The question of Calvin's influence on modern political thought is a mine that has been so thoroughly worked that one would have expected it by now to be exhausted. Yet Ralph Hancock has not only uncovered and dug out a new vein of ore, but managed to show that some of the ore previously extracted contains a sizeable admixture of fool's gold. To specialists in intellectual history this is doubtless a significant accomplishment; others may see it as the sort of (...) modest contribution characteristic of a decent doctoral dissertation. (shrink)