Books: Go West!

THE YANKEE EXODUS (398 pp.)—Stewart H. Holbrook—Macmillan ($5).

Whenever Vermont-born Historian Stewart H. (Holy Old Mackinaw) Holbrook, 56, goes back to the stone-fence-and-maple-sirup world of his boyhood, he is saddened by what he sees. On the rocky, rugged hill where four successive generations of Holbrooks once farmed and raised their children, the wilderness is taking over, "marching from the edges of the old fields and pastures . . . advancing to the barn to break its ribs." As he gazes on his deserted schoolhouse and the ghostly, grass-choked neighboring farms, Historian Holbrook ponders three...