The powerful afterlife of a town that was seized by eminent domain and flooded to create a reservoir, featuring new material which brings the story up to date.
 
In the early 1940s, the Bridgeport Hydraulic Company flooded Connecticut’s Saugatuck River Valley to create a reservoir that would meet the region’s growing population. Under twelve billion gallons of water lay Valley Forge, once a thriving iron and steel manufacturing town, which was seized by eminent domain to create the reservoir and dam. In Village of the Dammed, journalist James Lomuscio tells the story of the rise and fall of Valley Forge, drawing on Civil War-era photographs of the town and other sources to show what the town was like, document the futile battle to save it, and reveal the flooding’s life-altering repercussions. He also recounts a grassroots movement to prevent the development of nearby Trout Brook Valley in the 1990s, a heated fight with a different outcome. As the population of the American northeast continues to swell and spread, placing new demands on existing resources, communities are frequently confronted with forces and choices not unlike those faced by Valley Forge and Trout Brook Valley. Village of the Dammed reminds us to be ever vigilant in the protection of our irreplaceable environmental heritage.

Revealing how people in need advocated for and negotiated their own care until the development of standardized medicine

The Voices of Need uncovers how men and women in Charlestown, Massachusetts, who turned to municipal authorities for aid, actively shaped how their need was understood and addressed. Through a close examination of Charlestown’s care networks, Angela Keysor shows how town selectmen relied on sufferers themselves to articulate what would relieve their distress, while local women—paid by town authorities—provided hands-on care in homes and neighborhoods. These networks flourished in the early and mid-eighteenth century, but their flexibility and responsiveness were increasingly strained by crisis and change. A devastating smallpox epidemic in 1763, followed by racialized debates over belonging after the legal end of enslavement in Massachusetts in 1783, exposed the limits of community-based care.

After the American Revolution, rising numbers of aid requests prompted town officials to reorganize care through a contract system in which paid caregivers attended to multiple dependents at once. As care became centralized and standardized, the space for individuals to define their own needs—and to influence how those needs were met—steadily narrowed. By 1819, with the founding of Massachusetts General Hospital, sufferers were fully redefined as patients, expected to submit to professional authority rather than participate in decisions about their own care.

Tracing this transition from negotiated assistance to institutional medicine, The Voices of Need illuminates a largely forgotten history of agency among the poor and infirm. In doing so, Keysor challenges conventional narratives of early American health care and shows how the rise of standardized medicine fundamentally reshaped the meaning of need, care, and authority.