"WHEN I began to collect these signs and sayings, it was with the idea of gathering them for my own entertainment. In days like the present of universal books and schools, I thought I could hope to get only a few remnants of the thought and notions that have descended to us from the illiterate and superstitious ages of the past; and I supposed that by the time I had picked up two or three scores of these oddities the subject would be exhausted as far as New England was concerned. But when I began to notice, I found that people in their every-day conversation were constantly dropping remarks on the significance of all sorts of things that were a part of this old folk-lore. When questioned, nearly every one, old and young, could repeat a few sayings of the kind I sought, and among these were almost always some I had not heard before. My collection grew until I saw the possibility of a volume, and I could not but wonder what the superstitions of the Dark Ages were like if these were only remnants."

Say "New England" and you likely conjure up an image in the mind of your listener: the snowy woods or stone wall of a Robert Frost poem, perhaps, or that quintessential icon of the region--the idyllic white village. Such images remind us that, as Joseph Conforti notes, a region is not just a territory on the ground. It is also a place in the imagination. This ambitious work investigates New England as a cultural invention, tracing the region's changing identity across more than three centuries. Incorporating insights from history, literature, art, material culture, and geography, it shows how succeeding generations of New Englanders created and broadcast a powerful collective identity for their region through narratives about its past. Whether these stories were told in the writings of Frost or Harriet Beecher Stowe, enacted in historical pageants or at colonial revival museums, or conveyed in the pages of a geography textbook or Yankee magazine, New Englanders used them to sustain their identity, revising them as needed to respond to the shifting regional landscape.

Yankee Talk provides in-depth coverage of the different New England dialects and definitions of the popular phrases used.

"It may seem like clambakes, the Red Sox, and the Patriots define New England, but boy did the Pilgrims land in one very strange spot! These six states are filled with odd curiosities and bizarre legends, such as the elusive Vermont hum, the hibernating hill folk, hillside whale tales, and the Holy Land (yes, you read that right). Tongue-in-cheek and filled with dry wit, this is a journey you'll not soon forget."--P. [4] of cover.

From colonial farmhouses in the Rhode Island countryside to shingled beach cottages on Martha's Vineyard, this lush tour of some of New England's most inventive and quintessentially American interiors reveals the unique regional style that has come to define our country's idea of home. Color photos.