Diana Muir  Diana Muir  Photograph by Elizabeth Waugh  Diana
Muir Appelbaum is at work on a book tentatively entitled
Nationhood: The Foundation of Democracy.  Her previous book,
Reflections in Bullough’s Pond; Economy and Ecosystem in New
England, explores the interaction of the economy, the ecosystem
and population growth in shaping the history of New England. The
region is important because it had an extremely early Industrial
Revolution, parallel with that of Britain. It was the New
England invention of interchangeable parts manufacturing and the
New England-invented machine tools that, along with such New
England-invented precision manufacturing devices as the vernier
caliper, that made it possible for the British-invented steam
engine to change the world.  The project  that Appelbaum is
working on addresses two inextricably interconnected ideas that
dominate modern political thought: the idea that individuals can
collectively constitute a people or nation with a right to self-
government, and the idea th