Restoring Williamsburg

"An earlier version of this book, published in 1988, was titled Williamsburg Before and After: The Rebirth of Virginia's Colonial Capital. It explored how the Reverend W. A. R. Goodwin, the rector of Williamsburg's historic Bruton Parish Church, persuaded John D. Rockefeller Jr. to invest millions of dollars in the restoration of the eighteenth-century capital. Yet the story of the restoration, as told in the first edition of this book, was not the full story. The first edition focused on one major "before" and one major "after"--Williamsburg before and after the restoration. The creation of Colonial Williamsburg is indeed an important story, and one that remains at the heart of this new book. Yet in reality there were many Williamsburgs--not just a single before and a single after. During the thirty years since the original publication date, our understanding of the history has deepened: The restoration has been an ongoing process, one that continued well after Goodwin and Rockefeller left the scene. This book tells some of those stories. This book also includes many aspects of Williamsburg's earlier history that were not included or not fully explored in the first book--for example, Williamsburg's history during the Confederacy and the restoration's impact on local residents in general and on African Americans in particular. It also includes additional building profiles and updated information on the buildings originally included"--