Yale University Press

Methodism

Empire of the Spirit

David Hempton

The first transatlantic history of the rise of Methodism, one of the fastest-growing Christian traditions of the modern age

The emergence of Methodism was arguably the most significant transformation of Protestant Christianity since the Reformation. This book explores the rise of Methodism from its unpromising origins as a religious society within the Church of England in the 1730s to a major international religious movement by the 1880s. During that period Methodism refashioned the old denominational order in the British Isles, became the largest religious denomination in the United States, and gave rise to the most dynamic world missionary movement of the nineteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, Methodism had circled the globe and was poised to become one of the fastest-growing religious traditions in the modern world.

  David Hempton, a preeminent authority on the history of Methodism, digs beneath the hard surface of institutional expansion to get to the heart of the movement as a dynamic and living faith tradition. Methodism was a movement of discipline and sobriety, but also of ecstasy and enthusiasm. A noisy, restless, and emotional tradition, Methodism fundamentally reshaped British and American culture in the age of industrialization, democratization, and the rise of empire.

David Hempton is University Professor at Boston University, where he directs the university's program in the History of Christianity. His previous books include Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750-1850, which won the Whitfield Prize of the Royal Historical Society; Religion and Political Culture in Britain and Ireland; and The Religion of the People: Methodism and Popular Religion, c.1750-1900.

  "The great strengths of this book are its command of the history of Methodism on both sides of the Atlantic and, of no less importance, Hempton's acute sense of the social contexts that allow religious movements to take root and flourish. Overall, his is the best informed and most acute analysis of Methodism's success in America that we have."--David D. Hall, Harvard University

Pub. Date:&nbspApril 2005
Price:  $30.00
Format:&nbspHardcover
320 p., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches
12 b/w&nbspillustrations
ISBN:&nbsp0300106149

Alexis de Tocqueville

A Life

Hugh Brogan

The first full-length biography in English of the prophet of modern democracy, published to coincide with the bicentenary of his birth

Alexis de Tocqueville was one of the greatest political writers of all time. Born a French aristocrat, he saw the decimation of his family during the Reign of Terror. He spent most of his adult life struggling for liberty under the unsuccessful regimes of nineteenth-century France.

  In 1831, Tocqueville made his famous voyage to America, and his two-volume record of his journey, Democracy in America, remains one of the most vital texts in the history of democratic thought. Deeply affected by his own experience of France's disastrous revolutions, Tocqueville grappled incisively with the question of how America's nascent democracy might thrive. His observations on American character and culture remain startlingly fresh nearly two centuries later.

A magisterial book by an eminent scholar of both European and American history, this will stand as the standard biography of Alexis de Tocqueville for years to come.

Hugh Brogan has worked for the Economist in the United States. He taught at Cambridge University and was subsequently R. A. Butler Professor of History at the University of Essex until his retirement. His books include The Penguin History of the United States of America as well as biographies of John F. Kennedy and Arthur Ransome.

Pub. Date:&nbspJuly 2005
Price:  $35.00
Format:&nbspHardcover
448 p., 6 x 9 inches
16 b/w&nbspillustrations
ISBN:&nbsp030010803

THE LETTERS OF ABIGAILL LEVY FRANKS, 1733-1748

Edith B. Gelles

Abigaill Franks' letters are among the earliest extant by a woman in colonial New York City. They are also the earliest known letters by a Jewish woman in British America and probably the Western colonies. Thirty-five letters survive, all written to her son Naphtali between 1733 and 1748. These letters represent a rare resource for the study of family life during the colonial period as well as of the life of a lively and articulate woman.

In this fascinating book, Edith B. Gelles carefully edits all of Abigaill Franks' letters to make them accessible to modern readers. Gelles' substantial introduction provides a portrait of New York City at the time, describes typical colonial family life, and discusses the Jewish immigrant experience in New York. Abigaill's spontaneously written letters tell of one Jewish family's assimilation in eighteenth-century America; it is a story that resonates with other stories of assimilation that permeate the pages of American history.

Edith B. Gelles is senior scholar, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Stanford University. She is the author of Portia: The World of Abigail Adams and Abigail Adams: A Writing Life.

