| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 231 words from this article are provided below; about 619 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Neil Kamil. Fortress of the Soul: Violence, Metaphysics, and Material Life in the Huguenots' New World, 1517–1751. (Early America: History, Context, Culture.) Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2005. Pp. xxiv, 1058. $75.00.

This is an ambitious, unsettling, initially stimulating, but ultimately tedious and unconvincing book. Over a thousand pages long, it ranges across the cultural and intellectual history of early modern Europe and North America, connecting (or claiming to connect) the metaphysics of sixteenth-century Paracelsianism to the furniture made by craftsmen of Huguenot origin in seventeenth and eighteenth-century New England and New York. Essential to the connection is the fact that many of the Huguenot joiners active in the American colonies hailed from the province of Saintonge, home during the first generation of the French Reformation to the potter-alchemist-architect-author Bernard Palissy. Palissy, in turn, is the central figure in the first third of the book, which offers an extended reading of his oeuvre and presents him as the founder and ur-expositor of a distinctive tradition of rural Saintongeais artisan Protestantism, heavily inflected by pietism and Paracelsianism, that parted company with orthodox Calvinism in permitting believers to dissimulate their deepest convictions and in encouraging a focus on inward spiritual transformation. This world view, Neil Kamil suggests, was passed down to subsequent generations of artisans from the region, who found it particularly appealing in times of persecution.

. . .

There are about 619 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.