Beyond Farm: National Ambitions in Rural New England. By J. M. Opal. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Pp. 261. Cloth, $39.95.)Reviewed by Brian ConnollyThe transition to capitalism in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has generated vast amount of scholarship over last couple decades, but as Paul Gilje has noted, most difficult aspect to articulate has been the mindset - mentality - of capitalism.1 In Beyond Farm, J. M. Opal attempts this most difficult of tasks by tracing contours of ambition in early national rural New England. Opal convincingly takes reader through transformations of ambition in rural New England as they intersected with emergence of liberalism, capitalism, nation, and modernity.Ambition was culturally fraught term in early republic, retaining its earlier connotation of dangerous passion while simultaneously being harnessed to larger, national projects of progress. As one might expect, ambition was highly gendered concept, and Opal convincingly explores this by tracing lives of six ordinary men in rural New England, all of whom came of age in early republic. In this way, Opal adds much needed depth to myriad discussions of gendered and raced nation. By tying lives of these six men to larger discourses of national formation through category of ambition, Opal takes reader through often unconscious ways in which nation was coded as white, male republic. Ambition, Opal convincingly argues, was trait open only to white, educated men.The first part of book situates ambition in four overlapping cultural, social, and political contexts: Enlightenment, Revolution, Constitutional ratification, and widespread establishment of independent households throughout New England. For Enlightenment thinkers, rehabilitation of ambition occurred insofar as it was part of constellation of ideas like emulation and enterprise, which were more explicitly civic minded. It was Revolution, and even more so ratification of Constitution, remade ambition. The new nation, particularly one envisioned by Federalists, was an extended republic required those of talent and genius to think beyond provincial confines of household, neighborhood, or even region. The nation-building project bore powerfully on experiences and imaginations of obscure and isolated people, demanding rural ambitions go beyond (14). Here, as in much of book, Opal foregrounds ideological and cultural changes paved way for later economic market revolution.Opal follows this early foray into meanings of ambition by tracing it through transportation and consumer revolutions, establishment of independent households, transformation of education, and finally establishment of new, independent professions. At all of these sites and stages, ambition was constantly made and remade. Opal is at his strongest in middle of book, where he examines movement of young men beyond their natal households and institution most formative in move - academies emerged throughout New England at end of eighteenth century. It has become historiographical commonplace post-Revolutionary family went through dramatic changes animated by romance, affection, and consent, all of which undermined patriarchal authority. Yet, as scholars such as Susan Juster and Dana D. Nelson have noted, while hierarchical authority of father may have been challenged by Revolution, fraternal authority of white males was reinforced.2 In convincing fashion, Opal demonstrates rising significance of ambition was central to this transformation, and, moreover, negotiates seeming historiographical contradiction. Opal argues a new rationale of family life emerged that lifted prospects of nation over needs of household (69). …