Over a remarkable career, Bernard Bailyn has reshaped our understanding of the early American past. While looking back fondly on his own formidable education and paying tribute to his mentors, Bailyn also tells the human stories of a Boston merchant tormented by the tensions between capitalism and Puritan piety; a shopkeeper who condemned British authority; a German Pietist who founded a unique cloister in the Pennsylvania wilderness; and the townspeople of Petersham, whose response to a 1780 Massachusetts constitution characterizes the struggle between individual freedoms and central authority.