A City So Grand: The Rise of an American Metropolis: Boston 1850-1900

Growing up in Dorchester,the second off three children of blind parents,we spent our entire lives riding the subways of Boston. My dad worked and briefly lived on Beacon hill and my siblings and I attended the Boston Public schools from K1 right through graduating high school. Now at the age of 69 I will shamefully say that I learned more about " my city" ( which I actually left in 1995) after spending the first 43 years of my life in it, from this book. I have traveled every street mentioned in the book, I have " played" In every neighborhood in the book, I have passed through every transit station in the book and my grandparents, both sides, were 1st generation Irish and Italian immigrants to this great city. Everything about Boston is of much more significance to me after reading this book. This is my fifth book by Stephen Puleo and I can't wait to read my next one,Boston Italians. Thank you so much for writing, your books are an absolute pleasure to read.

Interesting if you love Boston I imagine. Well written but not being from Boston I it felt a little long.

I purchased this book based on the excellent reviews at Amazon (ten reviews, all five stars); thus, my expectations were high. I was disappointed. The author chooses to "bore in" on certain topics that are only tangentially related to the development of the city, for example, 38 pages on the abolitionist movement. Also, there are many digressions to discuss rather minor characters, for example, five pages on the individual who first used X-ray technology at the Massachusetts General Hospital.There are a few photographs in the book (hardcover), and they are poorly reproduced. The photos are so dark that the details are obscured. Perhaps the photographs should have been printed separately on glossy paper rather than on the pages of the text. Throughout the text, the author refers to specific locations in the city by street names. Unless one is intimately familiar with Boston, this is quite confusing. A few simple maps would have been very helpful. A specific example is the filling in of the Back Bay. Maps showing the outline of the Back Bay before the project began and showing the arrangement of the streets (named) after the project was completed would have been very instructive.

I had this book sitting around for a while. I bought it because it was recommended by a friend who is also a Bostonian, and whose opinions I respect. After the Boston Marathon bombing, I felt stronger in my love of my city, and thought I would finally get to reading Puleo's book. What a revelation. Much of the information was not new to me, but it put everything into perspective. It is a page turner, which cannot be said for a good many non-fiction books. Anyone who is interested in American history should read this, because it mirrors what it means to be an American. Anyone who has any relationship with Boston should definitely not miss the experience of reading this book. It is on my must read again list.

John Winthrop's "city on a hill" becomes a leader in things technological and sociological in this engrossing read by Puleo, bookended by two rail events: the railroad exposition of 1851 and the building of America's first subway in 1899. In the intervening years, Boston becomes a leader in antislavery movements, precipitated by the return of a refugee under the Fugitive Slave Law; the amazing landfill of the Back Bay is begun, most of the business district is destroyed by fire, and the once-despised Irish gain a social foothold in the city, followed by the Italians.I have other histories of Boston, but this one presented even more facts and stories I had never heard of in a highly-readable, but never condescending style. A must for anyone who loves the city or late 19th-century American history.

This book is a wonderful telling of the fifty years that birthed what we call the City of Boston. The book showed me the original events that provide the echoes I hear today. The city that installed the first subway and became the the city that implemented the Big Dig. The city that roused itself against having a slave returned to his master became the city that emptied its streets to capture a bomber. The book showed that the Bostonian's feelings that Boston is a special place are not the result of a provincialist's narrow view of the world, but instead are an echo of what Boston justifiably felt about itself at the end of the 19th century,

It is a great book if you have any knowledge of current Boston. There is so much information on how it became what it is today. There are so many familiar names that you get more insight into the roll they played in the growth of Boston. With the knowledge center and character with which Boston developed I finished the book being proud to be from Greater Boston.

Boston was at a crossroad in 1850. The next 50 years transformed the city in amazing and innovative ways. I couldn't put the book down. It examined the traffic, the demise of horse drawn trolleys, the building of the subways and railroads- coining words along the way, and the relations between the Irish newly immigrated, the slaves looking for sanctuary, the abolishionists and Daniel Webster. The establishment of colleges, the fire that demolished 1/2 of Boston, and of course the filling in of Back Bay. It was a tremendous chronology of Boston and readable like a novel.