An American community on the edge

“Nathaniel Popkin is a talented historian with a focus on Philadelphia and the early history of the US … but he’s really too good a writer just to be a historian (no offense to historians) so, he writes novels, beautifully written novels of a ‘lost America’ … but he’s too intellectually rigorous just to be a novelist (no offense to novelists) so he writes some of the sharpest literary criticism out there … but he’s too interesting just to be a literary critic (no offense to literary critics) so he writes wonderful essays on architecture, design, urban planning, and preservation. Renaissance humanists, eat your hearts out. Nathaniel Popkin, in short, is a national treasure.”

—Morgan Meis, winner of the Whiting Award, author of Dead People