Perry G. E. Miller was an American intellectual historian and Harvard University professor. He was an authority on American Puritanism, and a founder of this specialized area of American Studies. Alfred Kazin referred to him as "the master of American intellectual history". In his most famous book, "The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century," Miller adopted a cultural approach to illuminate the worldview of the Puritans. This distinguished him from most previous historians, who employed psychological and economic explanations of their beliefs and behavior.