This excellent study recovers the life of Joseph Ryder, a Leeds dyer and Dissenter, using what seems like an unprepossessing spiritual diary. Almost nothing is known of Ryder beyond his dates of birth, marriage and death, and the diary fleshes out little of the detail of his personal life. Yet it reveals how deeply introspective he was. Like Nehemiah Wallington a century before, Ryder's diary reveals a striking preoccupation with faith and salvation. Ryder worked his way into the middling sort by his own, considerable, efforts. But he was also troubled by wealth, so he gave away large amounts of money and worried whether he and his wife were buying dangerous luxuries as they furnished their house. He was also preoccupied by death so that, as Kadane records, his diary is ‘an alternative burial register of Dissenter Leeds’ (p. 32). The most interesting aspects of Ryder's diary are the interplay between spiritual and economic concerns. Prosperity made him spiritually vigilant of his behaviour – consequently Kadane challenges the Weberian model of ‘elective affinity’ between Protestantism and capitalism. The human and natural causes of poverty and abundance were also clear to Ryder; accordingly, for example, he questioned whether rioters were provoked by evil or necessity; and when he first saw the new Cloth Hall in Leeds in 1758 he was shocked by the vanity of the building. In this respect Kadane is right that Ryder was a ‘double minded man’. This is a readable, intelligent and important study of religion and economics in the period of the industrial revolution.