Taylor, Alan. William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early Republic. New York: Random House, Inc., 1995. A book review by Jonesia Wilkins. In writing William Cooper's Town, Alan Taylor connects local history to the political, economic, and cultural patterns prevalent in the early republic, assessing the balance of the American Revolution as demonstrated. through a protrusive family past, and merging the history of frontier settlement with the visualization and reenactment of that experience in literature. Taylor achieves these goals through a lively and dramatic fusion of narrative and analytical history. His book will be authoritative and will delight readers in many ways, particularly for its compelling and memorable portrayal of two main subjects: William Cooper, the frontier entrepreneur and city builder, and his youngest son, the theorist James Fenimore Cooper, who shaped his own novel. representation of family history through stories such as The Pioneers (1823). As William Cooper's Town readies to approach, his fluid, fast-paced narrative is virtually relentless in focusing on one major theme: the pursuit of ostentatious status in a republic that subscribed to democratic values ​​but remained bound by hierarchical designs of gregarious value of colonial history. By constructing the story around the terms "ascension", "power", and "legacy", Taylor reflects William Cooper's rise from poverty and ambiguity to great wealth and influence and, ultimately, his frivolity of the family fortune through an accumulation of restless excesses and transgressions. , and transmuting economic circumstances beyond his control. Cooper's goal of continuing his estate...... middle of paper ...... saw his sister Hannah in a riding situation and how her memories influenced the portrayal of the female character in The Pioneers. Taylor disputes Cooper's assertion in the 1830s that his novel must be about his family, attributing this denial to the novelist's discomfort with the authenticity of a noisy, democratic Cooperstown at odds with the harmonious and deferential Templeton of fiction . Alan Taylor wrote the book, William Cooper's Town so rich in texture and implicit insinuation that it is difficult to do it justice in a brief review. His work defies simple categorization as it moves seamlessly between the world of William Cooper and that of his novelist son. Taylor deserves the highest honor for allowing us to rethink the nature of the historian's art while transporting us to a particular frontier of the early American republic..