Puritans behaving badly. Gender, punishment, and religion in early America. By Monica D. Fitzgerald. Pp. xiv + 177 incl. 7 ills, 6 tables and 1 map. Cambridge–New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. £39.99. 978 1 108 47878 6

By the third generation, increasingly gendered conceptions of religious identity demanded of women an interiorised spirituality concerned with the body, inner corruption and sinfulness, while linking male religiosity with behaviour, outward conduct and civic participation. Each focusing on a particular case study from the mid-seventeenth century, the fourth and fifth chapters highlight striking efforts to negotiate these processes. Some reflections on the evolution of Separatist efforts in this region to reconcile a pluralistic emphasis on religious conscience with gendered approaches to social order and discipline might have further enriched the monograph's fascinating and timely interpretation of gender and power.