CANR
WORK TITLE: American Luthier
WORK NOTES: PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography longlist
PSEUDONYM(S): Whitney, D. Quincy
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.quincywhitney.com/
CITY: Nashua
STATE: NH
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME:
Quincy Whitney (’74) traces the steps of a ‘female Stradivari’
RESEARCHER NOTES:
Agent: Grace Freedson, gfreedson@gmail.com
PERSONAL
Born 1952, in Boston, MA; married; husband’s name Eli.
EDUCATION:Wake Forest University, B.A., 1974
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and biographer. Former arts feature writer, Boston Sunday Globe, New Hampshire Weekly; former newsletter editor, League of New Hampshire Craftsmen and American Textile History Museum. Also worked as college textbook sales representative for D.C. Heath, Random House and Harper & Row.
AWARDS:Eugene O’Neill Critic fellow, 1988; Salzburg Seminar fellow, 1998, 2006; research fellow, Metropolitan Museum of Art Department of Musical Instruments, 2004-06; PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography longlist citation, 2017, for American Luthier.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Author and biographer Quincy Whitney, wrote the contributor of a biographical sketch to the author’s eponymous Web site, the Quincy Whitney Home Page, “was the primary arts feature writer for the Boston Sunday Globe New Hampshire Weekly for fourteen years.” She is the author of a collection of short essays and stories titled Hidden History of New Hampshire, and of the biography American Luthier: Carleen Hutchins, the Art and Science of the Violin.
“In Hidden History of New Hampshire … Quincy Whitney of Nashua shows there’s always something new to learn about our small state. Ours is, indeed, a deep well of history,” said New Hampshire native Rebecca Rule in the Heart of New England. “Whitney started work on this book … when she was tapped by the State Council on the Arts to research and write about `New Hampshire Firsts and Bests,’ for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC…. She selected the most intriguing of those `Firsts and Bests’ and combined them with several other stories for Hidden History.” The work recounts important events and places in the state’s history, including its hosting of the Bretton Woods conference in 1944, held at the Mount Washington Hotel, where member states set up the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. “All in all,” concluded Jacquelyn Benson, writing in Fosters.com, “Hidden Histories of New Hampshire is a neat way for any Granite State native to learn how much more there is to our state than mountains and maple syrup.”
Whitney’s American Luthier tells the story of Carleen Hutchins, a self-taught maker of violins. “The facts about Hutchins were impressive,” Whitney stated in an interview with Maria Henson appearing in Wake Forest University Magazine. “She had carved almost 500 stringed instruments, performed hundreds of experiments in violin acoustics and created a more resonant violin. She wrote numerous technical papers including two Scientific American articles considered benchmarks by luthiers (violinmakers) around the globe and published a journal for 30 years for an international community of luthiers and physicists. Virtually unknown outside the violinmaking world, she was a most unlikely candidate for unsung pioneer…. How could a ‘New Jersey housewife violinmaker’ and mother of two carving fiddles in her kitchen impact the sophisticated world of New York violin dealers?” “A great deal of the book,” declared Earl G. Williams in a review posted on the Alfred Nicol Web site, “discusses the trials and tribulations of Carleen’s Violin Octet. With the Octet she attempted to bridge the gap between the violin, viola, cello, and bass with a set of eight instruments graduated from a small violin to a very large bass. Promoting this Octet became an overriding passion for Carleen who travelled over the world in the effort. Ms. Whitney describes the many tribulations from funding musicians to perform to convincing conductors like Leopold Stokowski to inject them into the orchestra.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Reference & Research Book News, February, 2009, review of Hidden History of New Hampshire.
ONLINE
Alfred Nicol, http://www.alfrednicol.com/ (October 10, 2016), review of American Luthier: Carleen Hutchins, the Art and Science of the Violin.
Fosters.com, http://www.fosters.com/article/ (October 30, 2008), Jacquelyn Benson, review of Hidden History of New Hampshire.
Heart of New England, http://www.theheartofnewengland.com/ (February 20, 2017), Rebecca Rule, review of Hidden History of New Hampshire.
Quincy Whitney Home Page, http://www.quincywhitney.com (February 20, 2017), author profile.
Wake Forest University Magazine, http://magazine.wfu.edu/ (October 3, 2011), Maria Henson, “Quincy Whitney (’74) Traces the Steps of a ‘Female Stradivari.’”
