This collection of essays opens with the premise that if religion created the first forms of bigotry in the United States, it also prompted the first efforts to overcome bigotry. The choice of topics for the essays is broad ranging, introducing readers to religions practised by both English and non-English colonists as well as Native Americans and African Americans. Several underlying themes also link many of the essays, thereby providing a more unified whole than is often the case with such collections. A reader curious about religious prejudice in colonies better known for religious tolerance will find examples from both the New Netherlands and Pennsylvania. Likewise, a reader interested in growing distinctions between public and private life in the early modern period will find much to consider, with an essay on Native American religious life as a particularly strong example. While many colonies had mandated state religions, both whites and non-whites in the North American colonies developed methods for practising their own faiths in private which were often tolerated or ignored by colonial authorities. The divisions between Protestants and Catholics which impacted upon so many colonial and military endeavours during this period are also considered in several essays. Both the introductory and concluding essays also provide discussions on the terms ‘religious toleration’ and ‘religious liberty’, an important distinction in colonial and post-colonial North America. A few points of disconnect do, however, occur within the volume as a whole. While most of the essays illuminate very specific subjects, with Moravians, Quakers and Catholic Native Americans as only a few examples, the essays which have as their primary purpose an overview of religion in the colonies seem better fitted to a survey text designed for undergraduates. Like the book itself, the cover provides a montage of religious imagery from the colonial period. The choice of the satirical 1763 print, ‘Dr. Squintum's exaltation of the Reformation’ in the top right corner seems an odd one, given that the introduction makes it clear that the First Great Awakening will not be covered in the essays. A final issue is the unresolved question of whether the editors meant ‘early America’ to mean only the United States or North America as a whole as the term is treated differently within some of the essays themselves. Nevertheless, the broad range of topics covered by The first prejudice makes it a book to be read by both specialists and non-specialists in colonial religious history and may prove particularly fruitful for provoking discussion in the graduate-level classroom.