GENIUS OF PLACE: THE LIFE OF FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED

By Justin Martin (Da Capo Press, 496 pages, $30)

If the only thing Frederick Law Olmsted had accomplished was the creation of New York City's magnificent Central Park, his legacy would be complete. But as we discover in "Genius of Place," his influence was much more far-reaching. Olmsted was also a crusading journalist, abolitionist, social reformer and environmentalist. Looking for new challenges while park construction was underway, he created a medical support group for Civil War soldiers that was the forerunner of the Red Cross. He later was instrumental in the planning and preservation of Niagara Falls and California's Yosemite National Park, and in his capacity as the first "landscape architect," he designed the campuses of Stanford, Berkeley, the University of Chicago, the U.S. Capitol grounds and the 1893 World's Fair. A sensitive and questing man who suffered from depression and physical ailments, he was tireless in his quest to provide his countrymen, present and future, with comfort and beauty. Author Justin Martin has succeeded brilliantly in bringing to detailed life the man he calls the greatest American most Americans have never heard of.

CYNTHIA DICKISON, FEATURES DESIGNER

HEMINGWAY'S BOAT: EVERYTHING HE LOVED IN LIFE, AND LOST, 1934-1961

By Paul Hendrickson (Alfred A. Knopf, 560 pages, $30)

If there was a constant love in Ernest Hemingway's life, it was Pilar. The boat he bought in 1934 saw him through three of his four marriages, many friendships and most of his writing career. Author Paul Hendrickson uses the fishing boat as the vehicle to say something new about the Nobel Prize winner, to "lock together the words 'Hemingway' and 'boat'" in the same way that "DiMaggio" goes with "bat." But Hendrickson has too much material for such a tight focus, and the many stray documents and interviews get confusing. Still, readers will see what this fine boat meant to this great writer, and they'll see a side of him obscured by his temper. Bonus material for Minnesotans: the passages about Arnold Samuelson, an aspiring writer from Minneapolis whose tale of his life as Hemingway's deckhand was almost lost forever.

MAUREEN MCCARTHY, Senior metro editor