Essay Collections

Massachusetts and the Civil War: The Commonwealth and National Disunion

Edited by Matthew Mason, Katheryn P. Viens, and Conrad Edick Wright

All states are not created equal, at least when it comes to their influence on American history. That assumption underlies Massachusetts and the Civil War. The volume's ten essays coalesce around the national significance of Massachusetts through the Civil War era, the ways in which the Commonwealth reflected and even modeled the Union's precarious but real wartime unification, and the Bay State's post-war return to the schisms that predated the war. Rather than attempting to summarize every aspect of the state's contribution to the wartime Union, the collection focuses on what was distinctive about its influence during the great crisis of national unity.

The essays in Massachusetts and the Civil War originated from the conference of the same name, held at the Massachusetts Historical Society in April 2013.

June 2015. Order from University of Massachusetts Press
$90.00 Hardcover    ISBN: 978-1-62534-149-5
$27.95 Paperback    ISBN: 978-1-62534-150-1 

What's New about the "New" Immigration? Traditions and Transformations in the United States since 1965

Edited by Marilyn Halter, Marilynn S. Johnson, Katheryn P. Viens, and Conrad Edick Wright

Through the ten essays in this collection, readers will discover a wide range of experiences that will inform their understanding of immigration today. Newcomers share the stuff of daily life as they cope with teenagers, worship together, and maintain long-distance family ties using new social media. In other instances, their experiences have been marked by the passage of the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, which ushered in the current immigration system. In this new context, the men and women in these pages eke out a living below minimum wage, or practice a profession and contribute to political campaigns. They seek asylum through the federal bureaucracy and navigate the meaning of citizenship. They are Bosnian, Chinese, Mexican, Asian Indian, and Nigerian. They reside in Boston suburbs, the Nuevo South in Georgia, affluent Dallas suburbs, and the heart of Los Angeles. But they are representative of newcomers to communities throughout the United States.

What's New about the "New" Immigration? presents the work of recognized immigration scholars. It is the latest in a series of essay collections based on conferences held at the Society.

December 2014. Order from Palgrave MacMillan
$90.00 Hardcover    ISBN: 978-1-137-48386-7 

Margaret Fuller & Her Circles

Edited by Brigitte Bailey, Katheryn P. Viens, and Conrad Edick Wright

The essays in this collection consider anew Fuller the journalist, the reformer, the traveler, the social and cultural observer, and the author and critic. They engage a mature body of scholarship to make fresh contributions and set future directions for the study of Fuller’s life and work. The authors are among the leading scholars of Margaret Fuller, Transcendentalism, and the antebellum period.

January 2013. Order from the University Press of New England
$85.00 Hardcover    ISBN: 978-1-61168-345-5
$35.00 Paperback    ISBN: 978-1-61168-346-2
$34.99 Ebook    ISBN: 978-1-61168-347-9

The Libraries, Leadership, & Legacy of John Adams & Thomas Jefferson

Edited by Robert C. Baron and Conrad Edick Wright

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson realized the value of education, of books, and of libraries in a democracy. What is the role of books and reading in the thoughts and actions of Adams and Jefferson? How did they organize their libraries, and how familiar were they with the books in their libraries? How did these books inform their roles as founding fathers? This collection of essays, from some of today's premier historians of Adams and Jefferson, celebrates these two founding fathers and the importance of books and libraries in America.

320 pages
Order from the publisher, Fulcrum Publishing
$35.00 Hardcover (2010)    ISBN: 978-1-936218-08-0

Remaking Boston: An Environmental History of the City & Its Surroundings

Edited by Anthony N. Penna and Conrad Edick Wright

Remaking Boston examines Boston from its early glacial formation to the present, outlining the physical characteristics and composition of the land and harbor, and the significant environmental impact of human occupation. Individual chapters address population movements, land use, infrastructure development, historic climate changes, biological adaptations, and reclamation projects, among other topics. The volume offers valuable lessons for the study of metropolitan environments and the efforts being made to improve and preserve them for future generations.

340 pages
Order from the publisher, the University of Pittsburgh Press
$40.00 Hardcover (2009)    ISBN: 9780822943815

$27.95 Paperback (2013)   ISBN: 9780822963011

Emerson Bicentennial Essays

Edited by Ronald A. Bosco and Joel Myerson

Drawn from papers presented at the conference that celebrated the 200th anniversary of his birth, Emerson Bicentennial Essays presents 17 studies of Emerson that address five general themes: "The Construction of Emerson," "Emerson's Audience," "Emerson the Reformer," "Emerson the Poet," and "Emerson and the World of Ideas." In their treatment of the aesthetic, social, religious, philosophical, and political aspects of his life and work, these scholars confirm Emerson's preeminence in American intellectual and literary history.

