"Perhaps the most penetrating examination yet published of 'the sources of our obsessive concern with the meaning of America.'"
-- Jack P. Greene, History

"The most valuable achievement in colonial American literature since the best work of Perry Miller."
-- David Levin, William and Mary Quarterly

"A brave and brilliant book…that is the most significant and far-reaching contribution to the theory of American literature in recent years."
-- Alan Trachtenberg, Partisan Review

"A study which reaches with daring ease from the Bible and Augustine to Emerson and Whitman…[and] offers an agenda for the next several decades of scholarly work on colonial religious studies."
-- John F. Wilson, Theology Today

"…casts a dazzling light on the myth of America and the conundrums of individuality and community that are the core of the American character."
-- Michael Zuckerman, Early American Literature