PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe author, an academic from Fordham University in New York, confronts his subject as you’d expect a history professor to do — his book is meticulously researched and draws on much of the rich scholarship dedicated to the region. But those who associate 'academic' with 'dry' will be pleasantly surprised; the book’s prose is light and readable. Though I sometimes found myself lost in the timeline that sprawls from feudal England to modern America, I thought Stoll told a complicated, multicentury story well ... Stoll’s criticisms of the market economy are sometimes needlessly polemic. Capitalism has its problems, of course. But Ramp Hollow is sometimes so earnest that it ignores obvious complications for its core thesis ... The book’s great strength is that it acknowledges something our politics often fails to: that not everyone wants the same things or possesses the same preferences ... I disagreed with much of this challenging, interesting and engrossing book. But it made me think. And that, it seems to me, is the whole point.