512 pages, 6 illustrations
Order from the University of Virginia Press

$60.00 Hardcover (2006)    ISBN: 0-934909-89-X

Henry Adams & the Need to Know

Edited by William Merrill Decker and Earl N. Harbert

Presents fourteen essays that articulate Adams's ongoing preoccupation with knowledge, stressing his eclecticism and his need to clarify the role of critical intelligence in public life.

383 pages
Distributed by the University of Virginia Press

$50.00 Hardcover (2005)    ISBN: 0-934909-87-3

World of John Winthrop: England & New England, 1588-1649

Edited by Francis J. Bremer and Lynn A. Botelho

The essays in The World of John Winthrop: England and New England, 1588-1649 vigorously assert a new unity to the transatlantic and Puritan Anglo-American sphere, integrating the English and colonial stories from a refreshingly singular perspective.

416 pages
Distributed by the University of Virginia Press

$50.00 Hardcover (2005)    ISBN: 978-0-934909-88-4
$35.00 Paperback (2006)    ISBN: 978-0-934909-96-9

Faces of Community: Immigrant Massachusetts, 1860-2000

Edited by Reed Ueda and Conrad Edick Wright

Because the Bay State became a primary destination for immigrants dislocated by industrial and urban development around the world, the essays in this volume offer important case studies, with national significance, of how newcomers and natives adjusted to each other and reshaped the boundaries and identities of American communities. This collection explores the common aspects of community creation and evolution that linked their various ethnic experiences, including, among others, Irish, French Canadian, Jewish, Italian, Swedish, Chinese, and African American.

269 pages, 7 illustrations
Order from the University of Virginia Press

$22.50 Paperback (2002)    ISBN: 0-934909-82-2
$50.00 Hardcover (2002)    ISBN: 0-934909-80-6

Hope & Glory: Essays on the Legacy of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment

Edited by Martin H. Blatt, Thomas J. Brown, and Donald Yacovone

This volume brings together the best scholarship on the history of the 54th, the formation of collective memory and identity, and the ways Americans have responded to the story of the regiment and the Saint-Gaudens monument. Contributors use the historical record and popular remembrance of the 54th as a lens for examining race and community in the United States. The essays range in time from the mid-nineteenth century to the present and encompass history, literature, art, music, and popular culture.

358 pages, 37 illustrations
Order from the co-publisher, the University of Massachusetts Press
$24.95 Paperback (2001)    ISBN: 978-1-55849-722-1

John Adams & the Founding of the Republic

Edited by Richard Alan Ryerson

Praise from David McCullough, author of John Adams:
"With interest in John Adams and his world growing steadily, this splendid collection could not be more timely or welcome. The authors are all front-ranking scholars in the field and all have much of value to say. I found the book totally absorbing from start to finish."

John Adams, lawyer, congressman, diplomat, vice president, and president, had one of the most varied and productive public careers of America's Revolutionary generation. His many achievements, taken for granted or even discounted through much of the 20th century, have in the past decade attracted the enthusiastic attention of historians, political scientists, and more gradually, the larger public. This collection of essays, the first ever published on the nation's second president, includes a full introduction to his life and career and nine explorations of Adams's rich legacy by several leading authorities on the man and his era. In assessing John Adams, the authors consider many topics that have seldom, if ever, been examined in any detail. These include Adams's choice of public role models in provincial Massachusetts; a comparison of Adams and Thomas Jefferson as young men; Adams's aggressive diplomacy in Europe; his frustrating experience as vice president; the intricacies of the election of 1796; Adams's thoughts on free speech; a detailed study of Abigail Adams as President Adams's most important advisor; the novelty of Adams's authorship of a history of his own public career; and a study of his magnum opus, The Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America. Both as the most convenient brief introduction to John Adams's life and career and as the only collection of new scholarship on this Revolutionary leader, this volume will prove indispensable to a full understanding of Adams's importance in American history.

