A History of Boston

Description

Boston is today one of the world’s greatest cities, first in higher education, hospitals, life science companies, and sports teams. It was the home of the Great Puritan Migration, the American Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the first civil rights movement, the abolition movement, and the women’s rights movement. But the city that gave us the first use of ether as anesthesia, the telephone, technicolor film, and the mutual fund—the city where Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott founded their world-changing partnership—was also the hub of the anti-immigration movement, the divisive busing era, and decades of self-inflicted decay. Boston has the most important history of any American city. Yet its history has never been given a comprehensive treatment until now. Join Dan Dain as he acts as your tour guide from the arrival of First Peoples up to the election of Boston’s first woman and person of color as mayor. Dain’s masterful work explores the policies and practices that took Boston from its highest heights to its lowest lows and back again, and examines the central role that density, diversity, and good urban design play in the success of cities like Boston.

Readers’ Comments

“Dan Dain’s A History of Boston arrives at a critical moment when cities like Boston contemplate their future in the post-pandemic era of hybrid and remote work. Dain offers up a compendium that spans both old and new Boston, reminding us how urban centers with staying power are hardly static. They rise and they fall, and whether they rise again depends on their ability to adapt to changing times.”

—SHIRLEY LEUNG, Boston Globe columnist and associate editor

“Dain’s A History of Boston lays out a blueprint for cities wanting to thrive in the 21st century through diversity, density, and good urban design. The deep analysis of one of America’s oldest cities provides insights for all cities looking for a road map forward.”

—MALIA LAZU, founder, The Urban Labs and MIT lecturer

“Dain’s massive volume regarding Boston history merits a comfortable chair, a glass of wine, and a good reading light.”

—LAWRENCE S. DICARA, former president of the Boston City Council, mayoral candidate, and author of Turmoil and Transition in Boston: A Political Memoir from the Busing Era

“Welcome to Boston, the city that reinvents itself every century or so. That’s one takeaway from a magnificent and masterful book on the history of Boston written by Dan Dain, a top commercial real estate lawyer by day, author at night. But the book also offers a warning: Boston’s current success is not cast in stone, having followed nearly a century of stagnation and malaise.”

—SCOTT VAN VOORHIS, publisher, Contrarian Boston, and columnist for Banker & Tradesman

“Dain’s A History of Boston helps the reader understand how land-use and environment contribute to shaping a community. Dain’s Boston is the go-to book.”

—R.J. LYMAN, former director of the Mass. Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) Office and chair of Governor Bill Weld’s presidential campaign

“For those who want to truly understand this city and its past, Dain’s book is indispensable.”

—ANDREW LELLING, former United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts and Boston Globe Magazine Bostonian of the Year in 2019