The City State of Boston by Mark Peterson

I read about this book in the New Yorker, and for some reason, while I read almost entirely fiction, I feel like I have a non-fiction book a week within my reach for the time being.  This was a rough way to start, though, because it is an almost 700 page book that is even denser to read than it is to lift. 
Drawing from vast archives, and featuring unfamiliar figures alongside well-known ones, such as John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, and John Adams, Peterson explores Boston’s origins in sixteenth-century utopian ideals, its founding and expansion into the hinterland of New England, and the growth of its distinctive political economy, with ties to the West Indies and southern Europe. The most interesting and unknown to me part was the 1600's when Boston rose to a powerful and rich city-state through Atlantic trade.  They even had their own silver currency!
By the 1700s, Boston was at full strength, with wide Atlantic trading circuits and cultural ties, both within and beyond Britain’s empire. After the cataclysmic Revolutionary War, the city aimed to negotiate a relationship with the American confederation, but through the next century, the new United States unraveled Boston’s regional reign. The fateful decision to ratify the Constitution undercut its power, as Southern planters and slave owners dominated national politics and corroded the city-state’s vision of a common good for all.  A situation that we are still emerging from as a nation.