books

Books in Print
Paul E. Johnson

with John M. Murrin, James M. McPherson, Gary Gerstle, Emily Rosenberg,
and Norman Rosenberg, Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People
(Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, cloth and paper, 1996; 2d edition, 1998)

with Sean Wilentz, The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in
        19th- Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994; paperback, 1995)
        Selection of Reader's Subscription and The History Book Club; Editor's Choice,
        American Heritage; a Voice Literary Supplement 1994 Best Book of the Year

In The Kingdom of Matthias, the distinguished historians Paul Johnson and Sean Wilentz retell the lomg-forgotten story of the self-styled prophet, Matthias, imbuing their richly researched account with the dramatic force of a fine novel. Here, in gripping detail, the strange history of Matthias and his kingdom provides a fascinating window on the turbulent movements of the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening--movements which swept up great numbers of evangelical American and gave rise to new sects like the Mormons. Shedding new light on the communal cultism that has continued to shock and perplex Americans today, the authors offer what the critic Leon Wieseltier has called "a delicious and disturbing book" agout "marginality, fantasy, commerce, sex, and the soul's hunger."

"Written with the sweep and narrative drive of a best seller.... A dazzling work of original history that is a joy to read.... Extraordinary."

Robert V. Remini, Atlantic Monthly

"Enthralling.... Written with skill and verve.... A splendidly readable and fascinating piece of history."

Gordon S. Wood, The New York Review of Books

"Makes you hug yourself with delight.... Entertaining and felicitously written."

Roger Miller, The Milwaukee Journal

Editor, African-American Christianity: Essays in History (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, cloth and paper, 1994)

A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New York: Hill andWang, cloth and paper, 1978) Co-winner of the Merl Curti Award of the Organization of American Historians, a prize awarded semi-annually to a book in social history. Twentieth Printing, 1995; 74,886 copies in print as of Autumn 1998.

The religious revival that flourished in the early nineteenth century and changed American life found its most spectacular expression in Rochester, New York. The revival, in Rochester and elsewhere, made the United States the most militantly Protestant nation on earth and had enormous influence on many Northern antebellum reform movements, including abolition and temperance. But although many historians have discussed its profound and wide-ranging effects, we know very little abouth its causes. A Shopkeeper's Millennium not only explores the interconnections between these vitally important economic, social, political, and religious changes but presents an evocative picture of a rapidly growing frontier city.
"Johnson's book is indispensible for any understanding of the evangelical revival and related reform movements in New York's 'burned-over district.' No less important, Professor Johnson has brilliantly fused the quantitative methods of the 'new social history' with a sparkling style and imaginative reconstruction of social reality. Both in substantive conclusions and as a model for future regional studies, A Shopkeeper's Millennium is one of the freshest and most exciting books I have read in the past few years."

David Brion Davis, Yale University

"This is far more than a study of local history, and more even than a provocative interpretation of the social sources of religious revivalism. It is a brilliant pioneering assult upon the most important unaddressed problem in American historiography--how our society and very personalities were transformed by the rapid advance of the capitalist market in the earlier nineteenth century."

Charles Sellers, University of California, Berkeley

Long Vita

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