American Revolutions, Alan Taylor
American Revolutions, Alan Taylor
12 Rating(s)
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American Revolutions
A Continental History, 1750-1804

Author: Alan Taylor

Narrator: Mark Bramhall

Unabridged: 18 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/06/2016


Synopsis

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, a fresh, authoritative history that recasts our thinking about America’s founding period.
The American Revolution is often portrayed as a high-minded, orderly event whose capstone, the Constitution, provided the ideal framework for a democratic, prosperous nation. Alan Taylor, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, gives us a different creation story in this magisterial history of the nation’s founding. Rising out of the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies, Taylor’s Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britain’s mainland colonies, fueled by local conditions, destructive, hard to quell. Conflict ignited on the frontier, where settlers clamored to push west into Indian lands against British restrictions, and in the seaboard cities, where commercial elites mobilized riots and boycotts to resist British tax policies. When war erupted, Patriot crowds harassed Loyalists and nonpartisans into compliance with their cause. Brutal guerrilla violence flared all along the frontier from New York to the Carolinas, fed by internal divisions as well as the clash with Britain. Taylor skillfully draws France, Spain, and native powers into a comprehensive narrative of the war that delivers the major battles, generals, and common soldiers with insight and power. With discord smoldering in the fragile new nation through the 1780s, nationalist leaders such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton sought to restrain unruly state democracies and consolidate power in a Federal Constitution. Assuming the mantle of “We the People,” the advocates of national power ratified the new frame of government. But their opponents prevailed in the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, whose vision of a western “empire of liberty” aligned with the long-standing, expansive ambitions of frontier settlers. White settlement and black slavery spread west, setting the stage for a civil war that nearly destroyed the union created by the founders.

About The Author

Alan Taylor, twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history, is the author of American Revolutions and American Republics, prior volumes in his acclaimed continental history of the United States. He is professor emeritus of history at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on April 07, 2017

Longer review coming. If you have a "Johnny Tremain" view of the revolutionary era, prepare to have many of your illusions shattered. Taylor does a bang up job looking at the era from all angles. The motivations, and contributions of every class of citizen is reviewed, and much of it is not admirabl......more

Goodreads review by Jill on October 08, 2016

Alan Taylor has written the best three books on North American History (including the importance of the British and French West Indies). Start with AMERICAN COLONIES: it goes way beyond the 13 and how the rest influenced the history of the US. Then this new volume. Follow with the excellent THE CIVI......more

Goodreads review by Ted on October 08, 2016

This is a very interesting and important book on the American Revolution. Its subtitle calls it a "continental history," and it lives up to that notion, as it moves the "camera" back from a narrow focus on the conflict in the 13 colonies/states to a broader focus that includes the Caribbean, South A......more

Goodreads review by Julian on October 27, 2020

A great history of not only the Revolution in terms of the 13 colonies, but the entire continent of America as well. Mr. Taylor weaves the story of the 13 British colonies that became the United States, Canada, the West Indies, and the Non British colonies of the remainder of North America. Really s......more


Quotes

An epic, landmark history that places the American Revolution on a global stage while never losing sight of the struggles and sufferings of major and minor characters… Taylor’s range is masterful.—Jill Lepore, author of Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin

American Revolutions is a game changer—a sprawling, ambitious history that forever alters our understanding of the Revolutionary War era. —Elizabeth Fenn, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People

As masterful as its author and as pluralist as its title, American Revolutions combines strong narrative drive with a kaleidoscopic array of settings and characters. In vivid prose animated by prodigious research, Taylor reveals the fight for the independence of the United States as a bloody civil war in which violence and division were the norms and clarity of purpose the exception. This is a sweeping synthesis for a new century. —Jane Kamensky, author of A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley

The new standard work—essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the complicated beginnings of our national history.—Peter S. Onuf, coauthor of “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination