Pulitzer Prize Winner: “A meticulous and remarkably detailed account of the early government and social organization of the town of Sudbury, Massachusetts.” —Time In addition to drawing on local records from Sudbury, Massachusetts, the author of this classic work, which won the Pulitzer Prize in History, traced the town’s early families back to England to create an outstanding portrait of a colonial settlement in the seventeenth century. He looks at the various individuals who formed this new society; how institutions and government took shape; what changed—or didn’t—in the movement from the Old World to the New; and how those from different local cultures adjusted, adapted, competed, and cooperated to plant the seeds of what would become, in the century to follow, a commonwealth of the United States of America. “An important and interesting book . . . to the student of institutions, even to the sociologist, as well as to the historian.” —The New England Quarterly

This work explores the town meeting form of government. It provides a conception of town meeting democracy, positing that it is a de facto representative legislative body with three safety valves - access to all voters, the ability to add articles and call meetings, and the protest referendum.

The author examines the institution and mystique of the New England town as it has impinged upon and molded the American imagination for two hundred years through the works of such writers as Thoreau, Dickinson, Cheever, and Updike.

How would you like to take a stroll with me, a stroll down memory lane? Travel down a dirt road in a small New England town of about 800-900 people in a time when America was struggling out of depression.