In a grand and immemsely readable synthesis of historical, political, cultural, and economic analysis, a prize-winning historian depicts much more ...
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reviews
Jan 18, 2012
Stephen
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This Pulitzer Prize-winning analysis of the American Revolution is among the most engaging, most thought-provoking and most erudite history books I’ve ever read. Nothing dry, parched or plodding to be found here. This is history that reads more like literature and will trap your attention into the folds of its narrative flow like sailor falling into Charybdis.
Mr. Wood, together with David McCullough (John Adams)and Barbara Tuchman (The Guns of August), constitute the ruling council More...
Mr. Wood, together with David McCullough (John Adams)and Barbara Tuchman (The Guns of August), constitute the ruling council More...
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Nov 08, 2011
Libyrinths
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Wood looks at the cultural and sociological background of Colonial America, through the Revolution and a little beyond. He isn't always good about putting things into their larger context, I assume because he presupposes a reader who can do that for herself. But the information he shares, and the pictures he portrays, are some you may not have found elsewhere.
His thesis is that the American Revolution was indeed radical, but at the moment, because of his book, I'm inclined to think t More...
His thesis is that the American Revolution was indeed radical, but at the moment, because of his book, I'm inclined to think t More...
May 26, 2010
Joe
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Caveat: While this book is the kind of great history book to tickle a history fan like myself pink, I see it as being too "on subject" to appeal to most general readers. My nutshell review is that it offers a fine three stage analysis of the changes in the American social-political thought process in the years before, during, and after the Revolution. If that sort of thing floats your boat you will love this book. If not, I know very well this one will bore you stiff.
Too More...
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Feb 12, 2011
DoctorM
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An excellent study of social attitudes and political concepts in eighteenth-century British North America and how the American Revolution changed the ways in which Americans thought of hierarchy, patronage, personal dependency, "liberty", and the nature of government.
Wood is excellent on the structures of class and economic ties in a pre-industrial, pre-Marxian world, a world where influence and success depended on personal ties and patronage as much as wealth, a world whe More...
Wood is excellent on the structures of class and economic ties in a pre-industrial, pre-Marxian world, a world where influence and success depended on personal ties and patronage as much as wealth, a world whe More...
Feb 04, 2010
Nathan
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Wood's thesis - that the American Revolution was essentially a cultural and political metanoia - is not actually so controversial as it might seem. He has no problem proving that, and does so thoroughly and consistently. What this book has more trouble with is building towards a useful conclusion after laying the theoretical groundwork; Wood never quite manages to address the question "So what?" after he has answered the question "What happened?" Still, it's interesting to no
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Dec 02, 2010
Eric
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By the time I finished this book, back in October, I was so tired of Wood’s dry Kashi prose—as Matt memorably put it—that to write a review seemed more than I could bear. Recent reading about the Roman legacy and disaffected Russian gentlefolk has, however, recalled Wood to my thoughts. The Radicalism of the American Revolution was written against a notion of the revolution as essentially conservative. It’s easy notion to hold, for us in a multi-racial democracy. One group of white landowners in
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Feb 19, 2010
Paul
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A great read on the revolution from a completely different angle than I've ever read. Wood doesn't write the book chronologically; there are no story arcs, protagonists, etc. It reads like a textbook and as such can get pretty dry. But textbooks can also be fascinating.
When we think of the American Revolution, we think of a war and a political revolution. We were taught that the French Revolution, even though it happened afterward, was the more monumental event because it was a socia More...
When we think of the American Revolution, we think of a war and a political revolution. We were taught that the French Revolution, even though it happened afterward, was the more monumental event because it was a socia More...
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Nov 07, 2008
Larry
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Professor Wood is an emminant historian and has written an insightful work demonstrating that not only was the American Revolution a world political pardigm shift but that the subsequesnt invention of an all new republican democratic society was in itself an even greater and more radical change in society. The post-war destruction of the patronage systems and the then existing aristocracy, coupled with the advent of the personal work ethic and unquenchable desire to improve one's economic positi
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Apr 26, 2008
Craig
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This book does a really good job explaining the dramatic cultural changes prmopted by the American revolution. I came away from this read persuaded by the writer's thesis.
The writer argues that the revolution wasn't strictly a change to the self-rule of democratic government but also a transformation of society. The argument goes that society was composed largely into cultural elites with high manners, learning, and property, and a laboring mass with little learning, a meanness of More...
The writer argues that the revolution wasn't strictly a change to the self-rule of democratic government but also a transformation of society. The argument goes that society was composed largely into cultural elites with high manners, learning, and property, and a laboring mass with little learning, a meanness of More...
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Aug 01, 2007
Xio
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From Library Journal
Historians have always had problems explaining the revolutionary character of the American Revolution: its lack of class conflict, a reign of terror, and indiscriminate violence make it seem positively sedate. In this beautifully written and persuasively argued book, one of the most noted of U.S. historians restores the radicalism to what he terms "one of the greatest revolutions the world has ever known." It was the American Revolution, Wood argue More...
Historians have always had problems explaining the revolutionary character of the American Revolution: its lack of class conflict, a reign of terror, and indiscriminate violence make it seem positively sedate. In this beautifully written and persuasively argued book, one of the most noted of U.S. historians restores the radicalism to what he terms "one of the greatest revolutions the world has ever known." It was the American Revolution, Wood argue More...
