American Enlightenments

“[A] deeply learned and eloquently written book.”—Edward Cahill, Reviews in American History

"[Winterer] reminds readers that the Enlightenment in the US was not synonymous with the American Revolution and that Americans not only absorbed Enlightenment thought but also contributed to it in important ways."—Choice

"Winterer has penned an engaging and wide-ranging survey of predominantly eighteenth-century North American intellectual history and the process of “enlightenment.”…[t]he often-dazzling array of topics and impressive erudition demonstrated surely mean that American Enlightenments will become a core text of Enlightenment courses . . . "—Intellectual History Review

"Fascinating . . . engagingly unfamiliar and surprising. American Enlightenments offers a valuable and provocative contribution to the ongoing question of how to understand the eighteenth-century enlightenment and its meaning for our contemporary moment."—Journal of the Early Republic



"A work of outstanding scholarship, American Enlightenments views the Enlightenment as pluralistic, with diverse manifestations, each with its own context, motivations, and achievements. Caroline Winterer’s approach is novel, accessible, refreshing, and up-to-date. Her book is a major accomplishment."—Daniel Walker Howe, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848

"In a lively prose style that is as convincing as it is entertaining, Caroline Winterer comprehensively covers the American Enlightenment generously defined as the whole North American continent."—Joyce Appleby, professor emerita of history, University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination

"American Enlightenments advances our conception of Enlightenment—both in America and Europe—in powerful ways. With chapters devoted to everything from seashells and geology to the ancient peoples of Mesoamerica, Winterer convincingly argues that our perception of a unified 'American Enlightenment' is a myth, while at the same time showing Enlightenment in general to be a conversation that required and included America."—Mark A. Peterson, University of California, Berkeley

"Caroline Winterer’s luminous study of the correspondence chains that bound figures like Franklin and Jefferson to their counterparts in Europe shows us an Enlightenment far richer than any we have seen before. She shows us not an abstract age of Reason but men and women reasoning intensely and creatively with the knottiest problems of science, politics, religion, and philosophy of their times."—Daniel T. Rodgers, Princeton University