Conspiracy and Romance

"...all readers interested in the American novel will find his study provocative and frequently insightful." Michael Oriard, Studies in the Novel "...richly interdisciplinary in its scholarship and the most committed to detailing precise ways that...American romancers have been very anxiously and actively responsive to their society." ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance "Levine does an excellent job of situating the works he examines in particular ideological frameworks...Levine's analysis of the ways in which themes transfer across discourse communities suggests some useful directions for rethinking the relation of the traditional American literary canon to the cultural situation that gave rise to its texts." Journal of American History "Levine provides useful information on the Illuminati scare and the counter-subversive discourse of the 1790's...Levine's persuasive analysis provides an example of how historical scholarship can significantly change one's reading of an individual text while also allowing that text to inform one's perception of its original audience." Scott Peeples, The Eighteenth Century