In a recent issue of the New York Review of Books, Gordon S. Wood lamented the current dominance of ‘monographic history’, a dominance which he claimed has brought ‘chaos’ to the discipline of history. Most works, he argued are so specific and technical that they are comprehensible only to a few specialists in each field. The title of this book might suggest that here is yet another study designed only to appeal to that hardy little band of historians who spend their professional lives grubbing through the records of early America.

In fact, this elegantly written book demands attention not only from historians of colonial America but from a wider intellectual audience. At one level, Isaac is writing microhistory, but at another he is dealing with the mentalite of pre-industrial civilisation. Moreover, in reconstructing the ‘world view’ of the prospective protagonists of this study – the gentry on one side, the ‘New Light’ evangelicals on the other – Isaac has utilised a sophisticated methodology based on ethnographic techniques developed by anthropologists – particularly Clifford Geertz. In an age when most historians shun theory, and by simply ‘writing history, implicitly embrace empiricism, here is a history which deserves to be read (by historians, sociologists, and anthropologists) not only for its findings but for its methodological underpinnings.