American Romanticism and the Popularization of Literary Education

colleagues—remember about visiting the Freedom Trail during the chronology of this book? While these questions might better serve a separate project, Bruggeman leaves no room for doubt that administrative policies and visitors’ experiences comprise a similar version of this story. Lost on the Freedom Trail converts a largely concealed institutional history of the Freedom Trail into a readable narrative. Bruggeman analyzes the twentieth century’s interpretation of events of the eighteenth century in Boston. He opens with an author’s note about racial reckoning in recent years and closes by mentioning a few subsequent changes, notably Faneuil Hall’s grappling with its complicity in chattel slavery. Lost on the Freedom Trail reaffirms the assertion that because our understanding of the past has consistently undergone evolutions, it will continue to do so. This book will do well in the hands of people who want to be onsite when that change happens.