Nov 01, 2010
Caitlin
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I don't care what you say in the introduction, Gordon Wood, but not addressing the agency of women and non-whites in the American Revolution leaves your book underwhelming and incomplete. Plus, you drag in republican motherhood at the end, and don't even explain how that developed. Geeze, dude, either flesh it out or don't bring it up at all.
Also, I think he makes a lot of generalizations about deference, democracy, and capitalism, and then says something like "except, of course, More...
Also, I think he makes a lot of generalizations about deference, democracy, and capitalism, and then says something like "except, of course, More...
Jul 22, 2010
Sean
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"Americans' interpretation of their Revolution could never cease; it was integral to the very existence of the nation. Some found the meaning of the Revolution in the Constitution and the union it had created. Others discovered the meaning in the freedom and equality that the Revolution had produced. But many other Americans knew that such meanings were too formal, too legal, too abstract, to express what most actually experienced in being Americans. In concrete day-to-day terms, invocation
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Jan 04, 2011
Mark
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When I reach for superlatives to characterize this magisterial book, my cup simply runneth over. Gordon S. Wood, by now, is a--if not the--major figure in Colonial and Early United States historiography, and this book, while perhaps not his magnum opus (he has recently published a major study titled Empire of Liberty, and surely has more books and articles to produce), it is perhaps the final word on the ideology and social philosophy of those who fomented the American Revolution. Casual readers
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Nov 28, 2008
This book will blow your mind. It's all about the ideological origins of the United States. It really does a good job of combatting presentism. Almost every ideological development at the American Revolution is relevant today. This book concretely illustrates some of the unique paths of white supremacy and capitalism in the United States. That may not be what Gordon Wood intended, but read it for that and you won't be disappointed. This stuff is deep and deeply relevant.
Jul 25, 2011
Karen
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Certainly an excellent work, and essential reading for a colonial americanist. However, it is not a work without flaws. For a view of the scholarly debate, read the transcript of the Forum "How revolutionary was the Revolution? A Discussion of Gordon S. Wood's The Radicalism of the American Revolution" in the William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., Vol. 51, no 4 (Oct., 1994) pp. 677-716. Historians debating are McGiffert, Appleby, Clark-Smith, Zuckerman, and a rebuttle by Wood.
Aug 04, 2011
Wood makes the point that the founders were influenced by classical Roman and Enlightenment thinking. They wanted a society were an elite (not by virtue of the family that you were born into, but by your own merit) would run the government in a disinterested manner for the good of all. They never imagined the party politics and consumer society that they helped to create and didn't like what they saw starting to happen in their lifetimes.
Aug 21, 2010
Lauren
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Another book that earns its Pulitzer Prize and then some. I made the mistake of starting this book while in law school, so I ended up reading it off and on over a period of years. Part of why this book took so much time to read is that it is an unbelievably dense tome that requires long stretches of unwavering attention. Dr. Wood covers an enormous amount of material without ever letting it up, yet the book coalesces into a brilliant narrative. While the long stretch of time between starting and
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May 16, 2010
Mike
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Good history of the American Revolution and the social changes it brought. NOT a military history, but a look at three stages in the evolution of american society: pre-Revolution when still part of Brit Empire, the vision and behavior of the founders, and finally the popular democracy that the founders did not really envision. Classic primer on American Rev; won Pulitzer
Oct 04, 2010
Kaci
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Wood successfully argues that the American Revolution was, in fact, a radical movement, both in its break from England as well as in its formation of a new social order. However, he does so in a way that fails to capture the interest of non-political or Constitutional historians and makes this successful book almost impossible to read.
Oct 07, 2011
Patrick
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Well-written exploration of Wood's central thesis: the American Revolution was not some staid conservative counterrevolution but rather a radical upending of the dominant political, social, economic and religious order of the day. Very inspiring.
Jan 21, 2012
Louise
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The author provides compelling primary source evidence that the real revolution was flattening distinctions between the idle gentry and those who worked for a living. We appear to be going in the opposite direction today.
Dec 16, 2009
I think this might be my favorite book I've read this year. It looks deeper into the reasons for the American Revolution and at the results of it and how it effects our lives today.
Sep 22, 2011
Carrie
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Every American should read this book about the ideology behind the founding of the U.S. You'll get insight on the thinking of the revolutionary leaders, and how they not only desired to change the government but also society and how people interacted within it. It is a history and philosophical analysis that is very readable. You'll be surprised at what you learn.
Dec 16, 2009
Joel
rated it: 
I cannot figure out what book the people read to give this thing 3 or 4 stars.
Reads like a textbook.
A lame textbook.
Instead of pieceing together a narrative based on some exciting action (of which there is plenty surrounding the American Revolution) it's structured like a mathematical proof in which the author is attempting to prove that he can bore us with the American Revolution.
Well, he succeeded with flying colors.
Here's another math proof for you:
L More...
Reads like a textbook.
A lame textbook.
Instead of pieceing together a narrative based on some exciting action (of which there is plenty surrounding the American Revolution) it's structured like a mathematical proof in which the author is attempting to prove that he can bore us with the American Revolution.
Well, he succeeded with flying colors.
Here's another math proof for you:
L More...
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Jan 10, 2010
Rhett
rated it:
Really does illustrate how radical the revolution and the ideas behind it were. An amazing book. Highly recommended.
Jul 02, 2009
I *think* I read this during college, but since I can't remember, I'm reading it again at some point!
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May 05, 2010
Joshua
rated it:
Provocative, Hegelian, and ultimately flawed. Pretty good read though.
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