The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards (Library of New England)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Overview
Review: This is a very successful attempt to produce an overview of the Puritan experience in New England. Arguably the most important single group on American history, this relatively small collection of religously inspired immigrants generated a number of cultural and political trends that continue as important features of American life. Bremer provides the basic narrative structure, social and demographic history, and theological history of the Puritan experiment in a concise and well written book of less than 250 pages. Readers will be struck with how features of the Puritan experience continue to resonate today, particularly certain aspects of the Puritan religous experience. Also impressive is how aspects of Puritan history in the 17th century prefigured events of the later 18th century. The New England colonies' conflicts with the centralizing tendency of the later Stuart kings, the resentment towards imperialistic economic policies, the emphasis on relatively broad political participation, all have important parallels in the struggles that lead up to the Revolution. Not surprisingly, religion occupies a central place in this book. Bremer does a particularly good job of describing the Puritans' sense of themselves as a chosen people, their involvement in a trans-Atlantic religous culture, and their complex theology. Perhaps the only deficiency, and this is relatively minor, is Bremer's less thorough treatment of the 18th century. While the narrative continues up to the death of Jonathan Edwards in 1758, the treatment of the 18th century is more superficial than of the 17th century. This is probably an understandable result of Bremer's desire to keep this book concise. There is also a very nice annotated bibliography. In using the latter, readers should bear in mind that this edition was published in 1995 and there have been important works published since 1995. There is no reference, for example, to George Marsden's outstanding biography of Jonathan Edwards, which was published last year. Overall, this is a very valuable distillation of the broad and impressive body of scholarship concerning these fascinating people.