304 pages
Order from the University of Virginia Press

$60.00 Hardcover (2001)    ISBN 0-934909-78-4

Transient & Permanent: The Transcendentalist Movement & Its Contexts

Edited by Charles Capper and Conrad Edick Wright

Comprising 20 essays by leading scholars, this insightful collection provides the best recent writing on the Transcendentalists, the New England religious reformers and intellectuals who challenged both spiritual and secular orthodoxies between the 1830s and the 1850s. The volume addresses Transcendentalism from many directions, illuminating the movement more clearly than ever before. The contributions consider aspects of the relationship between the Transcendentalists and their intellectual and social world, assess the movement's cultural legacy, and place Transcendentalism in the context of historical and literary scholarship, past and present.

655 pages, 10 illustrations
Order from the University of Virginia Press

$75.00 Hardcover (1999)    ISBN: 978-0-934909-76-1
$25.00 Paperback (2005)    ISBN: 978-0-934909-81-5

Entrepreneurs: The Boston Business Community, 1700-1850

Edited by Conrad Edick Wright and Katheryn P. Viens

Great merchants, investors, and industrialists have long dominated the historiography of Boston business, but this collection of essays urges a broader definition of the city's business community. Without denying the economic importance of the major traders of colonial Boston or the merchants of the China trade or the men who built New England's textile industry, it also finds signs of vigorous entrepreneurial activity in places where previously historians have rarely looked—for instance, among artisans, women, and members of minority communities. Overall, a testimony to the innovative business sense that came to life in all segments of the Boston community.

466 pages, 14 illustrations, and 4 maps
Order from the University of Virginia Press

$45.00 Hardcover (1997)    ISBN: 978-0-934909-70-9
$16.00 Paperback (1997)     ISBN: 978-0-934909-71-6

Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives on a 17th-Century Anglo-American Faith

Edited by Francis J. Bremer

"Exemplifying the vitality and diversity of Puritan studies today, this well-edited collection of eleven essays helps close the distance between American and British scholarship in the field."—Michael McGiffert, Institute of Early American History and Culture

This collection of essays delves into new source materials and thoroughly analyzes the existing literature to examine Puritan culture on both sides of the Atlantic. The volume covers a wide range of topics, including conversion among Puritans and Amerindians, sects and the evolution of Puritanism, and the meanings of religious polemic.

317 pages
Order from the University of Virginia Press

$45.00 Hardcover (1993)    ISBN: 978-0-934909-38-9
$16.00 Paperback (1994)    ISBN: 978-0-934909-34-1

Massachusetts & the New Nation

Edited by Conrad Edick Wright

This collection of essays studies the role of a single state in the transformation of American life following the Revolutionary War. As the citizens of the state worked to establish their new Commonwealth and determine its relationship to a federal government also in its infancy, they were forced to confront challenging problems both within Massachusetts and outside it. Religious differences fractured the Standing Order, separating Unitarians and Congregationalists from each other at the same time that pressures from Episcopalians, Baptists, and others urged an end to the religious establishment. Poverty posed problems for Massachusetts at large, and particularly for Boston, at the same time that public officeholders struggled to create new governmental institutions both for the Commonwealth and for its capital. Massachusetts merchants had to develop new, independent patterns of trade in response to American withdrawal from the British Empire. Diplomats had to find a place for the Commonwealth in the world order. And federal officeholders from Massachusetts needed to address the most divisive of domestic issues, slavery. The essays in this collection reveal how Massachusetts coped with these unexpected problems of independence.

310 pages, 10 illustrations
Order from the University of Virginia Press

$40.00 Hardcover (1992)    ISBN: 978-0-934909-28-0

American Unitarianism, 1805-1865

Edited by Conrad Edick Wright

"This edited volume provides an excellent sketch of the new history of Unitarianism and a valuable stimulus to further research."—Journal of American History

Although scholarship over the past few decades has resulted in an increasingly sophisticated understanding of Unitarian theology and moral thought, it has often failed to integrate the denomination's history into the religious and cultural history of the United States before the Civil War. This collection brings together two generations of scholars whose work poses new questions about the development of the Unitarian church and its role in antebellum American life. All the contributors are concerned with situating the newly created Unitarian church within the intellectual climate of its time, and their work pays particular attention to social, psychological, and economic issues.

286 pages, 12 illustrations
Co-published with Northeastern University Press
For the availability of this title, please contact the Publications Department

$40.00 Hardcover (1989)    ISBN: 978-1555530-47-1