The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865

Recommended by Michele Lamont, Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies; Robert I. Goldman Professor of European Studies

“The City-State of Boston” tells the story of Boston from its 17th-century founding to the middle of the 19th century and how it remained at the center of U.S., dominating the East Coast, for more than 200 years. 

For Lamont, it’s also personal. It chronicles her neighborhood of Brookline, and how the “tax-avoiding bankers, scions of the protestant Brahmin elite, abandoned Boston to its Catholic immigrants to create some of the first American ‘garden towns.’” 

“[The book] radically informed my views of class segregation and of my location on the planet,” she said.