The nine colleges of colonial America confronted the major political currents of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while serving as the primary intellectual institutions for Puritanism and the transition to Enlightenment thought. The colleges also confronted the most partisan and divisive cultural movement of the eighteenth century-the Great Awakening. This is the first book to present a synthetic treatment of the colonial colleges, tracing their role in the intellectual development of early America through the American Revolution. Distinguished historian J. David Hoeveler focuses on Harvard, William and Mary, Yale, the College of New Jersey (Princeton), King's College (Columbia), the College of Philadelphia (Penn), Queen's College (Rutgers), the College of Rhode Island (Brown), and Dartmouth.

J. David Hoeveler is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. His books include James McCosh and the Scottish Intellectual Tradition: From Glasgow to Princeton and The Postmodernist Turn: American Thought and Culture in the 1970s.

Part I: Institutions
Chapter 1: Oxford and Cambridge
Chapter 2: Harvard I: School of the Puritans
Chapter 3: Yale: Precarious Orthodoxy
Chapter 4: William and Mary: Beleaguered Anglicanism
Chapter 5: The College of New Jersey: The Dangerous Middle
Chapter 6: King's College: Battle for New York
Chapter 7: The College of Philadelphia: The Perils of Neutrality
Chapter 8: Three from the Awakening: Rhode Island College, Queen's College, Dartmouth College
Chapter 9: Harvard II: A Liberal Turn
Part II: Politics, Revolution, and Intellectual Culture
Chapter 10: The Colleges and the Revolution: New England
Chapter 11: The Colleges and the Revolution: South and Middle
Postscript