Contested commonwealths : essays in American history /
Pencak, William,1951-
Bethlehem, Pa. : Lehigh University Press ; Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield,
c2011.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
The Knowles Riot and the crisis of the 1740s in Massachusetts (with John Lax) -- Metropolitan Boston before the American Revolution : an urban interpretation of the imperial crisis (with Ralph J. Crandall) -- The social structure of revolutionary Boston : evidence from the Great Fire of 1760 -- Play as prelude to revolution : Boston, 1765-1776 -- "The fine theoretic government of Massachusetts is prostrated to the earth" : the response to Shays's Rebellion reconsidered -- Politics and ideology in eighteenth-century almanacs : Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard and Nathanael Ames, Sr.'s An astronomical diary -- The beginning of a beautiful friendship : Benjamin Franklin, George Whitefield, the dancing school, and a defense of the "meaner sort" -- John Adams and his contemporaries -- The extended presidency of George Washington (1775-1797) -- Peter Oliver (1713-1791), chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court -- From racket to natural law : the permutation of smuggling into free trade -- "The great war for the empire" reconsidered as a cause of the American Revolution -- The Civil War did not take place.