"Clearly argued and written. . . . Arcenas convincingly demonstrates that colonists looked to Locke for guidance on matters involving child rearing and self-development, knowledge and its foundation, ways to read the Bible, and moral education, not so much as a guide to political principles. The text that early and mid-twentieth-century historians and political theorists such as Merle Curti, Carl Becker and Louis Hartz defined as the core of Lockean philosophy, the Two Treatises of Government, was not unknown to colonists, but it took a decided backseat to the Locke who reinvented the human mind, and when colonists went looking for political principles, Locke also took a backseat to Montesquieu and many others."– "Modern Intellectual History"