cover image The Illustrated Harvard: Harvard University in Wood Engravings and Words

The Illustrated Harvard: Harvard University in Wood Engravings and Words

Michael McCurdy. Globe Pequot Press, $19.95 (60pp) ISBN 978-0-87106-896-5

McCurdy provides a walking tour of Harvard through 25 black-and-white engravings, but his impressions are sterile, devoid of human beings, except for a few indistinguishable figures drawn for scale. Alumni who have misplaced their yearbooks may enjoy a nostalgic look at such old haunts as Lehman, Massachusetts, Harvard and Wigglesworth halls, the business, law and medical schools, Widener Library, Memorial Church, Radcliffe Yard and the Lampoon offices, but others will find little to interest them in this souvenir. McCurdy offers only terse information about when the buildings were constructed, their patrons and whom they memorialize. Although, as both McCurdy and Kaplan note, Harvard's edifices provide an architectural history of the last 350 years, no effort has been made to point out different styles. (May)