Books by Paul Boyer

Boyer explores the links between urban reforms of the Progressive era and efforts of prior generations. By the 1890s thinking about urban planning and social control gravitated between a bleak assessment that led to coercive strategies and a hopeful evaluation that stressed the value of environmental betterment as a means of urban moral control.

Domestic programs and foreign policies-and the man himself-explored in almost a hundred articles and essays, with expert commentary. "Paul Boyer has caught the essence of the pros and cons of Reagan and his presidency....A thoughtful and absorbing introduction."-Frank Freidel.

As influential as prophecy is in the worldview of so many, the belief in the phenomenon remains a popular mystery, largely unstudied and little understood. When Time Shall Be No More offers for the first time an in-depth look at the subtle, pervasive ways in which prophecy belief shapes contemporary American thought and culture.

Tormented girls writhing in agony, stern judges meting out harsh verdicts, nineteen bodies swinging on Gallows Hill. The stark immediacy of what happened in 1692 has obscured the complex web of human passion which climaxed in the Salem witch trialsFrom rich and varied sources-many neglected and unknown-Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum give us a picture of the people and events more intricate and more fascinating than any other in the massive literature. It is a story of powerful and deeply divided families and of a community determined to establish an independent identity-beset by restraints and opposition from without and factional conflicts from within-and a minister whose obsessions helped to bring this volatile mix to the flash point. Not simply a dramatic and isolated event, the Salem outbreak has wider implications for our understanding of developments central to the American experience: the disintegration of Puritanism, the pressures of land and population in New England towns, the problems besetting farmer and householder, the shifting role of the church, and the powerful impact of commercial capitalism.