Puritans have always been troublesome. In their own day, they were impatient and prickly agents of change. And after they faded away, their legacy became the subject of constant debate, not only in the British Isles, but in the United States as well. Puritans also fell prey to facile caricaturing. In our own day, their image as grim, self-absorbed, self-righteous, intolerant workaholics is all too familiar to anyone who was forced to read Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter in high school or Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in college. And younger folk who are now encountering Puritans through the New York Times's “1619 Project” or any other such revisionist history spawned by our Great Awokening are bound to have an even more negative caricature indelibly etched in their imaginations—one that depicts Puritans as avatars of the worst traits bequeathed to the world by Western civilization. One must wonder, then, whether there is something providential about the publication of Hall's Puritans at this point in time, especially since the concept of providence was so central to Puritan culture. Hall's masterful, sweeping history of the rise and fall of Puritanism on both sides of the Atlantic offers ample proof that Puritanism was an immensely complex religious movement and that its legacy is as significant as it is ambiguous. On the one hand, as Hall points out repeatedly, the Puritans’ deeply held convictions and their aversion to compromise often led to conflicts, not only with the world around them but also with each other, making their zealotry unsustainable. On the other hand, as Hall also affirms, their resolute opposition to the religiopolitical status quo of their time and place turned them into trailblazing nonconformist pioneers who paradoxically cleared the way for greater religious tolerance and democracy. Digging deeply into the great heap of texts written by Puritans of all stripes, Hall offers ample proof of their positive contributions in the realms of politics and social ethics. Ironically, then, Hall's account may lead one to conclude that the closest spiritual and intellectual descendants of the Puritans in our own day might be all those self-righteous folk who despise them and consider themselves very correctly and progressively woke.