A Tale of Two Bostons—eBook (2nd edition)

A Tale of Two Bostons traces the intertwined origins of Boston, Lincolnshire and Boston, Massachusetts, revealing how people, faith, and ambition shaped two places bound by name and history.

Drawing on original research and primary sources, Barry Arthur Cotton explores the Puritan networks, families, and ideas that crossed the Atlantic in the early seventeenth century, transforming a market town in England into a foundational settlement in New England.

This paperback edition presents the complete text in a durable, readable format, ideal for scholars, students, and general readers interested in early American history, transatlantic migration, and the cultural roots of New England.

 The Kirkus Review writes: “Historians will find a trove of useful data on everyone associated with the Company, along with appendices reprinting important documents, charters, and Dudley’s evocative letter describing the deaths and hardships endured by colonists. Cotton’s prose is lucid andworkmanlike, and he includes raucous anecdotes—Harvard’s first professor was prosecuted for beating students with a cudgel,  and his wife accused of feeding them hasty pudding adulterated  with goat dung—as well as piquant biographical sketches like  The transformative love [John] Cotton experienced in marriage  filled his sermons with connubial and oral images full of sexual  innuendo.”  

Eve LaPlante, author of  “American Jezebel,” writes: “A gap in our shared knowledge has recently been filled by Barry Arthur Cotton in his book, A Tale of Two Bostons.”