The great blizzard of 1978 is an event seared in the memory of anyone who lived through it. Most of Greater Boston was quickly overwhelmed by the storm, which shut down all forms of transit, stranded thousands of cars and motorists along Route 128, and virtually shut down most of the state for a week. But for many coastal communities, the impact of the storm, which brought record high tides and pounding surf, was pure devastation. The common thread shared by almost everyone in the region was positive memories of neighbors and strangers helping each other and finding new bonds of community. Greater Boston's Blizzard of 1978, illustrated with approximately 200 photographs from government archives and private collections, brings alive the fading experiences of February 1978 for those who were there and those who can only imagine.

The record-setting storm's impact on the area is explored through first-hand accounts from survivors, relief workers and former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, among others.

Route 128 traces its origins to the late 1920s, when the Massachusetts Department of Public Works cobbled together a makeshift network of existing roads through Boston's suburbs. Between 1947 and 1956, during a statewide push to build new highways, Route 128 was reconstructed as a major regional expressway. The new highway immediately fueled explosive growth in many of the region's once bucolic suburbs. What was once "the road to nowhere" quickly became a major commercial nexus for eastern Massachusetts and a critical link in the region's highway network. The visionary highway project vigorously promoted by William F. Callahan permanently altered the character of the two dozen towns through which it passed. Building Route 128 vividly documents the highway's construction and its impact on towns such as Waltham, Dedham, Lynnfield, and Gloucester. Drawing on previously unpublished images from the Massachusetts Department of Public Works and archives from many of the cities and towns affected, Building Route 128 tells the story of a region forever changed by the highway's construction.

Over the winter of 1977-78, anyone within shouting distance of a two-mile stretch of Boston's Commonwealth Avenue - from Fenway Park to the trolley curve at Packard's Corner - found themselves pulled into the orbit of college hockey. The hottest ticket in a sports-mad city was Boston University's Terriers, a team so tough it was said they didn't have fans - they took hostages. Eschewing the usual recruiting pools in Canada, Jack Parker and his coaching staff assembled a squad that included three stars from nearby Charlestown, then known as the "armed robbery capital of America." Jack Parker's Wiseguys is the story of a high-flying, headline-dominating, national championship squad led by three future stars of the Miracle on Ice, the medal-round game the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team won against the heavily favored Soviet Union. Now retired, Parker is a thoughtful statesman for the sport, a revered figure who held the longest tenure of any coach in Boston sports history. But during the 1977-78 season, he was just five years into his reign - and only a decade or so older than his players. Fiery, mercurial, as tough as any of his tough guys, Parker and his team were to face the pressure-cooker expectations of four previous also-ran seasons, further heightened by barroom brawls, off-the-ice shenanigans, and the citywide shutdown caused by one of the biggest blizzards to ever hit the Northeast. This season was to be Parker's watershed, a roller-coaster ride of nail-biting victories and unimaginable tragedy, played out in increasingly strident headlines as his team opened the season with an unprecedented twenty-one straight wins. Only the second loss of the year eliminated the Terriers from their league playoffs and possibly from national contention; hours after the game Parker's wife died from cancer. The story of how the team responded - coming back to win the national championship a week after Parker buried his wife - makes a compelling tale for Boston sports fans and everyone else who feels a thrill of pride at America's unlikely win over the Soviet national team - a victory forged on Commonwealth Avenue in that bitter, beautiful winter of '78.

The classic nature memoir of Cape Cod in the early twentieth century, “written with simplicity, sympathy, and beauty” (New York Herald Tribune). When Henry Beston returned home from World War I, he sought refuge and healing at a house on the outer beach of Cape Cod. He was so taken by the natural beauty of his surroundings that his two-week stay extended into a yearlong solitary adventure. He spent his time trying to capture in words the wonders of the magical landscape he found himself in thrall to. In The Outermost House, Beston chronicles his experiences observing the migrations of seabirds, the rhythms of the tide, the windblown dunes, and the scatter of stars in the changing summer sky. Beston argued: “The world today is sick to its thin blood for the lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.” Nearly a century after publication, Beston’s words are more true than ever.

New England was knocked to its knees on February 6th and 7th, 1978, by the incredible snow and wind referred to locally as the worst storm of the century, and this history combines stunning photographs with riveting text to reawaken memories of the "Blizzard of '78." Chronicling the period before the storm, the book then follows it through its progression, as it caused commuter nightmares and wreaked devastation. From Cape Cod to Connecticut, from Rhode island to Route 128, it explains how people survived the storm by spending more than 48 hours in their cars, and how coastal homes were torn from their foundations and smashed to smithereens by the vicious surf. The book records the brighter sides of the blizzard too, including neighborhood parties, cross-country skiing down abandoned highways, and the many ways that people pitched in to help total strangers. Intriguing analysis also compares the Blizzard of '78 with the Great Blizzard of 1888. This book will be cherished by anyone who survived the Blizzard of '78, as well as those spellbound by its legend.

In the midst of the Blizzard of 1978, the tanker Global Hope floundered on the shoals in Salem Sound off the Massachusetts coast. The Coast Guard heard the Mayday calls and immediately dispatched a patrol boat. Within an hour, the Coast Guard boat was in as much trouble as the tanker, having lost its radar, depth finder, and engine power in horrendous seas. Pilot boat Captain Frank Quirk was monitoring the Coast Guard's efforts by radio, and when he heard that the patrol boat was in jeopardy, he decided to act. Gathering his crew of four, he readied his forty-nine-foot steel boat, the Can Do, and entered the maelstrom of the blizzard. Using dozens of interview and audiotapes that recorded every word exchanged between Quirk and the Coast Guard, Tougias has written a devastating, true account of bravery and death at sea, in Ten Hours Until Dawn.