"T. H. Breen's important new book attempts to explain why the great Virginia Planters embraced the Revolutionary cause with so much enthusiasm. He argues that growing indebtedness to British merchants after 1750 jeopardized the planters' traditional dominance, finally precipitating a major cultural crisis' in the years immediately preceding Independence. Breen's major contribution is to delineate thementality' of the great planters of the period when private and public distress converged. . . . It is a superb contribution to the literature of the American Revolution."--Peter S. Onuf, William and Mary Quarterly