"Conforti has written a marvelously engaging memoir of self-discovery and the making of a historian. By exploring and coming to terms with his roots in a New England mill city, he tells a story that is quintessentially American. Always aware of context, from his boyhood in Fall River in the 1950s to his young adulthood in the 1970s, Conforti treats the reader to often brilliant and sometimes humorous insight into the ethnic cultures of New England, its industrial and Yankee past, its post-industrial present, and its sometimes seedy politics."—Ron Formisano, author of The Tea Party: A Brief History and Boston Against Busing: Race, Class and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s

"An expert historian's wonderfully honest memoir of growing up in Fall River, 'the city of hills, mills, and dinner pails.' It's an authentic American story, beautifully told."—Gordon S. Wood, Professor of History Emeritus, Brown University, and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution