My Publications

Jo Mora’s Carte of Los Angeles

Jo Mora. People referred to him as a Renaissance Man of the West, the cowboy cartographer. He was also a painter, illustrator, muralist, sculptor and photographer, and a cartoonist and comic artist, which will come as no surprise to fans of his ten historic maps – his cartes, as he called them – of the west. So much information is packed into Jo’s cartes. I can’t imagine how he knew so much, how he designed and painted all he wanted to pass on. For much more about this book, visit jomoratrailguides.com.

$18.95, plus $3.95 shipping and handling - use the contact page to order

“I render my message in the humerous manner as I’d rather find you with a smile of understanding than a frown of research.”  

— Jo Mora

The business of naming is as old as language itself. The names a town bestows on its rivers and river banks, streets, buildings and other landmarks provide a window into the soul of that town, through the history it chooses to celebrate.

In 1623, the first settlers arrived in what would one day be known as Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Native Americans in these parts already had a name for the swift flowing Piscataqua River. The settlers took over from there. Delighted with the vegetation they found growing there, they named their new settlement Strawbery Banke. (Those aren’t typos, incidentally, just the eccentricities of 17th century spelling.)

Join me for an informative and entertaining stroll through the town’s historic South End and downtown, its Victorian neighborhoods and the newer streets of the 20th century – and beyond.

From the obvious – with names like Wentworth Street, Langdon Place and Lafayette Road, to the obscure, streets such as Mirona Road and Moebus Terrace, Kent Street and Bersum Lane – each has its story to tell. Meet a colorful array of Portsmouth citizens – heroes, heroines, everyday folks, pillars of the community, even the odd scoundrel. Visitors from ‘away’ have left their mark too, but let there be no mistake – this is a Portsmouth story, through and through.

466 Streets • 252 Images • 16 Maps

Streets, parks, buildings and bridges named for poets and presidents, privateersmen, pastors and politicians, for farmers and merchants, sea captains and ship builders, doctors and developers – all immortalized on the signs we see every day. In bookshops around town.

$18.95 plus $3.95 shipping and handling - use the contact page to order

What Did Happen to M.J. Knoud’s?

So many thriving family businesses fail to survive beyond a third generation. M. J. Knoud, the internationally known English saddlery and leather goods shop that once graced the west side of Madison Avenue between 63rd and 64th Streets, was a classic example.

Founded in the early 20th century by an Irish immigrant who had arrived in this country in 1877, it passed into the hands of a second generation in 1929, survived the Depression, and rose to its glory as New York’s Upper East Side transformed into an upscale environment of town-houses, boutiques and mansions.

Half museum, half emporium, Knoud’s suited its elegant neighborhood to perfection and developed a clientele of multi-generational customers from all over the world.

Equal parts history and memoir, What Did Happen to M. J. Knoud’s? tells the complicated and ultimately sad story of this famous business’s downfall. Madison Avenue and the horse world in general are the poorer for its loss.

$19.95 plus $3.95 shipping and handling - use the contact page to order