The Memoir of John Mason Peck contains an extensive, firsthand, and often detailed “pre-sociological” account of pioneer life as reported by this remarkably systematic and disciplined observer. John Mason Peck (1789–1857), a pioneer Baptist missionary to the Illinois territory, was one of the most active as well as influential men on the Illinois frontier. He left fifty-three volumes of journals and diaries with the request that Rufus Babcock edit and publish them. Babcock completed this task in 1864, and de­posited the journals in the Mercantile Library in St. Louis, where they were misplaced and irretrievably lost during the Civil War. Peck founded numerous educational and religious organiza­tions, in part because he believed that they would provide the foundation for the new civilization and the basis for the fulfillment of American destiny in the world. The Memoir offers perceptive accounts of the economy and politics of the formation of religious and secular organizations on the frontier. The book gives fasci­nating reports on the development of institutions in a period of unprecedented social change. Paul Harrison, the current editor, has written a full introduc­tion and interpretation of the life and work of John Mason Peck. He includes in his Introduction many extensive quotations from Peck’s other works, the material of which is not available in the Memoir itself. This new edition makes available again a book of great im­portance to sociologists, theologians, and historians.