November 2004
256 p. , 5 1/2 x 8 1/4
Cloth 030010345X $35.00
THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN CULTURE

Louis Dupré

The prestige of the Enlightenment has declined in recent years. Many consider its thinking abstract, its art and poetry uninspiring, and the assertion that it introduced a new age of freedom and progress after centuries of darkness and superstition presumptuous. In this book, an eminent scholar of modern culture shows that the Enlightenment was a more complex phenomenon than most of its detractors and advocates assume. It includes rationalist as well as antirationalist tendencies, a critique of traditional morality and religion as well as an attempt to establish them on new foundations, even the beginning of a moral renewal and a spiritual revival.
The Enlightenment’s critique of tradition was a necessary consequence of the fundamental modern principle that we humans are solely responsible for the course of history. Hence we can accept no belief, no authority, no institutions that are not in some way justified. This foundation, for better or for worse, determined the course of the following centuries. Despite contemporary reactions against it, the Enlightenment continues to shape our own time and still distinguishes Western culture from any other.

“This immensely readable book will cause readers to rethink the Enlightenment and to see its positive aspects. It will also add crucial historical perspective to current discussions of modernity.”--Donald Verene, Emory University

2004 416 pp. 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Cloth ISBN 0-300-10032-9 $45.00

A RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, Second Edition

Sydney E. Ahlstrom
With a foreword by David D. Hall

This classic work, winner of the 1973 National Book Award in Philosophy and Religion and Christian Century’s choice as the Religious Book of the Decade (1979), is now issued with a new chapter by noted religious historian David Hall, who carries the story of American religious history forward to the present day.

2004 1174 pp. 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
ISBN 0-300-10012-4 $30.00

INVENTING A NATION
Washington, Adams, Jefferson

Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal’s uniquely irreverent take on America’s founding fathers will enliven all future discussion of the enduring power of their nation-building ideas.
Gore Vidal, one of the master stylists of American literature and one of the most acute observers of American life and history, turns his immense literary and historiographic talent to a portrait of the formidable trio of George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

In Inventing a Nation, Vidal transports the reader into the minds, the living rooms (and bedrooms), the convention halls, and the salons of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and others. We come to know these men, through Vidal’s splendid and percipient prose, in ways we have not up to now--their opinions of each other, their worries about money, their concerns about creating a viable democracy. Vidal brings them to life at the key moments of decision in the birthing of our nation. He also illuminates the force and weight of the documents they wrote, the speeches they delivered, and the institutions of government by which we still live. More than two centuries later, America is still largely governed by the ideas championed by this triumvirate.

From the book:
“Washington’s steady presence and regal confidence more than compensated for his poor performance in the field against British generals, themselves every bit as striking in their mediocrity as he.”
“Adams alone saw virtues in monarchy--not England’s but one of our own, with titles for the men of power (due to his elliptical shape he was dubbed His Rotundity).”
“If Adams was the loftiest of the scholars at the First Congress, Thomas Jefferson was the most intricate character, gifted as writer, architect, farmer--and, in a corrupt moment, he allowed his cook to give birth to that unique dessert later known as the Baked Alaska.”
Gore Vidal, novelist, essayist, and playwright, is one of America’s great men of letters. Among his many books are United States: Essays 1951-1991 (winner of the National Book Award), Burr: A Novel, Lincoln, and the recent Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.

2003
160 pp. 5 1/2 x 8 1/4
Cloth ISBN 0-300-10171-6 $22.00

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
An Independent Life

William H. Adams

An engrossing biography of one of the most colorful and least well-known of the founding fathers
A plainspoken, racy patrician who distrusted democracy but opposed slavery and championed freedom for all minorities, an important player in the American Revolution, later an astute critic of the French Revolution, Gouverneur Morris remains an enigma among the founding generation. This comprehensive, engrossing biography tells his robust story, including his celebrated love affairs during his long stay in Europe.

Morris’s public record is astonishing. One of the leading figures of the Constitutional Convention, he put the Constitution in its final version, including its opening Preamble. As Washington’s first minister to Paris, he became America’s most effective representative in France. A successful, international entrepreneur, he understood the dynamics of commerce in the modern world. Frankly cosmopolitan, he embraced city life as a creative center of civilization and had a central role in the building of the Erie Canal and in laying out the urban grid plan of Manhattan.

