Founded in 1636, essentially as a refuge for outcasts from Massachusetts, the colony of Rhode Island was unusually open-minded, leading Massachusetts Puritan Cotton Mather to refer to it as "the latrina [or sewer] of New England." The sixth of the Ivy League universities to be founded, in 1764, Brown accepted students early on regardless of religious affiliation, and in 1969 adopted a student-proposed "New Curriculum," allowing students to structure their education with relative freedom.

Over the last two and a half centuries, the university and its graduates have played a notable role in numerous defining moments in the American story, from the legacy of slavery (one of the founding Brown brothers was a leading abolitionist, the other an "ardent defender and slave trader"), to the Industrial Revolution and education reform. Although there are plenty of prominent names--among them Horace Mann, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Janet Yellen, and Edwidge Danticat--woven throughout, Widmer's is a more ambitious account that weaves its threads into a variegated history of how a university can both mirror and spur the wider culture around it.