Boston and New York in the Eighteenth Century.

Analyzes the differences between these two cities and evaluates their importance. Both cities performed crucial centralizing functions in such areas as culture, politics, finance, publishing, and commerce. The differences between them, in the colonial period as well as over time, stem from the differing ideals and purposes of the cities' founders; differences then reinforced by "eighteenth-century circumstances." New York City came to represent economic activity, while Boston's chief successes came in the realm of culture.