Harvard Yard

With the death of James Michener, a great void was left in the world of historical novels. William Martin has filled that void with GREAT historical novels about New England and other times and places in history. HARVARD YARD brings you face to face with the history of America's oldest college and the persons who played a major role in its development. All this comes about as a mystery unfolds in the same manner as the movie "National Treasure". Excitement from page 1-the end. Step back and live history from 1600 to the present.

I waited a long time since Citizen Washington for Bill Martin's next book and was not disappointed. I read it in about two days,only putting it down long enough to go to work. I may be a little biased since I am from and presently live in Boston, but its all part of the fun, since after reading this you can go to the places that are described and see it for yourself. One of these days I will get down to Annapolis also. Like Back Bay, Harvard Yard is a combination history lesson and treasure hunt. What could be better?

In "Harvard Yard", author William Martin does a remarkable job of bringing history to life in a way that will leave you thinking you have just watched an epic film! I understand that Martin, after his undergraduate years at Harvard, received a graduate degree in Film -- and his eye for visual, dramatic action certainly shows in this gripping historical novel! Martin is masterful as he draws you into this page-turning "treasure hunt" that spans 300 years of Harvard, Cambridge -- in fact AMERICAN history, as the past comes to life in colorful, unforgettable scenes: For example, in the early 1600's in England, William Shakespeare - very much alive - gives his newly-written play "Loves Labors Won" to his friends upon the birth of their child (John Harvard!),then we watch the family become nearly decimated by the plague. (Note: This unpublished manuscript crosses the ocean with John Harvard, and becomes the "treasure" which grows in value with each generation that it is hidden for various reasons, the most significant of which is the Puritan ethic which for many years squelched "enlightenment" represented, in part, by theater and dramatic literature.) In a later scene - now in colonial New England -- students in a "rustic" Harvard Yard where cows graze and chickens scuttle about, have to visit the equivalent of outhouses each morning, before attending classes - a glimpse into a very different student life at the fledgling college (where, in 1678, there were only 23 students in all!) In a hauntingly vivid scene, we watch the old Harvard library go up in flames on a cold winter night in the late 1700's (nearly consuming the hidden Shakespearean "treasure") as students and townspeople form a bucket brigade to fight the fire, the nearest pump being frozen. Later, the Titanic sinks as key figures in the "hunt" grapple for the already-packed lifeboats! A young northern soldier in the Civil War, fighting alongside many of his college friends, pauses for a moment to look back at "the hundreds of young southerners who were down, crying, dying, at all those hopes, all those years yet to live, all the love that had been spent on them, all thrown away in an instant" -- and in that moment of hesitation, he himslf is shot. Add scenes of witchhunts and 1960's riots, and bring to life historical figures such as Joseph Kennedy and FDR, and you cannot help but be engrossed, wishing that the hunt for the multimillion-dollar manuscript would never end!This book is outstanding and can be enjoyed on so many levels: If you like a fast-paced mystery/treasure hunt (like the hunt for the grail in The DaVinci Code), this is your next page-turner! If you want to absorb a great deal of history while experiencing a great read, this novel is chock full of historical detail that is so visual, you will never forget the New England of the mid-1600's to the present! If you devour family sagas, covering multiple generations with all the relationships, feuds and traditions, this bo

Harvard Yard is William Martin's very best in a pantheon of excellent novels. The fortunes of Harvard, the people who brought the college into being and the four hundred years of history, with all the pathos, ethos and Thanatos found in the very best historical novels. Martin goes for the double story here, as he had in Back Bay and Cape Cod: the historical story moving forward through time told through the eyes of a cast of facinating characters who went to Harvard and built this nation - and the current story in which the main character and the woman he loves discover a dark secret at Harvard that could change the fortunes of the world. I read it straight through, wanting more. Highly recommended.

You've gotta love a story that introduces William Shakespeare, as one of the characters, on the very first page! That's how William Martin begins his latest novel, HARVARD YARD. Robert Harvard, father of someday-to-be founder of Harvard University, John Harvard, is on his way to Stratford-On-Avon to visit his friend Will. Bill Martin has fashioned quite a wonderful tale from this meeting between friends. We get re-introduced to Peter Fallon, an antiquarian book dealer from Martin's previous novel, BACK BAY, who is now on the trail of something even more exciting than a Paul Revere Tea Set. (Well, I certainly would rather have a lost manuscript of Shakespeare's even more than the tea set!). The character that energizes this novel is the University itself. Its presence and influence are felt throughout Harvard Alum Martin's compelling story. We come to see that Harvard, more than any other University, has the stature and cachet to construct this story around. Major events in our history are seen through the portal of Harvard and a quintessential Harvard family, the Wedge's. We learn of Harvard's simple origins and how it grew and becomes the force it is today. We meet important influences in the University's development, such as that fun father and son duo, Increase and Cotton Mather. (They kind of remind me of that joke about a Puritan minister's always having a sour look on his face because somewhere, somehow, someone is having a good time.). We learn why theater is the Devil's work. Why the Colonial fathers made a law against theater in 1767. (Play. A mere word and the uttering of it was like the sound of a gun.) We discover that Harvard Graduation, long ago, was a Cambridge holiday. It turned Cambridge Commons into a kind of Mardi Gras. We learn the sad circumstance that lead to the creation of the Widener Library. We take side trips to the Salem Witch Trials and the great Boston fire that destroyed much of the financial district of the time. We eavesdrop on a lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson at the Divinity School. Historical heavyweights such as Joseph Kennedy, Robert Oppenheimer and John Kenneth Galbraith make appearances. As does President Franklin Roosevelt. Martin shows us why Harvard is as tradition bound as his ANNAPOLIS. And how important tradition is to our great institutions. The book is a wealth of Harvard lore and myth and American History, guided by Bill Martin's usual deft hand and obvious love of history and his Harvard. Throughout our country's good times and bad, times of war and times of peace, Harvard has had a hand to play, contributions to make. In this fast-paced, informative novel, Bill Martin once again takes us on an exciting and enlightening journey, back and forth through time. If, as Robert Harvard instills in his son John, 'A man will be known by his books,' then certainly William Martin will be known by this book, too. It's vintage William Martin. Fans of history will love th