Warren Huse has completed a book, commemorating the 125th anniversary of his hometown, Laconia, NH, as a city. Due out in December, "Celebrate Laconia: 125 Years of the Lake City" is a hardcover coffee-table type book of 160 pages, published by The Laconia Daily Sun, the newspaper for which Warren is still writing a weekly local history page - actually, two pages each Saturday.

Laconia is celebrating its anniversary during 2018, having been chartered in 1893. Of course, the area was settled another 125 years earlier, in the 1760s; so the history actually covers about 250 years of habitation.

The book contains 270 historic photographs, maps and other images and about one- quarter of it is devoted to text.

Warren has been writing the local history columns for The Daily Sun and, before that, for The Citizen - which ceased publication a year ago - for 27 years. He is also treasurer of the Laconia Historical and Museum Society, a 501(c)(3) organization.

In the 1990s, he published three volumes in the Arcadia "Images of America" series — "Laconia" (1995), "The Weirs" (1996) and "Lakeport" (1999), all pertaining to the city of Laconia.

Warren said …

§ For every item I was able to put in the text, and for every photo I was able to include, I had to leave out a hundred, maybe a thousand. You can't be encyclopedic in 160 pages. § I'm pleased that I was able to include several maps that show the growth of my city. It was formed from parts of two adjoining towns, in several stages. I visited the New Hampshire State Library, which has an extensive collection of maps, but they didn't have the ones I needed. Finally, I copied maps from an 1892 New Hampshire atlas, but I still did not have everything I needed, so I got a local architect to draw in the necessary boundaries on one of the 1892 maps and then, with the help of a colleague who is good at the technology of graphics, we shaded the appropriate parts of all the maps so that the land transactions were absolutely clear. To my knowledge, these modified maps do not appear anywhere else. § Oh, it was draining, particularly at the end with my publisher imposing more deadlines. (But, I'll be the first to admit I needed them!) I had to give up my weekly history pages in the local paper for two months in order to work full-time on the book. I'm glad to be back in the newspaper again and it was nice to have some folks say they missed them during my 'hiatus.' Further information about the upcoming "Celebrate Laconia" book can be found on the home page at laconiahistory.org

This book is testament to Warren’s tenacity, thoroughness and writing skills. Well done, Warren!