E. P. Thompson was one of the most visionary and influential historians of the twentieth century, acclaimed as the innovator of "history from below"-the immersion in the many details of everyday life, particularly among the working class, as a vital means of understanding the past and the patterns of history itself. The Essential E. P. Thompson, the largest collection of Thompson's historical work published in one volume, gives us the full range of his scholarly output, from The Making of the English Working Class and William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, to Albion's Fatal Tree and Customs in Common, all of which reflect "the union of knowledge with imagination and conviction" (The New York Times Book Review) that was the hallmark of Thompson's life and work.