The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790

“One of the best — and most provocative — books written on colonial Anglo-America over the past decade, it must be the starting point for all further work on the subject. Equally important, [Isaac’s] efforts to demonstrate how historians can profitably employ some of the tools of symbolic anthropologists . . . deserve close inspection.”—Times Literary Supplement

“[A] gracefully written evocation of eighteenth-century Virginia culture. . . . The book convinces us that close attention to commonplace events and their settings by someone of Isaac’s ability will give us fresh access to long lost worlds.”—American Historical Review