The American Revolution - Gordon S. Wood

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"An elegant synthesis done by the leading scholar in the field, which nicely integrates
the work on the American Revolution over the last three decades but never loses contact
with the older, classic questions that we have been arguing about for over two hundred
years."-Joseph J. Ellis, author of Founding Brothers

A magnificent account of the
revolution in arms and consciousness that gave birth to the American republic.

When
Abraham Lincoln sought to define the significance of the United States, he naturally
looked back to the American Revolution. He knew that the Revolution not only had
legally created the United States, but also had produced all of the great hopes and
values of the American people. Our noblest ideals and aspirations-our commitments
to freedom, constitutionalism, the well-being of ordinary people, and equality-came
out of the Revolutionary era. Lincoln saw as well that the Revolution had convinced
Americans that they were a special people with a special destiny to lead the world
toward liberty. The Revolution, in short, gave birth to whatever sense of nationhood
and national purpose Americans have had.

No doubt the story is a dramatic one: Thirteen
insignificant colonies three thousand miles from the centers of Western civilization
fought off British rule to become, in fewer than three decades, a huge, sprawling,
rambunctious republic of nearly four million citizens. But the history of the American
Revolution, like the history of the nation as a whole, ought not to be viewed simply
as a story of right and wrong from which moral lessons are to be drawn. It is a complicated
and at times ironic story that needs to be explained and understood, not blindly
celebrated or condemned. How did this great revolution come about? What was its character?
What were its consequences? These are the questions this short history seeks to answer.
That it succeeds in such a profound and enthralling way is a tribute to Gordon Wood's mastery of his subject, and of the historian's craft.