As this summer’s Lake Champlain Quadricentennial festivities wind down, celebrants may want a more lasting way to remember the anniversary than just scrapbooking their Tony Bennett ticket stubs. Adirondack Life’s new coffee-table book, Lake Champlain: An Illustrated History, is one answer. The lavish volume chronicles human imprints across the millennia, as well as the evolution of the lake’s geology and wildlife. More than 300 images, stunning in variety and visual interest, grace the large-format book.... Read more

Insects keening in the fields. Mysterious doubles, disguises and disappearances. Obsessive people living in close quarters. Bodies sunk in lakes, where they may or may not stay put. ... Read more

Many food blogs are liberally sprinkled with so-called “food porn” — sensual, close-up shots of plump, colorful pieces of fruit, moist slices of sashimi and carefully composed salads. But Carol Egbert of Quechee puts a different twist on hers at carolegbert.blogspot.com. The local artist intersperses photographs with paintings done in watercolors or oil.... Read more

The quadricentennial of the arrival of Samuel de Champlain has inspired not only a ginormous festival but dozens of ancillary products devoted to the body of water bearing the French explorer’s name. The almost-great lake entitles Vermont to the moniker “the West Coast of New England” and provides some of the state’s most stunning views. So it’s no wonder lovely Lake Champlain is the subject of recent books.... Read more

Vermonters have christened everything from convenience stores to chocolate companies after Samuel de Champlain (ca. 1570-1635). The French explorer charted vast stretches of North America and created hundreds of place names for geographical features in his remarkably accurate, elaborately illustrated maps. But he named only one after himself: the lake that he, two French companions and a small party of Indian allies reached on July 14, 1609. Vermont’s own, almost-Great Lake Champlain.... Read more

It could be the common abbreviation for “established.” Or for Eastern Standard Time. Or the French word for east. Or something else entirely. Burlington poet Taylor Sacco says he and artist Heather Bischoff, cofounders of the new literary journal est, intended its title to be “kind of ambiguous.... Read more

Ellen Ecker Ogden of Manchester Village, founder of the Cook’s Garden seed catalogue and former member of the Vermont Cheese Council, has been writing for a while — she has a gardening book coming up from publisher Stewart, Tabori & Chang.... Read more

Most people are comfortable with the concept of a book on CD or MP3. But a book on DVD? One you hear, read and watch?... Read more

Howard Dean is a former six-term Vermont governor, presidential candidate and chairman of the Democratic National Committee. He’s also the founder of Democracy for America, a grassroots activist organization. Through it all, he’s been Dr. Dean.... Read more

By title alone, Milk Teeth: A Memoir of a Woman and Her Dog would seem to fall into the same cutesy genre as John Grogan’s bestselling 2005 memoir Marley and Me. Though it does feature a deviantly behaved Lab and a plethora of lessons on life and love, Robbie Pfeufer Kahn’s meditative, soul-searching book couldn’t be more different.... Read more