In this 25th anniversary edition of his Bancroft Prize-winning book, Dawley reflects once more on labour and class issues, poverty and progress and the contours of urban history in the city of Lynn, Massachusetts, during the rise of industrialism in the early 19th century. He not only revisits this urban conglomeration, but also seeks out previously unheard groups such as women and blacks. The result is a more rounded portrait of a small eastern city on the verge of becoming modern.

This award-winning study analyzes in close detail the experiences of glassworkers as mechanization transformed their trade from a highly skilled art to a semiskilled occupation. Arguing that changes in the organization of work altered the lifestyle and political outlook of the glassworker, Joan Scott uses local archival materials and demographic records to reconstruct the experience of ordinary workingmen.

Through the history of one city Michael Frisch provides a persuasive and graceful account of the shifting context of urban experience. He traces the shift of people's perception of community from an informal, direct sensation to a formal, perceived abstraction, thus relating the history of a place to the history of an idea.