Christopher Grasso

George Whitefield

History & Biography

“Rather than emphasizing, as most studies do, George Whitefield’s role in the dramatic events of New England’s ‘Great Awakening,’ Peter Choi concentrates on Whitefield’s own focus—his orphanage in Georgia. Pushing past the turmoil of the early 1740s, Choi studies the neglected second half of the Grand Itinerant’s public career, after the revival fires had cooled. This provocative book’s Whitefield is not merely a celebrity evangelist; he is an imperial strategist, a tactical theologian, and an empire builder who becomes an eager slaveholder and wartime propagandist. He embodies the central dynamics of the British Atlantic world in the eighteenth century.”

One Life to Give

History & Biography

“Fanestil's One Life to Give focuses on personal motivation: What made men willing to die for the cause? He finds his answer in the long tradition of English Protestant martyrdom. Patriots repeatedly referenced willing self-sacrifice for a sacred cause. To dismiss this as mere rhetoric, Fanestil persuasively argues, is to miss something vital about the fusion of politics and religion in the American Revolution.”