Book excerpt: Originally published in 2011, this volume publishes the letters of Jeremy Belknap and Ebenezer Hazard. The letters encompassed twenty years, from 1779 to 1798, during a time when the United States was warring against England, establishing new governments, building a national identity, exploring the hinterland, and refining an American identity in prose and verse. The letters of Hazard and Belknap tell of an age when science and religion had not yet divorced due to irreconcilable differences, when the most profound philosophy nestled comfortably next to a childlike fascination with the remarkable. The two friends explored in their epistles the nature of love, death, and piety; the best way for humans to govern themselves; matters of religious and scientific truth and the best means to arrive at it; the methods and writing of history; human credulity; and the wonders of nature.