BOOK BEVIEWS [ 167 ] In a masterful work of synthesis, Jack R Greene challenges the traditional notion of amicable Anglo-American relations prior to 1763 by examining the underlying tensions between Britain and the colonies as well as the dysfunctional dimensions of the imperial system from 1660 to 1760. Greene's admirable discussion of the state of the Anglo-American community at mid-century greatly advances our understanding of the background of the Revolution; nonetheless, he is not wholly successful in establishing a direct connection between long-range causes and preconditions and the immediate events of the pre-Revolutionary decade. Similarly, while Rowland Berthoff and John M. Murrin have amassed a wealth of information concerning the socioeconomic development of the colonies in the eighteenth century, their provocative thesis that the Revolution prevented a feudal revival in America is tenuous. Two methodologically and conceptually divergent essays conclude the book. In an exemplary piece of quantitative analysis, H. James Henderson has tabulated roll call votes in the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1786 in order to unravel the shifting political alliances in the Congress, identify the structure of congressional leadership, and reveal the relationship between state and national politics during the Confederation. Beginning with the controversial contention that the Great Awakening was "really the beginning of America's identity as a nation—the starting point of the Revolution" (p. 198), William G. McLaughlin proceeds to fashion an excellent, if somewhat imprecise, excursus of how the role of religion in the Revolution was the forging of cultural cohesion based on the principles of voluntarism and freedom of conscience within a larger Protestant hegemony. In contrast to the wide-ranging institute conference, the Library of Congress symposium, the first of five successive annual sessions coordinated by the Library of Congress's distinguished American Revolution Bicentennial Program Advisory Committee and subsidized by the Cafritz Foundation, was devoted exclusively to a discussion of the most pervasive political development of the Revolution—the growth of republican ideology. The Development of a Revolutionary Mentality consists of the five papers presented to public audiences at the Library of Congress along with the valuable prepared comments on individual contributions delivered by J. H. Plumb, Edmund S. Morgan, Jack R Greene, and Esmond Wright. The introduction (the opening remarks of symposium chairman Richard B. Morris) and the preface are perfunctory, and the inexcusable absence of an index seriously diminishes the usefulness of the volume. We have here the fruits of a model symposium: expert examinations of diverse facets of a unified whole, an effective blend of the history of ideas (the development and communication of attitudes and beliefs) and intellectual history (the relationship between thought and behavior). With characteristic wit and wisdom, Henry Steele Commager presents a panoramic