Book excerpt: "This volume collects all known surviving correspondence by and to Cotton. These 125 letters - more than 50 of which are here published for the first time - span the decades between 1621 and 1652, a period of great activity and change in the Puritan movement and in English history. The letters chart the trajectory of Cotton's career and revive a variety of voices from the troubled times surrounding Charles I's reign. Among those who appear are such prominent figures as Oliver Cromwell, Archbishop James Ussher, Bishop John Williams, Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, John Eliot, John Winthrop, Richard Mather, Peter Bulkeley, Charles Chauncy, John Dod, and Nathaniel Ward, as well as many little-known persons who wrote to Cotton for advice and guidance.".