Nash’s book is one of the finest works on colonial America… His enormously thorough research, discriminating judgment, and lucid exposition will place the problems he discusses in the forefront of historical attention for the next generation of colonial historians.
-- Times Literary Supplement
This book is a major reinterpretation of urban life in eighteenth-century America… A masterful synthesis of the economic, social, and political history of prerevolutionary America’s three largest cities.
-- Journal of American History
A work of first importance.
-- William & Mary Quarterly