About
D. Quincy Whitney was born in Boston and raised in the northeast. She graduated with Honors in English from Wake Forest University. She was the primary arts feature writer for The Boston Sunday Globe New Hampshire Weekly for fourteen years. She was also Newsletter Editor for the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen and the American Textile History Museum. Prior to her writing career, she was a college textbook sales representative for D.C. Heath, Random House and Harper & Row.
As a Eugene O’Neill Critic Fellow, Whitney covered the 1988 National Playwrights Conference. Honored to be selected as a two-time Salzburg Seminar Fellow, she attended “The Modern Novel” (1998) and “Biography as a Mirror on Society” (2006) Seminars. During 2004-2006, Whitney was selected for two six-month fellowships as a Research Fellow at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Department of Musical Instruments to complete background research for the Hutchins biography. Hutchins donated a Violin Octet to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1989.
In June, 2006, Whitney attended “Writing Past Lives: Biography as History,” a summer seminar sponsored by the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University, out of which emerged the Boston Biography Group, a networking and support group for New England biographers. In March, 2009, Whitney attended the founding meeting of BIO, Biographers International Organization, an international resource organization for biographers worldwide. The Boston Biographers Group hosted the first BIO Conference on May 15, 2010.
Quincy Whitney (’74) traces the steps of a ‘female Stradivari’
BY MARIA HENSON ('82)
WEB EXCLUSIVES | October 3, 2011
Quincy Whitney (’74), biographer of Carleen Hutchins
Editor’s note: Author D. Quincy Whitney ’74 will be at Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) April 6 at 6 p.m. as part of a Southern book tour to launch her new biography, “American Luthier: Carleen Hutchins — the Art and Science of the Violin.” The following story is from 2011.
Carleen Hutchins was almost the fish that got away. When I first phoned her to ask for an interview, she turned me down flat, saying she did not have time. Immediately intrigued by an 86-year-old former housewife and current violinmaker who was too busy to talk, I held tight to the phone, figuring my next move. I had never known anyone to turn down free publicity. Then she asked a question I had never before been asked: “What’s your angle?”
I said the first thing that came to mind, and it just happened to be the truth. I said I was interested in stories where science and art overlap.
Bingo.
The door opened. “That’s exactly what I do,” Hutchins said. “When do we talk?”
Destiny, I have learned, often points backwards to one’s roots.
As a freshman at Wake Forest, I became fascinated by the synergy and synthesis of opposites, intrigued by how poetry, storytelling and the arts stretch meaning and embrace paradox. In fact, I had lived the synthesis of opposites in my own life as an estranged “mirror” twin. In my first writing job at the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, I saw artisans merge the art of design with the science of materials. As I covered the arts for the Boston Globe, I sought out stories about science and art. Writing about the arts, the nature of creativity and my life as a twin got me accustomed to finding words to describe what is beyond words. It turned out to be good training for telling an art-science-music tale of a muckraking outsider who changed the violin world.
Stories call us in unexpected ways. From the first time I interviewed Hutchins at her New Hampshire lake cabin — built with wood that fell in the hurricane of ’38 and hand hewn by Hutchins — it seemed as if I had climbed into a carved violin. I was hooked. The true story of a “female Stradivari” (1911-2009) struck me as a tale a journalist comes across once in a lifetime. I have been in pursuit ever since, writing a biography of this iconoclast in American music history.
The facts about Hutchins were impressive. She had carved almost 500 stringed instruments, performed hundreds of experiments in violin acoustics and created a more resonant violin. She wrote numerous technical papers including two Scientific American articles considered benchmarks by luthiers (violinmakers) around the globe and published a journal for 30 years for an international community of luthiers and physicists. Virtually unknown outside the violinmaking world, she was a most unlikely candidate for unsung pioneer. What were the odds that a trumpet player biologist would teach herself physics by making violins? How could a “New Jersey housewife violinmaker” and mother of two carving fiddles in her kitchen impact the sophisticated world of New York violin dealers servicing Carnegie Hall?
