Anyone in the United States with an interest in local history, or even anyone who's ever idly scanned the Local History section of a library or bookstore, has doubtless noticed plenty of books, many of which tend to have very similar covers, from an outfit called Arcadia Publishing:
https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/
They seem to have carved out a niche for producing a line of books covering the history of particular cities or counties--or, more recently, specific aspects of a local area's culture and history. They've produced books covering every place I've ever lived.
I've never been sure about how good these books actually are. I realize that they're most likely written by local writers and researchers, and so necessarily may be of variable quality. But does anyone have any insight into whether they, as a company, have quality-control measures in place to ensure that these books are reliable sources for local history? Or are they better regarded as rather bland-looking souvenirs with nice pictures ?
The couple that I’ve read for northeast CT seem to be pretty accurate. There is input from local historians and historical societies but the overall information tends to be sporadic depending on the amount of information available. Not sure what the budget is or how much time the compiler is given to complete the compilation. If anything, it’s kinda fun to try and compare the old pictures with their current locations.