The Puritan Ordeal

A powerfully imaginative and personal book--perhaps as all great American books on the Puritans must be.
--Gordon S. Wood (New York Review of Books )

The arguments in this book will resonate in the study of American culture for years to come...There is much to recommend this book ... historians and literary critics alike will be challenged by [it]. The Puritan Ordeal shows great promise for the continuing study of the life of the mind in America.
--Bruce Tucker (Journal of American History )

Delbanco's singular achievement in The Puritan Ordeal remains his sensitive, attentive, and generous recovery of the first emigrants' voices...[This book] may well provide the richest transcription we have of the hesitant, bewildered yet ultimately hopeful new-world inflections that register everywhere in early American culture.
--Donald Weber (American Literary History )