William Howard Adams describes Morris’s many contributions, talents, sophistication, and wit, as well as his romantic liaisons, free habits, and free speech. He brings to life a fascinating man of great stature, a founding father who receives his due at last.“This forgotten founder was as large and multifaceted as the Revolution itself. Marvelously idiosyncratic, he had a fiery imagination that went along with his unabashed taste for women. Alternately ambivalent and industrious, he was a cranky political genius. William Howard Adams’s biography is essential reading.”--Andrew Burstein, author of The Passions of Andrew JacksonWilliam Howard Adams is also the author of The Paris Years of Thomas Jefferson, published by Yale University Press.

Support for this book has been provided by Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund

2003
368 pp. 20 illus., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Cloth ISBN 0-300-09980-0 $30.00

THE PAPERS OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Volume 37: March 16 through August 15, 1782
Benjamin Franklin

Edited by Ellen R. Cohn

This book, encompassing five months during 1782, promises to be one of the most significant volumes in the entire series of Benjamin Franklin’s papers. Between March and August, Franklin mastered one of the greatest challenges of his diplomatic career by establishing the framework for a peace agreement with Great Britain.

The negotiations required enormous subtlety in order to mollify the French while also satisfying the British. Franklin’s success was based upon the same strengths he had demonstrated several years earlier during the lengthy search for an alliance with the French government: an unswerving confidence in the rectitude and ultimate triumph of the American cause, immense patience, and an aptitude for one of the diplomat’s most subtle arts--creating contrasting impressions for different audiences.

2003
896 pp. 5 3/4 x 8 5/8
Cloth ISBN 0-300-10077-9 $90.00

THE INDIAN SLAVE TRADE
The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717

Alan Galllay

Won the 2003 Bancroft Prize for a Distinguished work in American History from Columbia University

This prize-winning book is the first ever to focus on the traffic in Indian slaves in the American South. For decades the Indian slave trade linked southern lives and created a whirlwind of violence and profit-making. Alan Gallay documents in vivid detail the operation of the slave trade, the processes by which Europeans and Native Americans became participants in it, and the profound consequences it had for the South and its peoples.

Alan Gallay is professor of history at Western Washington University.

2003
464 pp. 4 illus., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Paper ISBN 0-300-10193-7 $18.00

JONATHAN EDWARDS
A Life

George M. Marsden

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is a towering figure in American history. A controversial theologian and the author of the famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, he ignited the momentous Great Awakening of the eighteenth century.In this definitive and long-awaited biography, Jonathan Edwards emerges as both a great American and a brilliant Christian. George Marsden evokes the world of colonial New England in which Edwards was reared--a frontier civilization at the center of a conflict between Native Americans, French Catholics, and English Protestants. Drawing on newly available sources, Marsden demonstrates how these cultural and religious battles shaped Edwards’s life and thought. Marsden reveals Edwards as a complex thinker and human being who struggled to reconcile his Puritan heritage with the secular, modern world emerging out of the Enlightenment. In this, Edwards’s life anticipated the deep contradictions of our American culture.
Jonathan Edwards, a towering figure in the history of American theology, was both a great American and a brilliant Christian. This definitive biography draws on newly available sources to reveal how the internationally famous preacher was shaped by cultural and religious battles of his time and how he struggled to reconcile his Puritan heritage with the secular world emerging out of the Enlightenment.

"This is the finest biography of Edwards that I have read. It will be the standard benchmark for Edwards scholarship for generations to come."--Harry Stout, Yale University

2003
640 pp. 30 illus., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Cloth ISBN 0-300-09693-3 $35.00

RELIGIOUS PLURALISM IN AMERICA
The Contentious History of a Founding Ideal

William R. Hutchison

Religious toleration is enshrined as an ideal in our Constitution, but religious diversity has had a complicated history in the United States. Although Americans have taken justifiable pride in the rich array of religious faiths that help define our nation, for two centuries we have been grappling with the question of how we can coexist.

