Monday, January 6, the Holmes Public Library was host to author Ted Reinstein who spoke of his book, A New England Notebook, as well as other titles he has written over the years.
Ted Reinstein is best known in New England as a journalist and reporter for “Chronicle,” Boston’s celebrated—and America’s longest-running, locally-produced—TV newsmagazine. While he appears occasionally in the studio at the anchor desk or delivering an opinion commentary, it’s out in the field where viewers are most familiar seeing Ted. From every corner of New England, he’s found the offbeat, the unique, the moving, and the just plain memorable, all while telling the enduringly colorful stories of the region’s people and places.
Ted has also been a regular contributor for WCVB’s political roundtable show, “On The Record,” and has been a member of the station’s editorial board since 2010. In 2002, he was part of a “Chronicle” team which received a national DuPont-Columbia Broadcast Journalism Award for coverage of Boston’s controversial Big Dig, and how such massive public works projects compare around the world. In 2018, he received an Emmy Award for his story on the “Good Night Lights” phenomenon in Providence, Rhode Island.
Elsewhere on television, Ted hosted the premiere season of the Discovery Channel’s Popular Mechanics show and brought viewers up-close to some of America’s most iconic landmarks for the HGTV network’s special, “Lighthouses.” For the Travel Channel’s photo-adventure series, FreezeFrame, he explored Hawaii’s volcanoes, the caves of Puerto Rico, and the South Pacific islands of Tahiti.
His first book, A New England Notebook: One Reporter, Six States, Uncommon Stories (Globe Pequot Press/2013) was selected by National Geographic Traveler as a “Best Pick.” He is also the author of Wicked Pissed: New England’s Most Famous Feuds (GPP/2015), and co-author, with his wife, Anne-Marie Dorning, of New England’s General Stores: Exploring an American Classic (GPP/2017). Ted’s most recent book is Before Brooklyn: The Unsung Heroes Who Helped Break Baseball’s Color Barrier (Lyons Press/2021).
Ted received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Brandeis University. He has two daughters, and lives just west of Boston.