Kenneth Silverman received both the Pulitzer Prize for biography and the Bancroft Prize in American History for The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (1984). Silverman provides both the scholar and the general reader with a true and compassionate account of Mather, "the first unmistakably American figure in the nation's history." As Larzer Ziff wrote in the New York Times Book Review (25 March 1984), "Mr. Silverman has a knack for telling the reader with no special knowledge of Puritanism all he need know about the background of an event or the personality of an actor without interrupting the flow of a narrative that engages the specialist as well." It is the compelling narrative and clear analytical prose of The Life and Times of Cotton Mather that led John Demos to proclaim in his review for the New Republic (13-20 August 1984) that "what Silverman achieves can well stand as a model...