“At last! With this literally unprecedented volume, Blake Gumprecht has filled what may have been the most grievous of gaps in the literature of our American settlement landscape. Moreover, he has done so in magisterial fashion by telling us in wonderfully readable prose virtually everything one might wish to know about those many scores of special places. I have read it with unalloyed pleasure and hope that a vast number of readers will share my joy.”—Annals of the Association of American Geographers

“If a friend should ever ask for a book that epitomizes the best that geography can offer, I recommend Blake Gumprecht’s new volume as a near-perfect candidate. In The American College Town he takes a landscape familiar . . . and makes us see it afresh. He dissects its complexity with astonishing thoroughness. He assembles the total package with spirited, clean prose, some of the best academic writing I have ever seen.”―Journal of Cultural Geography

"Surpassing his earlier The Los Angeles River, Gumprecht's new book places him among the leading cultural/historical geographers. Lavishly illustrated, meticulously researched, and enlivened by a former journalist's eye for detail, this will be a classic. Essential.”―Choice

"There are red states and blue states, and then there are college towns—a universe of their own, anomalous political cultures. This brilliantly worked-out idea by a University of New Hampshire geographer is the rarest of things—the first full-length study of its subject—and sure to please any academic on your list.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"With a keen eye for telling details and examples and an easy writing style, both products of an earlier career as a journalist, Blake Gumprecht identifies, explains, and vividly conveys the characteristics that make American college towns distinctive places.”—David J. Wishart, author of An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians

“College towns are a critical piece of America’s changing cultural geography. Blake Gumprecht provides a vivid insider’s account of their growing importance to our economy and society. I can’t imagine a better book on this subject.”―Richard Florida, author of The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class—and What We Can Do About It

“A field guide to the leafy, left-of-center places so many academics call home. Insightful and candid.”—Ann Arbor Observer

“A collection of intersecting short stories: warm narratives full of colorful anecdotes and supporting actors, out of which the character of the American college town emerges.”—Flagpole

“The book is an illuminating read for anyone drawn to a good yarn about what makes college towns the idiosyncratic places that they invariably turn out to be. Gumprecht's reportorial instincts bring to life the history, social patterns, personalities, and politics that define the localities he has chosen to discuss. His role as a geography scholar gives dimension to what college towns mean in the larger fabric of American places.”—Planning in Higher Education

“Blake Gumprecht is passionate about college towns. He has spent most of his adult life in them and has written a lively and engaging book that should be required reading for the many architects and planners in Greater Boston.”—Architecture Boston

“Although there are books on campus planning and design and others on the university as a cultural, political and and economic entity, few combine the physical and social aspects of colleges and universities, and none attempt to define the college town. The American College Town is a welcome addition to the literature on the history and experience of colleges, universities, and their urban settings.”—Traditional Dwellings and Settlements

“As a rule, Gumprecht's prose is easy to digest, and on many occasions his fact-finding turns up marvelous anecdotes."—Indiana Magazine of History

“Those interested in the sociology of American higher education—and simply in well-presented case studies—will find much to like in Gumprecht's work."—The Review of Higher Education

"The American College Town demonstrates Gumprecht's knack for recognizing a great untold story. It also proves that it is actually possible to articulate that most elusive of geographical concepts, the sense of place, when the writer is a master of landscape observation, as Gumprecht unquestionably is. This book teaches readers how to see the meaning embedded in places we take for granted. Gumprecht's exhaustive, multi-dimensional research enables him to read landscapes better than any historical geographer writing today."—Anne Kelly Knowles, author of Calvinists Incorporated: Welsh Immigrants on Ohio's Industrial Frontier