Mark Peterson, professor and chair of history, teaches and writes about colonial America and the American Revolution. His specialty is Boston and New England. He is completing a book for Yale University Press titled The City-State of Boston: A Tragedy in Three Acts, 1630-1865. His earlier works include The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England (Stanford, 1997), as well as numerous articles and essays. He edits a regular column, "Common Reading," in the on-line journal of early American history Common-place.org. Peterson's scholarly interests include the history of ideas about economic life, and the nature of community formation in the early modern Atlantic