In the introduction to Becoming America, Jon Butler notes that he began the book partly as a response to a friend who asked how to "synthesize colonial history after the Puritans" (p. 7). The question is familiar to every early Americanist. The beginning and ending points of the colonial period, the early years of colonization and the American Revolution, boast immense and immensely sophisticated literatures and long-standing traditions of interpretation. The middle years, defined by Butler as lasting between 1680 and 1770, have been comparatively neglected. Except for the Salem witchcraft trials and the Great Awakening, the period lacks the landmark events that attract ongoing attention from scholars and readers. Of course, as Butler suggests, these years have hardly been ignored. But scholarly work considering the period, though often of extraordinary quality, tends to be focused tightly on a single question, colony, or region. Synthesizing these substantial but often maddeningly separated literatures is a formidable task, but Butler performs it with aplomb. He has read widely and deeply in areas often known only to a few handfuls of specialists. The book includes learned discussions of furniture-making, Jewish immigration, and Native-American religion. But Butler does more than simply summarize these literatures. He also makes a strong case that this was a defining period. In 1680, Butler suggests, the colonies were small (a total population of perhaps 150,000) and relatively homogeneous. By 1770, they encompassed a population of some two million and were ethnically and racially diverse, largely market-driven, politically sophisticated, and religiously diverse. In the intervening years, Butler argues, America had become modern, become American.