Each chapter is brilliant, informed by Weinbrot's astonishingly wide reading and ability to make the past come alive... As he has done before, Weinbrot makes serious intellectual history fun... Highly recommended. Choice Professor Weinbrot ranges wide and delves deep in this study, which could nostalgically be called intellectual history... Moreover, Weinbrot provides accurate and succinct historical summaries along the way. ... Read more
Robert G. Walker Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer Literature, Religion, and the Evolution of Culture is a formidable work of scholarship written by one of the period's sharpest critics. Its erudition is pronounced, its analysis acute... Digital Defoe Weinbrot's examination of the gradual evolution of English cultural perceptions of religious "others" makes an important contribution to eighteenth-century studies. The University of Chicago Press Mr. Weinbrot's study is an infinitely rewarding sourcebook for important eighteenth-century religious concepts (including passive obedience, the Thirtieth of January Sermon, or Augustinianism) and movements (such as Methodism). Without doubt, he offers a most impressive reconstruc- tion of the raging religious feuds. Moreover, his study of Defoe's monumental Shortest Way with the Dissenters is as careful as it is penetrating. His book is informed by his keen sense of injustice: its pages are suffused with his indignation about cruelties, such as the "state terrorism"... Scriblerian ... a watershed moment in our field. Notes and Queries Show Less