500 Tomato Plants in the Kitchen is a delightful book, an irresistable blend of 50 articles, essays and stories with a decided Rhode Island/New England flavor, selected by the author from a lifetime bounty of writing, and assembled and presented with the literary acuity of an acclaimed regional writer.

Collected here for the first time are pieces on such varied subjects as tomatoes, Rhode Island vampires, the origin of spring fever, the discovery of Florence Nightingale's nursing cap in a hospital lobby, Rhode Island Jonny-Cakes, the demise of RFD as a mailing address, tongue-in-cheek advice on investing in Maine, the author's eyewitness account of the Japanese surrender aboard the U.S. Battleship Missouri in 1945, his memoir of the Great Hurricane of 1938, and forty-one more!

In these intriguing pieces, a melange of genres including fiction, memoir, history and criticism, the author has something to say about many things, and this undeniably eclectic mix is a veritable catalog on his innate ability to write on many topics with authority and charm. Topics which by rights should be provincial and dated, remain surprisingly fresh and enormously engaging.

His prize-winning article, "The Storm that Changed the Course of History", first published in Yankee magazine, and re-published in this volume, has been cited as "an exceptional piece of research and scholarship."

500 Tomato Plants in the Kitchen gives readers a fresh perspective on familiar subjects, and new insights on those not so familiar.

The unrelated title of the book sets the tone for the widely varied and unrelated articles within. As for the origin of the title, the author says:

"The title was suggested by what was my practice each spring for many years, before we built a greenhouse, of starting hundreds of tomato plants and other vegetables from seeds in our large country kitchen, much to the consternation of my long-suffering wife.

"Since the nature of this collection made it impossible to arrive at a suitable title that would reflect the book's contents, I reasoned that a totally unrelated one would do just as well; would be in keeping with the eclectic nature of the collection within; and might even serve to pique the curiosity of prospective readers."

The endless variety of articles and stories in 500 Tomato Plants in the Kitchen, make it an ideal book for random reading, and you need not be a Rhode Islander or a New Englander to enjoy it!

Enlightening, refreshingly entertaining and full of charm, this anthology is a great read!