgy,sociology or ecology will enjoy this book
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Summary: Thank You!
Review: Diana Muir read my review of All Souls & emailed me. I saw it was from the University of New England Press & thought it would be a more academic book. It wasn't and that was fine with me! A great timeline, using a pond in Newton, MA as a backdrop. The Ecological (including human) from the Stone Age to the present. Anyone interested in how New England got to be the way it is must read this book! Easy to read as well. Take a sunny Saturday, sit outside and enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: Reflections
Review: Diana Muir tells a fascinating story, which just happens to be true. Like "The Pencil" and "The Professor and the Madman," this beautifully written book reads like literature but is as informative as any serious work of scholarship. It changed my outlook on history, ecology, nature, and psychology. I would recommend this work to anyone who is interested in the world around us.
Rating:
Summary: A book to change the way you view the world
Review: Diana Muir's "Reflections in Bullough's Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England" is an absorbing, thought-provoking look at the interrelationship between environment and inhabitant. Refreshingly, this is not a book which aims to point fingers at who has ruined a pristine natural world. As Muir states in the Introduction, her book "is no jeremiad, it is a paean to the human ability to overcome daunting odds. Over and over again people in this small corner of the planet have faced disaster in the forms of economic collapse or resource dearth and overcome the odds." This is not to say that the author is oblivious to the damage done to New England's environment and the threat to the region's well-being posed by that damage. But while discussing the woeful state of some aspects of today's natural world, she also makes clear that it is within our power to take effective measures to, if not restore New England's ecology to some mythical perfection, then at least alter our behavior to avert future calamity. That is, after all as Diana Muir shows, what people in New England have done time and time again. "Reflections in Bullough's Pond" describes in elegant prose how activities over the centuries by New England's inhabitants (Yankee industrialists, European colonial farmers, Indian farmers and hunters, and even beavers) have affected the region's ecology and, equally important, how New England's changing ecosystems have impacted the inhabitants, especially in how they, as Ms. Muir is fond of saying, make a living. It is a fascinating tale, starting at the close of the last ice age and continuing to the present day. If anyone has the quaint notion that Native Americans lived in a primeval Eden without leaving a trace upon the natural world, Muir very soon demonstrates that New England's ecosystems were being altered by its people before any European ship crossed the Atlantic. She paints a portrait of a dynamic world, always changing in response to its inhabitants, while creating new crises and new opportunities for its population. Diana Muir has not written a dry academic tome which maintains an Olympian distance from its subject. Rather, its pages are filled with engaging accounts of indviduals who pioneered new paths of economic development and with intimate pictures of local scenes which illuminate our understanding of the larger world. Classic white-painted mansions in a Connecticut coastal village, sand washing from ice-coated Massachusetts highways into a pond outside Muir's own windows, a moose on the loose in Boston - these are among the vivid details which act as brushstrokes on the larger canvas. And Diana Muir does not shrink from supplying a few hard numbers and graphs where they aid in setting out the story she wishes to tell. Books which alter the way you view the world about you are rare. "Reflections in Bullough's Pond" is one of them.
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Summary: A beautifully written history of real people
Review: Diana Muir, the author, read one of my Amazon reviews and sent me an E mail suggesting that I might like her book. Well, I have this to say to Ms Muir... "thank you so much! I love it! " This wonderful story of the economic development of New England is written with a pond near Ms Muir's home (Bullough's Pond) as a backdrop. She tastefully weaves her personal experiences into the story she tells of the growth of New England's economy. We learn about the industriousness of the beaver and its effect on the New England ecosystem. We learn of the Native American's effect. Ms Muir traces settlers' early efforts at living off the land and how Yankee ingenuity led to the development of industry when the population grew to the point in which the New England landscape could no longer support farming. She further illustrates how small industries grew large. This book is a celebration of the average person's ability to thrive and adapt. Of course,there are the environmemntal costs which Ms Muir well illustrates. However, she is not judgmental, rather, she records the environmental consequences without ranting against the ingenious people who made New England prosperous. What is particularly wonderful about this book is that the people she writes about are not the famous families of New England but are normal people who carved out their niches. Of course the cream of this group prospered. I love this book and I have sent copies to others as gifts they will certainly enjoy. This book is serious history written with charm and style. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A beautifully written history of real people
Review: Diana Muir, the author, read one of my Amazon reviews and sent me an E mail suggesting that I might like her book. Well, I have this to say to Ms Muir... "thank you so much! I love it! " This wonderful story of the economic development of New England is written with a pond near Ms Muir's home (Bullough's Pond) as a backdrop. She tastefully weaves her personal experiences into the story she tells of the growth of New England's economy. We learn about the industriousness of the beaver and its effect on the New England ecosystem. We learn of the Native American's effect. Ms Muir traces settlers' early efforts at living off the land and how Yankee ingenuity led to the development of industry when the population grew to the point in which the New England landscape could no longer support farming. She further illustrates how small industries grew large. This book is a celebration of the average person's ability to thrive and adapt. Of course,there are the environmemntal costs which Ms Muir well illustrates. However, she is not judgmental, rather, she records the environmental consequences without ranting against the ingenious people who made New England prosperous. What is particularly wonderful about this book is that the people she writes about are not the famous families of New England but are normal people who carved out their niches. Of course the cream of this group prospered. I love this book and I have sent copies to others as gifts they will certainly enjoy. This book is serious history written with charm and style. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: hard to put down
Review: Everyone who visits, lives in, or loves New England will love this book. On almost every page there is something that makes you say, 'Aha! now I understand.' It is well written, never boring, and sometimes makes you chuckle. And it''s about economic and ecological history. Who would'a thunk it?
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