Previous scholars have noted the Puritans' edenic descriptions of New World landscapes, but Inventing Eden is the first study to fully uncover the integral relationship between the New England interest in paradise and the numerous iconic intellectual artifacts and social movements of colonial North America. Harvard Yard, the Bay Psalm Book, and the Quaker use of antiquated pronouns like thee and thou these are products of a seventeenth-century desire for Eden. So, too, are the evangelical emphasis of the Great Awakening, the doctrine of natural law popularized by...