Defending a Way of Life: An American Community in the Nineteenth Century

This book profiles an American community in the nineteenth century to show the larger process by which the nation was transformed from a life close to the frontier to that characteristic of industrial capitalism. Michael Cassity considers this economic change from the broader perspective of an historian of the American people, offering insights into its social implications and consequences.

With graceful and moving prose, Cassity focuses on the process of social change, the pains that change generated, and the resistance to it. In the course of this transformation, the author examines the ways in which workers, farmers, businessmen, and women experienced and responded to the rise of a new industrial order.