“How did a tiny Massachusetts town explode with such intellectual force—setting off a detonation that, only a decade or so later, would deliver the foundational works of American literature and upend American politics? Bruce Nichols offers the most lucid of answers in this vibrant account of our influential early disrupters.” —Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize–winning author 

“A striking group portrait . . . The charming and expansive result renders the contours of many lives with warmth and breadth, and paints a complete portrait of a man who once declared, ‘I am a fragment.’” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

 
“Wars, a shipwreck, the Underground Railroad, loves, tensions, and above all a thirst to understand the world: this bold venture in group biography brings alive an extraordinary moment and a remarkable circle of people. And it makes the reader feel, as all good history writing does: I wish I had been alive then.” —Adam Hochschild, author of American Midnight

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