In the December 2014 issue of the Journal of American History, Shelby Balik gives a favorable review of Crisis of Community. She notes that, “Fuhrer shows how the grand narratives of the early republic played out in families and neighborhoods. . . She is to be commended for breathing new life into the New England community study; what could have been a dry compendium of data has become, in Fuhrer’s deft hands, a rich and engaging account (supported with statistics tables in the appendices that are useful but not intrusive) . . . Fuhrer show what happened when the turbulence that churned the early republic touched ground.”

The Spring, 2015 Volume of the Journal of the Early Republic brought an enthusiastic review from Eric Chaput. The author, he writes, “skillfully draws on the work of scholars who have written syntheses covering the immense societal, political, and cultural changes that took place between 1815 and 1848, and she tracks how these national forces associated under the umbrella term of the ‘market revolution’ played out in a small rural town in central Massachusetts. As Fuhrer documents, citizens of Boylston responded to change with an ‘uncompromising faith,’ and a ‘determination to cultivate self, and dreams of perfecting society.’ The narrative is accompanied by a rich collection of data on geographic mobility and agricultural development . . .  Mary Fuhrer’s meticulously researched and elegantly written book is a pleasure to read. It will be appreciated by subject area specialist and by general readers, and is an excellent choice for undergraduate and graduate courses on Jacksonian America.”