As a Metropolitan Museum of Art Research Fellow, I toured Europe in 2004 just to follow in her footsteps. I interviewed 25 people in 30 days in nine countries — luthiers, physicists, musicians, composers and curators who all knew Hutchins. In the late ‘90s, just after I met her, I had been struck by her international stature when I stood near the clock tower at the center of Cremona, Italy, known as the “City of Violins” and birthplace of Stradivari. On that trip an apprentice to a master violinmaker exclaimed to me he had read everything that Hutchins had ever written. An exhibit “From Tree to Violin” at the prestigious violinmaking school in Cremona paid tribute to her, a lone American female praised in the company of Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari — all Italian men.
Her story would indeed reach a broader audience through Hutchins’ master craftsmanship. In answer to a dare from composer Henry Brant, Hutchins created a violin octet –- a consort of eight violins across the tonal range of a piano ranging in size from an 11” treble to a 7’ double bass — all made by Hutchins. YoYo Ma won a Grammy for his 1995 performance of Bartok’s “Viola Concerto” performed on a Hutchins alto violin played as a vertical viola.
But for Hutchins, the tour de force for her violin octet reaches back to one bass player with a dream. In 1983 Joe McNalley, a New England Conservatory sophomore, returned home to San Diego, the same year that Hutchins brought an octet to the campus of the University of California, San Diego. McNalley was 19. “I played the big bass in Brahms’ ‘First Symphony,’ felt the earth move under my feet and saw an entire first violin section bounce out of their seats at the sound of the low G!” he said. After many years of trying to make a bass, McNalley hatched a plan to buy an octet. Within two days, he garnered interest from five top players in Southern California. What he thought would take two years took only two months. In January 2000, I escorted Hutchins to Irvine, Calif, to witness the world premiere concert of the Hutchins Consort — a dream come true for both Joe McNalley and Carleen Hutchins.
Hutchins Consort will perform at Wake Forest on Oct. 23
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Hutchins’ birth, the Hutchins Consort will make its October 2011 Debut East Coast Tour to perform in a number of locations, including at Wake Forest. On Sunday, Oct. 23, at 7 p.m., I will introduce the Hutchins Consort for a concert at the Kulynych Auditorium of the Porter B. Byrum Welcome Center, returning home to my alma mater where I first fell in love with writing and learned how to never let go of a story worth chasing.
Quincy Whitney lives in Nashua, N.H., where she writes and lives with her husband, Eli. She has two grown children who are both following their bliss, one on the high seas, the other in the Big Apple. Her upcoming biography, “The Violinmaker’s Crescendo,” is expected to be published in 2012. Along with many other professional writers who are Wake Forest alumni, she will be participating in the first Wake Forest writers conference March 23-25. She will serve on the panel “Writing Science and Art.”
Hidden history of New Hampshire
Reference & Research Book News. 24.1 (Feb. 2009):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 Ringgold, Inc.
http://www.ringgold.com/
Listen
Full Text:
9781596295377
Hidden history of New Hampshire.
Whitney, D. Quincy.
History Press
2008
159 pages
$19.99
Paperback
F34
Writer and editor Whitney offers a tribute to the citizens of New Hampshire in this collection of stories about some of the state's best-known newsmakers and significant historic events. Wide-ranging topics include the first incident in the Revolutionary War, Mary Baker Eddy, the first medical X-ray, the country's first and largest artist colony, pioneers in dog sledding, and the first warships built in North America.
