People of the Wachusett is an ambitious book. The book provides a social history of town creation and development and briefer forays into cultural identity as explored by residents. - Carla Gardina Pestana, Ohio State University (The Journal of American History) This is an important book whose central conception of serial town settlement as the engine of cultural production in greater New England makes a valuable contribution to New England studies. - Joanne Pope Melish, Univ. of Kentucky (Journal of the Early Republic) Contributing to two important trends in recent scholarship--the understanding that the early British colonies were a multiracial society and the analysis of the history of memory--David Jaffee puts a detailed study of east-central Massachusetts into a larger portrait of cultural patterns of Euroamerican settlement between the mid-seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. - Michael Lienesch, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (William and Mary Quarterly) Jaffee shows the significance of the collected memory of family, household, and village in shaping New England identity. This work contributes to understanding local history in the larger context of regional society and culture. (Choice) Jaffee's book has the qualities of a synthesis that benefits from the previous mining of social historians.

The book is enjoyable to read. - Bruce C. Daniels, University of Winnipeg (American Historical Review) Through impressive research in town records, material culture, and printed materials, Jaffee chronicles the development of regional identity in the early Washusett. There is much that historians of American religion will find worthwhile about this book. - John Fea, Valparaiso University (Religious Studies Review).