A loose set of essays, not really related at all. Not really a coherent collection, and not very interesting, either. A boring writer who stands off to the side, as he rattles off facts and information, adding little personal context. Why bother. ( )

I’m new to writer Howard Mansfield but feel comfortable characterizing him: a curious historian, a reverent preservationist of New England history, and a thoughtful weaver of philosophy and practicality. His book, Turn & Jump, is not as easy to characterize. “This is a book about time and place,” he writes; actually about “the divorce of time and place.” Collected, I could agree that these essays examine our change of perspective (in both geography and time) from local to global. But I found it a lot less tangled to simply read the essays as unconnected journeys into history.

And reading them is all about the journey -- a reader’s willingness to slow down and accompany Mansfield into the past in the same way that we accompany a writer like Bernd Heinrich on a nature hike in books like Summer World. Among my favorite essays are Mansfield’s exploration of the establishment of water rights and milling; the evolution of a family-owned country store into department store and then its extinction among corporate behemoths; and a look at time itself -- how it used to be locally determined, based on the sun, until the railroads required a nationally standardized time. I enjoyed some essays less (repetitive passages or topics less interesting to me) but developed such respect for Mansfield’s perspective and purpose that I'm drawn to read more by him, likely The Same Ax, Twice: Restoration and Renewal in a Throwaway Age.

(Review based on a copy of the book provided by the publisher.) ( )