[In the following review of Look at America: New England, a picture book with commentary by Chase, Nichols notes that Chase treats New England in poetic terms.]

Knowing a good thing when their camera sees it, the editors of Look have been turning a contemplative eye on New England. For this, the second of their regional guide books, they have tracked down the cod and the Brahmin, the sea captain and the Connecticut Valley farmer, and have packaged them under a familiar corporate label. Look at America: New England is both the title and the invitation, and the latter is well worth accepting at once. The volume will be an excellent non-driving companion for the back seat of the car as the family starts out on vacation—up the Post Road, of course—and later upon the shelves for the cold, reflective days of fall.

Naturally, New England is more than a region of America, although the editors of Look, being politic and uninterested in self-immolation, must call it that. To waste no time about it, New England is America, and everything lying west is an appendage, or series of appendages, some good and some bad. New England has retained its unity and pride with an enthusiasm rivaled only by Texas; although a cynic alien to both might conclude that a Texan can be identified by the size of the chip on his shoulder and the New Englander by his calm assumption there can be no dispute about the right of kings. The editors of Look apparently are not Texans, and there is a good deal of evidence to suggest they may be New Englanders; at any rate, they have turned out a cool, detached study in the efficient Down-East manner which sets forth the facts and then stands on them.

Regardless of the editors, there is no mistaking the origin and point of view of Mary Ellen Chase, who writes the foreword. This is put down under the title of “New England—‘Land of God,’” the inner quotation being from a poem she memorised as a child. From the summit of her Northampton retreat, Miss Chase now recognizes the poem as having been flowery, florid and lacking in Aristotelian virtue—but she obviously believes every word of it still. Her quotation of it is benign and in the proud tolerance of a parent discovering that her child has uttered a universal truth. As she reels off lists of New England towns and villages as though they were poetry—as, indeed, they probably are—she clearly regards “Land of God” as an understatement.

Since they are factual and this is, after all, a guide book, the pictures of New England keep closer to stark reality—or, at least, to the tangible reality you can see from an automobile. Just as in the Look master guide books, which include New England and terra incognita, that on the six states is broken into sections. The first deals with Rhode Island and eastern Massachusetts; and it might be noted there are those who would find it unnecessary to go elsewhere to see New England, the country and the world. At any rate, for the determined traveler, there are pictures and description of Boston, Gloucester and the Cape, as well as stops along the way.

Another division takes up Connecticut and western Massachusetts, pausing to give a lesson in early American architecture, to describe youth hostels and to give a portrait of Serge Koussevitsky superintending rehearsals at Tanglewood in the Berkshires. Under Vermont and New Hampshire are the White Mountains, Lake Winnepesaukee, the town fair, the old New England occupation of maple sugaring. As befits the giant in size, Maine has a division unto itself, with illustrations of potatoes and logs, the woods, fur-bearing animals and the harbors.

The editors of New England are interested alike in industry and pleasure, in summer theatres, mountain climbing and the manufacture of gun stocks. In the book can be found some of the wanderings of Thoreau, the birthplace of Longfellow, the flower-covered bridge at Shelburne Falls, Mass., and the Wedding Cake House at Kennebunk, ME. The volume proves, as collaborator Chase takes pains to say, that New England is an entity, through historical development as well as by climate. New Englanders are stern and New England granite is hard, and occasional lapses away from the Land of God can be blamed on others. Although she does so with humor, Miss Chase is quite in order in pointing out that Rhode Island's addition of tomatoes to clam chowder probably was on the order of New York millionaires in Newport.

Rhode Island's defection can be accepted less charitably than the secession of the southern states during the Civil War. After all, they were outside the country.