([c]2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
BOOK REVIEWSP. L. MarstonPhysics Department, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164These reviews of books and other forms of information express the opinions of the individual reviewers andare not necessarily endorsed by the Editorial Board of this Journal.(Published online 10 October 2016)American Luthier, Carleen Hutchins—The Art &Science of the ViolinQuincyWhitneyUniversity Press of New England, Lebanon, New Hampshire,2016, 290 pp. Price: $35.00 (hardcover) ISBN: 978-1-61168-592-3American Luthier, Carleen Hutchins—The Art & Science of theViolin, written by Quincy Whitney (primary arts writer for theBostonSunday Globe NHWeekly), provides a biographical account of the violin-maker and scientist, Carleen Hutchins. In 1997 Carleen asked Ms.Whitney to write her biography and provided her with valuable diariesand other material that has made this book such a true-to-life work. Itgives an extensive chronicle of Carleen’s life while providing snippets offascinating stories related to the art and science of musical instruments,and, in particular, the role of women. For almost anyone involved inmusical acoustics, Carleen Hutchins was a household name as well as aninspiration to scientists with an interest in violins. Ms. Whitney says it sowell on p. 136, “Carleen Hutchins had a gift for perceiving other people’sgifts, igniting their passions, finding common ground, and then providingthe energy of enthusiasm that she powered like the wind.” She wasawarded the Honorary Fellowship in the Acoustical Society of America in1998 “for her unique role in combining the art of violin making with thescience of acoustics.” This reviewer was one of those fortunate scientiststo have known her and was most impressed by her selfless dedication topromoting violin acoustics. This relationship started with my Ph.D. workunder Eugen Skudrzyk who presented me with several violin plates madeby Carleen to study during my dissertation, having received them fromCarleen in the promotion of her love in life, violin acoustics. Her recogni-tion was ubiquitous. Quincy Whitney describes the world class musiciansthat visited Carleen’s basement acoustics laboratory at her residence at112 Essex in Montclair—a tribute to the reach of her fame and influence.What is wonderful about this book is that Ms. Whitney captures theessence of Carleen as a scientist and as a person. Having met and workedwith Carleen, my personal experiences resonated in unison with Ms.Whitney’s accurate accounts. Furthermore, the author adds fascinating“Intermezzos” or short sections throughout the book that entertain thereader with fascinating stories: histories of instruments and instrumental-ists, harps from 2500 BC to organs in the Dark Ages, women as perform-ers in the Renaissance, polyphony and the science of sound, waves andvibrations, early days of Cremona, Leonardo Da Vinci’s inventions ofmusical instruments, Michele Todini’s “cabinet of curiosities”—theGolden Harpsichord, enthralling stories of the great virtuosos and makersof the 18th and 19th centuries, and finally the most famous violin in theworld that no one has ever heard—the Messiah.As a promoter of violin acoustics as well as a violist with a passionfor string quartets, we find out about Carleen’s incredible circle of scien-tists, not surprisingly also musicians, cellists John Schelleng and RobertFryxell and violinist Frederick Saunders. Schelleng jokingly called this“intense foursome” the “catgut acoustical society” leading to the foundingof the society with this name in 1963. Under Carleen’s leadership theCAS has promoted scientific research and publication in violin acousticsever since its first newsletter in May 1964.As a luthier we remarkably hear about a visit to Carleen from the“celebrated, internationally known instrument dealer” Rembert Wurlitzerof NYC that ended in an opportunity for Carleen to work with his masterluthier Simone Sacconi from 1959 to 1963. Sacconi was a renownedexpert on violin restoration and author ofThe Secrets of Stradivari.Itisnot surprising that 9 years later she founded the summer ViolinCraftmanship Institute at the University of New Hampshire which contin-ues to instruct luthiers today.A great deal of the book discusses the trials and tribulations ofCarleen’s Violin Octet. With the Octet she attempted to bridge the gapbetween the violin, viola, cello, and bass with a set of eight instrumentsgraduated from a small violin to a very large bass. Promoting this Octetbecame an overriding passion for Carleen who travelled over the world inthe effort. Ms. Whitney describes the many tribulations from fundingmusicians to perform to convincing conductors like Leopold Stokowski toinject them into the orchestra. This reviewer was fortunate to performwith the Sixteen Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia on the so called“tenor,” a small cello tuned a fifth higher. It was a joy to play, and playedwith ease. However, a colleague who played the much larger baritonecello groaned at the difficultly of playing it. It is perhaps in this last com-ment that the fate of Carleen’s Octet rested—it turned out that classicallytrained musicians that spend so many hours in the practice room wouldmostly remain unwilling to struggle with a new set of difficulties pre-sented by the Octet. The author captures this so well in her writing of thehistory of the Violin Octet, leaving the reader a bit sad in the end.However, and moreover, one cannot forget that Carleen’s greatest contri-bution was to the field of violin acoustics.This reviewer highly recommends this book. It is an engaging, enter-taining, accurate, and informative work, especially to those with an inter-est in music and acoustics. Having researched extensively Carleen’s life,Quincy Whitney has done a phenomenal job.EARL G. WILLIAMSSenior Scientist for Structural Acoustics,Acoustics Division, Naval Research Laboratory,Code 7106, 4555 Overlook Avenue, Washington,DC 20375
Book Review: Hidden History of New Hampshire
by D. Quincy Whitney (History Press: paper, 160 pages, $19.99)
Review by Rebecca Rule
In Hidden History of New Hampshire, D. Quincy Whitney of Nashua shows
there’s always something new to learn about our small state. Ours is, indeed, a
deep well of history. Yup, we go way back.
