Faithful readers of my blog will know that I am a sucker for a short well-designed book on an interesting subject. The Modern Library Chronicles Series is aimed at producing just such books. The reason I bring this up is that I just finished one: The American Revolution: A History by Gordon S. Wood.
While I have neither the expertise nor the time and energy to give you a full-fledged review, I would like to recommend it. If you are looking for a quick read on this interesting subject or if you wouldn't mind knowing a little bit more about this nation's founding without getting bogged down in some academic tome, this would be a good place to start.
The American Revolution is no stranger to the tug and pull of partisan cheerleading posing as scholarship (not to say that some of that cheerleading isn't accurate and worthwhile). I am sure that those with strong interest and/or knowledge in the subject would say that Gordon S. Wood has a bias and/or “a take” on many of the issues involved but he attempts in this book not to make this a moralistic story of right and wrong but instead views "how the Revolution came about, what its character was, and what its consequences were" as "the questions this brief history seeks to answer."
In my opinion Wood gives a great overview of the historical, political, and intellectual ideas and events that make up this fascinating time in our country's history. He does so in a way that is accessible to the average reader but that is still thought provoking and interesting.
Wood breaks the book down into seven parts: Origins, American Resistance, Revolution, Constitution-Making and War, Republicanism, Republican Society, and the Federal Constitution. Each one of these sections is only 25 pages or so long. This makes for easy reading. In fact, if you had a chunk of time you could read the book in one sitting (it is only 167 pages). But within each chapter, and throughout the whole book, Wood weaves the political, economic, cultural, and intellectual issues together to give you a well-rounded picture of the events. He keeps the pace by creating a sense of discovery and the rush of events. You can tell that he is fascinated by the ideas and events he is describing and that fascination is contagious.
He is able to describe the events leading up to the Revolution as having a certain inertia. Few were really set out on a path to Revolution and separation but as events and ideas took on a life of their own the crisis deepened rather than abated. This crisis was not crudely based on economic interests or simply a moralistic crusade for the Colonialists “rights.” Instead, it was a complicated mix of social, economic, and political evolution and yes, revolution. Wood of course traces the changes in population and in the colonial economy and he notes the particular and localized events that were involved in the escalation to Independence. The most fascinating sections of the book, however, are those when Wood discuss the intellectual and social changes that shaped and grew out of the Revolution. His discussion of both the unique American perspective on liberty and its growth out of the English "country opposition" (as opposed to the corruption of the "court") is fascinating and thought provoking. Americans often spoke and thought as if they were simply defending the “Rights of Englishmen” but they were in fact pushing a more radical agenda. The fear of a powerful monarchical executive drove them toward advocating what were seen as radical reforms at the time: greater suffrage, a greater freedom of the press, and in general a more populist and egalitarian perspective for example. This rhetoric, used for cynical and idealistic reasons, tended to snowball and take on a life of its own. As tensions with the English Crown increased, this oppositional viewpoint became the lens through which the colonists saw the world. The adoption of this Republican worldview in turn had enormous social consequences but didn't lead to complete social breakdown. Wood paints the events leading up to Independence as a conservative yet radical revolution.
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