Alan Taylor is the leading historian of early America within his generation. His second book, William Cooper's Town (1995) won a Pulitzer prize and his survey American Colonies (2001) in the Penguin History of the United States series was instantly hailed as a classic. He is also a “public intellectual,” serving over the past decade as the chief reviewer of books on early America for the US publication New Republic. This collection reprints his often quite lengthy review articles for the magazine on a variety of historical works – some scholarly, some popular – in a thematically organized anthology. It is an absolute joy to dip into and will confirm Taylor's reputation as a historians' historian. Most of the articles treat works familiar to specialists and of interest to non-specialists. Each of the essays displays Taylor's own erudition but in each he emerges as a fair-minded and enthusiastic, but honest, reader. He must be a superb adviser of graduate students and referee of scholarly books and articles. Were Taylor motivated by vanity or professional aspiration judgements such as the following (on Edmund S. Morgan's Benjamin Franklin), “Unfortunately, Morgan has surprisingly little to say about Franklin that is new or challenging” (230), would never have found their way into (re)print. Morgan is the biggest of “big names” and Taylor acknowledges, eloquently, the great man's many virtues. Yet, characteristically, in this case Taylor faults Morgan for not using his status and genius to present the public with multifaceted reading of an iconic American Founding Father. (Not that Taylor is a fan of complexity for complexity's sake. The modish preoccupations and methodologies of several younger turks come in for forensic dissection in these reviews. His review of Joyce Chaplin's Subject Matter (2001) is classic of its kind). Taylor's primary concern lies, quite properly given the origin of these reviews, with the general reader. Is he – the current market for history in the US being mostly male – well served by the blockbusters available at the local Barnes and Noble? Not if, as Taylor explains in a review of Giles Milton's Big Chief Elizabeth (2000), “a pop historian casts adrift from the creative tension with evidence that gives history its mystery and depth” (119). Hear hear!