William Dunlap wrote history for much the same reason that he worked in the theater, authored plays, and painted pictures: he loved art and thought, believed in their importance in the democratic context, and spent a lifetime seeking ways to combine his enthusiasm for such things with a means to earn a livelihood. Without conspicuous genius, Dunlap was competent and diligent enough to make a contribution to American art and to become the leading dramatist of the early republic. Yet Dunlap's cultural histories and biographies remain the most important work of this immensely dedicated and productive American. These books preserve an immense amount of information about the cultural life of the new nation, especially the lives of its players and artists, that would otherwise have been lost. They also offer an intelligent argument for the vitality and advantages of democratic art by a man whose life reflected, in...