It's a brave man who employs Puritanism as a term of art for a more-or-less unified set of beliefs born of the seventeenth century, still less for beliefs that have endured until modern times. After decades of debate early modern historians are if anything less certain about the meaning of the term and, despite the evident and long-standing influence of religion in American history, it is no mean task to tie seventeenth-century Congregationalists to modern times. In which case George McKenna is courageous to the point of reckless self-endangerment in his new book that purports to identify The Puritan origins of American patriotism and to trace the enduring significance of covenant theology, anxious introspection and America's sense of its providential mission in the world. In addition, to these core ‘Puritan’ themes in which he grounds a peculiarly American patriotism, McKenna is interested in the contrasting images of the Puritans over time. The opening chapter considers the doctrinal divisions in early New England which are later compromised by figures such as John Cotton and other post-Restoration thinkers and writers who acknowledge New England's individual failures while endowing the region with a grace and sense of mission bequeathed to later generations. Thereafter chapters address the expansion of these themes through the era of the American Revolution and Early Republic, focusing on the First and Second Great Awakening; the Civil War and Gilded Age, in which the Progressive Movement is read as the latest incarnation of Christian reformist zeal; and then on through the twentieth century – the '20s and New Deal, the Second World War, the '50s and '60s, Watergate through the Clinton administration. The book ends with 9/11, after which the country is divided between those who still subscribe to the idea of America's mission in the world and those who have worked out that it may have been thinking of this kind that brought the planes to the Twin Towers in the first place. The book is deftly written, and beautifully produced by Yale University Press. Some will find it maddening for its too-often unexamined and on occasion celebratory take on American exceptionalism. Others will be provoked by the review of desperate historiographies and well-informed correctives, for example regarding the founding fathers' position on the separation of Church and State. All will admire the breadth and reach of McKenna's confident insights into the shifting fortunes of Protestantism and moral discourse in public life extending from the migration of seventeenth-century Puritans to the contemporary ‘war on terror’. McKenna is professor emeritus at City College in the City University of New York and his book bears the hallmarks of a lifetime of pondering and doubtless teaching the narrative and great texts of American history – even down to his curmudgeonly lament at the decline of good history teaching in schools and universities. Gripped as we are, at the time of writing, by the latter stages of a crucial presidential election, it would be interesting to hear McKenna's assessment of what John Winthrop would have made of Sarah Palin's take on America's mission in the world.