J. David Hoeveler begins with two principal objectives in this study of higher education in early America: to offer the “first synthetic examination” (p. x) of all nine colonial colleges and to describe the construction of an “American intellectual culture” (p. xi). The result is a masterly synthesis but one that remains somewhat unconvincing in its main contention that these colleges played a “particularly significant role” (p. xi) in creating the American mind. Hoeveler's study is comprehensive—covering the early histories of Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, the College of New Jersey (Princeton), King's College (Columbia), the College of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania), the College of Rhode Island (Brown), Queen's College (Rutgers), and Dartmouth— but it is noteworthy even more for the quality of its analysis. Hoeveler manages always to place particular institutional developments within the larger context of changes occurring in the intellectual, political, and social life of each colony. Whether the issue involved the advent of liberal Congregationalism at Harvard, Anglican ordination at Yale, rational Christianity at the College of William and Mary, the Old Side and New Side schism at the College of New Jersey, nonsectarian challenges at King's College, or academic politics at the College of Philadelphia, Hoeveler never loses sight of the big picture. His deft use of “extended biographies of the key players” (p. xi) also merges private and public realms in a way that adds further depth to an already engagingly written narrative. One could scarcely ask for more finely drawn portraits than Hoeveler offers of such major figures as Edward Wigglesworth and John Winthrop (Harvard), Thomas Clap and Ezra Stiles (Yale), James Blair (William and Mary), John Witherspoon (College of New Jersey), William Smith and Francis Alison (College of Philadelphia), and Samuel Johnson (King's College).