As a City on a Hill: The Story of America's Most Famous Lay Sermon

From a Bancroft Prize–winning historian, the fascinating story of how an obscure Puritan sermon was remade into a founding document of American identity

“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill,” John Winthrop warned his fellow Puritans at New England’s founding in 1630. More than three centuries later, Ronald Reagan remade that passage into a timeless celebration of American promise. How were Winthrop’s long-forgotten words reinvented as a central statement of American i...