Whitney started work on this book about ten years ago when she was tapped
by the State Council on the Arts to research and write about “New Hampshire
Firsts and Bests,” for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC,
featuring -- in 1999 -- the Granite State. She selected the most intriguing of those
“Firsts and Bests” and combined them with several other stories for Hidden
History.
Lively, Readable
Organized thematically, the stories are short (usually no more than a page or
two), fact-filled but not bogged down in facts (she’s a lively writer), and often,
surprising -- even to those of us who think we know quite a bit about our state,
having lived here all our lives (so far).
Recently, you may have heard murmurings of a second Bretton Woods world
monetary summit. Pretty sure the new owners of the Mount Washington Hotel
would be delighted to host dignitaries from around the world to hash out ways
get us out of a financial pickle, as they did in July of 1944, “within a few weeks
of the D-Day Normandy landing and Hitler’s bombing of London.”
WWII Conference in the White Mountains
Whitney tells the story behind the story, including who attended and which
disputes threatened to clog the works. The hotel had been closed for two years
because of the war, so quickly preparing it for the conference presented
considerable challenges.
The government brought in 150 workers -- including enlisting a group of Army
Military Police who outworked the hired help -- to overhaul the hotel that has
two thousand doors and twelve hundred windows.
Roofs had collapsed under heavy snow, wallpaper was peeling of the walls
and everything was in need of a coat of paint. As the Walking Tour guide
booklet states, “Each worker got 50 cans of white paint, and was told if it didn’t
move, they should paint it white -- which is what they did! They painted all of
our beautiful mahogany doors white, the brass light fixtures in the Great Hall
and even some of the Tiffany windows.”
Sure enough, in this whitest of hotels, the dignitaries managed to establish the
World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the gold standard at $35 an
ounce, and to tie other currencies to the U.S. dollar -- all without benefit of the
Wifi or I-phones. Each year, people from all around the world “revisit the
hotel they knew in 1944.”
Pretty interesting and timely. Whitney included that story under the
“Government, Politics and War” theme.
Fun to Read
Other themes: “Home, Town, Community,” “Ingenuity and Enterprise,”
“Forests and Mountains,” “Sea, Lake and Sky.” She covers a lot of territory, but
the book never feels disjointed or haphazard. It’s fun to read.
We meet New Hampshirites of note from poet Celia Thaxter to teacher-in-
space Christa McAuliffe, from Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy to
inventor Dean Kamen.
In this short space, I can offer just a few tastes from this book’s rich menu.
Among the historical snapshots that caught my eye:
We boast the oldest and longest covered bridges in the country,. The
Woodsville bridge, built in 1829, is believed to be the oldest; the Cornish-
Windsor bridge wins the prize for the longest.
The tradition of supporting the arts can be traced to 1931 when we established
the New Hampshire Commission of Arts and Crafts -- the first in the nation.
Perhaps Governor Winant was influenced by the stirring words of Royal Bailey
Farnum, director of the Rhode Island School of Design: “History has shown
again and again that the state and the nation which supports its art lives on
forever.”
In 1900, our beloved Robert Frost “moved his family to a farm in Derry . . .
where he grew apples, raised chickens and continued to write and suffer
consistent rejection. The Atlantic Monthly responded to one submission: ‘We
regret that the Atlantic Monthly has no place for your vigorous verse.’”
After Frost became famous, the Atlantic Monthly “came calling.” Frost
submitted “the very same poems that had been rejected earlier.” Ha!
In 1872 Norwegian immigrants formed what is now the oldest ski club in
America, according to “unofficial historians” (gotta love ‘em). Later the
skiklubben was named the Nansen Ski Club after adventurer Fridtjof Nansen
who skied across Greenland. The skeleton of the great Nanson Ski Jump, which,
when constructed in 1938, was the highest in the country, still stands on a
hillside between Berlin and Milan. It’s 171 feet high.
Wild Game -- in New Hampshire
Here’s one last nibble from Hidden History.
