In Lancaster, Ohio, 1800-2000, David R. Contosta tells the story of one American town as it has evolved over a two hundred-year period. Contosta has found that Lancaster was never the sort of idyllic community that writers once imagined for small towns; nor was it the social and cultural wasteland that social critics portrayed during most of the twentieth century.

In explaining why Lancaster has remained a small but relatively successful community for some twenty decades, Contosta looks at various factors, including location, natural resources, technology, transportation systems, local...