This is a new telling of Marsden’s earlier biography, not an abridgement. A fresh feature incorporated throughout the book is the parallel experiences of Benjamin Franklin, allowing us to see how two precocious New England boys rose to prominence amidst the turbulent intellectual shifts of their day. Chapter 1 sets the stage with the Puritan story from England to New England. As the 18th century unfolded, the question was whether the heirs of the Puritans would hold unto the old world or whether they would move into the modern world and the emerging Enlightenment; Edwards chose the former, Franklin the latter. Chapters 2–4 canvass the familiar biographical details of Edwards’s life, including his role in the Great Awakening. This leads into chapter 5, which further probes George Whitefield’s significance: he was “one of America’s leading founding fathers,” “best known person in the colonies,” and he “revolutionized American religion, and hence much of American life” (p. 60). Along with Gilbert Tennent and others, Whitefield’s evangelical egalitarianism fueled an epochal social revolution (before the American Revolution). Chapter 6 gives us glimpses of Edwards’s family life on the home front: Edwards was an intensely ascetic, visionary, aristocratic, pastoral, intellectual theologian-pastor (pp. 87–89). There is a sensitive but brief treatment of Edwards and slavery (pp. 89–92), and of course there was the “bad book” episode. Chapter 7 explores different aspects of war during that time, illuminating paradoxical features of Edwards’s Puritan heritage, some still characteristic of modern American evangelicals and their relationship to the United States. And finally, chapter 8 recounts the events and situations leading up to Edwards’s death at age 54 from the small pox vaccine, not least his amazingly prolific writing. The book’s conclusion reflects this short biography as a whole: theologically sensitive, historically insightful, and engagingly written. Highly recommended.

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