In this ambitious reappraisal of American religious history, William Hutchison chronicles the country's struggle to fulfill the promise of its founding ideals. In 1800 the United States was an overwhelmingly Protestant nation. Over the next two centuries, Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others would emerge to challenge the Protestant mainstream. Although their demands were often met with resistance, Hutchison demonstrates that as a result of these conflicts we have expanded our understanding of what it means to be a religiously diverse country. No longer satisfied with mere legal toleration, we now expect that all religious groups will share in creating our national agenda.
This book offers a groundbreaking and timely history of our efforts to become one nation under multiple gods.

William R. Hutchison is Charles Warren Research Professor of the History of Religion in America at the Divinity School, Harvard University.

2003
288 pp. 55 illus., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Cloth ISBN 0-300-09813-8 $29.95

THE WORKS OF JONATHAN EDWARDS
Volume 21: Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith
Jonathan Edwards

Edited by Sang Hyun Lee

In this collection of writings drawn from Jonathan Edwards’s essays and topical notebooks, the great American theologian deals with key Christian doctrines including the Trinity, grace, and faith. The volume includes long-established pieces in the Edwards canon, newly reedited from the original manuscripts, as well as documents that have never before been published and that in some cases reveal new aspects of his theology.
Sang Hyun Lee is Kyung-Chik Han Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.

2003
592 pp. 4 illus., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Cloth ISBN 0-300-09505-8 $95.00

THE WORKS OF JONATHAN EDWARDS
Volume 22: Sermons and Discourses, 1739–1742

Jonathan Edwards

Co-Edited by Nathan O. Hatch Harry S. Stout

The sermons and discourses in this volume chart the rise and decline of the Great Awakening in Jonathan Edwards’s parish in Northampton, Massachusetts, and beyond. A leading figure of the revival period, Edwards delivered potent and wide-ranging sermons during the years 1739–42. In this volume the transcript of the original manuscript of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is reproduced for the first time, along with the text of its first printed edition.
Harry S. Stout is Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Christianity at Yale University and general editor of The Works of Jonathan Edwards. Nathan O. Hatch is Andrew V. Tackes Professor of History and provost at the University of Notre Dame. Kyle P. Farley is a doctoral candidate in the department of history at the University of Pennsylvania.

2003
608 pp. 6 illus., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Cloth ISBN 0-300-09572-4 $95.00

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Edmund S. Morgan

“The best short biography of Franklin ever written.”--Gordon S. Wood

Benjamin Franklin is perhaps the most remarkable figure in American history: the greatest statesman of his age, he played a pivotal role in the formation of the American republic. He was also a pioneering scientist, a bestselling author, the country’s first postmaster general, a printer, a bon vivant, a diplomat, a ladies man, and a moralist--and the most prominent celebrity of the eighteenth century.

Franklin was, however, a man of vast contradictions, as Edmund Morgan demonstrates in this brilliant biography. A reluctant revolutionary, Franklin had desperately wished to preserve the British Empire, and he mourned the break even as he led the fight for American independence. Despite his passion for science, Franklin viewed his groundbreaking experiments as secondary to his civic duties. And although he helped to draft both the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution, he had personally hoped that the new American government would take a different shape. Unraveling the enigma of Franklin’s character, Morgan shows that he was the rare individual who consistently placed the public interest before his own desires.

Written by one of our greatest historians, Benjamin Franklin offers a provocative portrait of America’s most extraordinary patriot. Edmund s. Morgan is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University. He has written more than a dozen books including Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America, which won the Bancroft Prize, and American Slavery, American Freedom, which won the Francis Parkman Prize and the Albert J. Beveridge Award. Cited as “one of America’s most distinguished historians,” Morgan was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2000.

The greatest statesman of his age, Ben Franklin was also a pioneering scientist, a bestselling author, the first American postmaster general, a printer, a bon vivant. He was also a man of vast contradictions. This brilliant biography by one of our greatest historians offers a compact and provocative new portrait of America’s most extraordinary patriot.

2002 American History
352 pp. 20 illus., 5 1/2 x 8 1/4
Cloth ISBN 0-300-09532-5 $24.95

March 4 , 2005