Learn about the University of Massachusetts-Amherst when it was still a quiet agricultural college barely past its infancy. Discover quaint pastimes and bygone traditions at elite Amherst College, founded in 1821 by Noah Webster and others. And brush up on the heroes and villains of the Pioneer Valley’s colonial days, from populist icon Daniel Shays, leader of Shays’ Rebellion, to the notorious Lord Jeffery Amherst, who was revered as a war hero but is reviled for having suggested that Indians be given smallpox-infected blankets. The Handbook of Amherst provides a rich and illuminating vignette of life in the late nineteenth century in a classic New England college town.

Edited and with a foreword by Richard Panchyk, University of Massachusetts alumnus and author of twelve books, including A History of Westbury, Long Island.