Mark Peterson's The City-State of Boston is a formidable work of history—prodigiously researched, lucidly written, immense in scope, and yet scrupulously detailed. A meticulous history of New England over more than two centuries, the book argues that Boston and its hinterland emerged as a city-state, a “self-governing republic” that was committed first and foremost to its own regional autonomy (p. 6). Rather than as a British colonial outpost or the birthplace of the American Revolution—the site of a nationalist struggle for independence—the book recovers Boston's long-lost tradition as a “polity in its own right,” a fervently independent hub of Atlantic trade whose true identity placed it in tension with the overtures of both the British Empire and, later, the American nation-state (p. 631).

马克·彼得森（Mark Peterson）的《波士顿的城市状态》是一部艰巨的历史著作，经过了深入的研究，明晰的写作，范围广泛而又经过详尽的详尽研究。该书认为，新英格兰已有两个多世纪的悠久历史，其波士顿及其腹地成为一个城邦，一个“自治共和国”，首先致力于自己的区域自治（第6页） 。该书取代了英国殖民地的前哨基地或美国革命的发源地，即民族主义争取独立的场所，而将波士顿早已失传的传统恢复为“自身的政治”，这是大西洋贸易的极度独立的枢纽，真正的身份使它与大英帝国以及后来的美国民族国家的提议都息息相关（第631页）。