Using the Amsterdam Municipal Orphanage as a window through which readers         can see the start of profound social and economic changes in early modern         Amsterdam, Civic Charity in a Golden Age explores the connections         between the developing capitalist economy, the functioning of the government,         and the provision of charitable services to orphans in Amsterdam during         the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the period of the city's greatest         prosperity and subsequent decline.       Anne McCants skillfully interprets details of the orphanage's expenditures,         especially for food; its population; the work records of those who were         reared there; and the careers of the regents who oversaw it. The establishment         of the orphanage itself was called for by the changing economic needs         of rapidly expanding commercial centers and the potential instability         of a government that depended on taxes from a large, politically powerless         segment of the population.