Historian Edmund S. Morgan is the author of the 2002 best-seller Benjamin Franklin. He says his latest book, The Genuine Article, “amounts to an intellectual autobiography” of his scholarly career.

The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century by Perry Miller (Belknap, $28). Miller made me take seriously the ideas of the New England Puritans, who looked at the world in a very different way from myself or anyone I knew. Writing with extraordinary clarity and resonance about a highly complex system of thought, Miller shows how compelling religious beliefs can be in determining human behavior at any time or place.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us