New England's Puritans were devoted to self-scrutiny. Consumed by the pursuit of pure hearts, they latched on to sincerity as both an ideal and a social process. It fueled examinations of inner lives, governed behavior, and provided a standard against which both could be judged. In a remote, politically volatile frontier, settlers gambled that sincerity would reinforce social cohesion and shore up communal happiness. Sincere feelings and the discursive practices that manifested them promised a safe haven in a world of grinding uncertainty.

But as Ana Schwartz demonstrates, if sincerity promised much, it often delivered more: it bred shame and resentment among the English settlers and, all too often, extraordinary violence toward their Algonquian neighbors and the captured Africans who lived among them. Populating her "city on a hill" with the stock characters of Puritan studies as well as obscure actors, Schwartz breathes new life into our understanding of colonial New England.

Ana Schwartz is an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.

"Unmoored is a stunner. Ana Schwartz's careful rereading of sincerity reveals settler colonialism to be a practice, embedded in social activities that nominally exist toward other ends. With its beautiful, stylish writing, its nuanced positions and measured judgments, and its ability to tease significant interventions from subtle distinctions, this book is one of the most sophisticated, interdisciplinary studies I have ever read in this considerably sophisticated, interdisciplinary field."—Jordan Alexander Stein, Fordham University.