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Health & Fitness

Who Wants Some History?

A few weeks back, I stumbled onto the 1889 King’s Handbook of Newton on-line and was enchanted.  It’s not a history book, rather its a guide book to all of the Newton villages as they were in 1889.  It’s written in a slightly goofy, sometimes funny, mock poetic style of a 19th century city booster.  It’s full of drawings, poems, anecdotes and curiosities about each of the villages.

The book is organized around a section for each village including the villages of “Riverside” and “Elliot”. The book is available for free on-line via Google books but I’ve produced a printed  340 page paperback version that we’ll be selling as a fundraiser to help with the rebuilding of the Emerson Playground in Upper Falls.  This is a straight ahead reprint with the original fonts, drawings, ads, etc.

Two proof copies arrived today.  The productions copies of the book will be available in about two weeks but we’re starting to take orders now.  It will sell for $19.95.  It will be available for sale on-line but we’d rather sell it to you direct.  You’ll save the shipping cost and we’ll make a few dollars more per copy.  100% of the proceeds will go to the playground fund.

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If you’d like a copy (or ten) send me an email (JerReilly@yahoo.com) with your name, address and phone#.  Once they arrive we’ll deliver them to your door.

As it says in the Foreword – “You will be contributing to a civic good in today’s Newton – something your 19th century Newton predecessors would certainly approve of.”

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And as the 1890 Introduction says:
“The publishers, too, have their acknowledgments to make to those well-to-do and generous citizens by means of whose pecuniary aid it is possible to offer this large and costly volume, with its one hundred and fifty illustrations, at a prices so low that each and every resident can easily afford to own one copy at home and perhaps send one or many copies to distant friends, or to present to guests, as a memento of their visits, or to place in the hands of acquaintances who are seeking suburban homes.”


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