Description
?This lovely little book is what the new local history is all about. It captures, intimately and authentically, the life of an eighteenth-century New England town, and it conveys, effectively and ingeniously, the entanglement of that life in the surge of stirring events of a wider world beyond its borders. In its narrative vibrancy and synthetic sweep, it is, I think, the most suggestive and satisfying of the case studies of colonial communities. In its originality, its compassion, and its sensitivity to the irony of human endeavor, it is, I believe, the beginning of a brilliant career of a major American historian. It?s a gloriously good book.? ? Michael Zuckerman, University of Pennsylvania … – ?This book is a pleasure to read?so much so that one may easily miss the monumental research upon which it rests. The author has successfully brought new methods to the solution of an old historical problem. In his careful study of a single American community, he has developed for the ?rst time a sustained and convincing interpretation of the American Revolution as a social movement. The argument will not, of course, command agreement in all its intricate details, but it will be read and respected for a very long time. ‘The Minutemen and Their World’ is likely to be one of the few enduring works … ” ? David Hackett Fischer, Warren Professor of History, Brandeis University