Whitney gives a brief history of a place that has long fascinated me, because of
the fence that keeps everybody out but, could not, evidently, keep everybody
in: Corbin’s Wild Game Preserve.
When banker Austin Corbin II bought 25,000 acres in Newport, Croydon, and
Grantham in 1888, some called it “Corbin’s folly.” New York newspapers
criticized his purchase of “a big worthless chunk of New Hampshire wilderness
populated by wild animals and thickly scattered with granite boulders.”
His idea was to bring in wild animals from other
places so he and his buddies could hunt them --
while preserving them. He imported bison,
bighorn sheep, antelope, and even “wild boars
from the Black Forest of Germany.”
Some of the elk and boars escaped and their
descendants may be living in the woods outside
the sanctuary even now. How weird is that?
In the 1940s “a one-day elk hunting season was
declared” to thin out the herd of escapees.
“Today,” Whitney writes, “this largest private
game sanctuary in the United States still exists,
although, according to local residents, it may
be one of the best-kept secrets of the Granite State.”
About this article's author: Rebecca Rule is a humorist, author and storyteller,
who is the author of two collections of short fiction, including The Best
Revenge, winner of the NH Writers Project award for fiction.
Book Review: Hidden History of N.H. a treasure trove for newcomers and old-timers as well
Thursday
Posted Oct 30, 2008 at 3:15 AM
By Jacquelyn BensonShowcase Book Critic In keeping with my recent burst of Granite State pride, this week I decided to take a look at D. Quincy Whitney's new collection of tidbits and trivia about New Hampshire's unique history. Whitney, a writer for the Boston Globe's New Hampshire Weekly, has amassed an impressive array of facts and stories, some of which are certainly more potentially pride-inspiring than others, though all of them make for interesting reading.
For example, did you know that the first medical x-ray took place right here in New Hampshire? When 14 year-old Eddie McCarthy fell down skating on the Connecticut River, two Dartmouth professors saw their chance to experiment with a new and mysterious type of rays, capturing an image of the bones of McCarthy's broken arm.
We were also, it seems, the site of the first all-female workers' strike when the ladies of Cochecho Mills in Dover went on the march in 1828, an event the Dover Enquirer called "one of the most disgusting scenes ever witnessed". Apparently the editors of the Enquirer found a bunch of women demanding fair rights at work to be a revolting concept.
There are plenty of notes in Whitney's collection about some of New Hampshire's better-known features, such as a description of our first-in-the-nation primary. This includes the story of Dixville Notch, famous for its midnight vote-casting in the ballot room at The Balsams resort hotel. Whitney also covers New Hampshire's Shaker buildings and postcard-perfect covered bridges. But perhaps more interesting are the unexpected stories about some of the state's more obvious and well-known features, such as our mountains and forests.
Turns out, New Hampshire was host to quite a few pioneers in the art of recreational skiing, including the founders of America's oldest ski club and a number of firsts in the science of ski trail design. We were also trailblazers when it came to — well, blazing trails, namely the hiking routes up the mountains of the Presidential Range, one of which was the earliest continuous mountain footpath in the nation. One that I'm particularly proud of is that New Hampshire was also home to the country's first forest protection organization.
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Another point of pride that few Granite Staters might be aware of is our role in the integration of baseball. Whitney gives the details in her account of the founding of the Nashua Dodgers. The quotes she relates from African-American ball players Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe describing how welcome they felt here are particularly moving.
This is only a start, of course — Whitney's little book — just over 150 pages — is stuffed full of fascinating facts.
Did you know the first transatlantic cable landed right here in Rye at Straw's Point? Or that New Hampshire was the site of the largest stereoscopic company in the world? Do you even know what a stereoscope is? How about Christian Science? Founder Mary Baker Eddy did much of her writing from her home in Concord. Or maybe you'd like to know more about how the Russo-Japanese war ended right in Portsmouth, or find out what the deal is with the Cathedral of the Pines.
All in all, Hidden Histories of New Hampshire is a neat way for any Granite State native to learn how much more there is to our state than mountains and maple syrup.
D. Quincy Whitney will be reading from "Hidden History of New Hampshire" at Gibson's Bookstore in Concord on Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. Call 224-0562 or visit www.gibsonsbookstore.com for more details.