Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of he American Social Order, 1730-1840.

This is an important book, long overdue on this side of the Atlantic. For several decades, eighteenth-century freemasonry has been a topic of intense analysis in Britain, France, and Germany. Historians and historical sociologists working variously in traditions extending from both the Annaliste cultural turn and the Frankfurt School have argued that European freemasonry was the popular seat of the Enlightenment, and a fundamental dimension of the making of the new order of bourgeois nationalism. American historians have virtually ignored free-masonry, except for their examination of its nemesis, the Antimasonic Party. Bullock's Revolutionary Brotherhood fills a gaping hole in our …