These poignant, wise essays provide a deeply personal commentary on twentieth century America. Paul Conkin courageously repudiates all sentimentality and the conventional platitudes of both left and right.

Daniel Walker Howe, Rhodes Professor of American History, Oxford University

In these wise, trenchant, [and] iconoclastic essays . . . Conkin celebrates American pluralism and tolerance of diversity as he mourns tight-knit local communities, which, in his estimation, have all but disappeared.

Publishers Weekly

Offers the reader a compelling and insightful series of essays on a spectrum of American historical events and personalities. Offers both students of American history and non-specialist general readers seeking an historical grasp to contemporary political and cultural trends an informative , "reader friendly" perspective.

The Bookwatch

All this amounts to one reading that might connect up diverse reflections within this elegant collection of addresses. Read Conkin on liberty and property. Or read him on history as memory. Or learn from him how local diversity worked to allow diversity of religious practice in early British American settlements..... Throughout the book, Conkin converses with his public, not only because he is a good and therefore conversational writer but because his essays began as talks of one kind or another. It is gratifying reading or listening.

Florida Historical Quarterly

At a time when efficiently harnessing scholarship to one good cause or another is said to be the supreme test of its value, Conkin's candor and independent spirit provide us with a model to cherish and emulate.

Journal of Southern History