Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston

in the state’s constitution and state house imitating the Bay State in both an ideological and physical sense (223). Making Maine will be of interest to scholars and lay readers of the state’s history. The amount of research in Making Maine borders on encyclopedic, and the primary sources in the book are impressive, coming from an impressive number of archives. Making Maine seems written for Mainers with an intimate knowledge of the Pine Tree State’s geography. Those interested in placing Maine’s experience during the War of 1812 within the wider national experience may note that the encyclopedic coverage of the war and the events surrounding it do not lend itself to a narrative structure. Smith vividly describes exciting battles and confrontations but could have also spent more time convincing readers why those events mattered with greater context. As a native Mainer, I fear that those “from away” will have a hard time seeing the relevance or importance of this forgotten episode from a largely forgotten war. Overall, Making Maine brings long overdue attention to an important moment in American history. Unlike Maine’s cries for help in 1814, one hopes that this book is heard by scholars beyond the state’s borders, because it helps us understand a critical crossroads not just in Maine’s history, but the nation’s as well.