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The first historical study of the American town, As a City Upon a Hillmay be called a "collective biography" of the town, from its birth as a uniquely effective agency for permanently settling a vast continent after the wave of the frontier had pushed on to its absorption by the pervasive urban culture of the United States of today. Page Smith, winner of the Bancroft Award for his biography of John Adams, questions the cherished notion that the pioneer townbuilders were liberal and independent spirits, since in many instances their migration was prompted by the erosion of orthodoxy in their hometowns back east; it was not individualism but community values that prevailed and shaped the town—equality, neighborliness, conformity.