""Civic Wars is a great study of the American city. It combines history, anthropology, and politics to render the culture of American cities as a drama, full of conflict. "Civic Wars is more than an academic study; Mary Ryan is passionately committed to cities as the necessary places of citizenship."--Richard Sennett, author of "Flesh and Stone

"A bold, innovative study of nineteenth-century city people and their tumultuous politics. Ryan raises talk of 'the public sphere' to a new height by grounding it in the rough, evolving life of urban America. Anyone interested in the history of democracy should read this book."--Michael Kazin, author of "The Populist Persuasion: An American History

"An eloquent and compelling narrative of the fate of public life in the nineteenth-century city. No one else has analyzed the robust democratic public culture of the antebellum years with such depth and subtlety; no one else has provided such a masterful combination of social and political history. Her important book will reshape not only our historical understanding of the nineteenth-century city but also contemporary debates about the fate of democratic public life."--Roy Rosenzweig, author of "Eight Hours for What We Will