Illuminating History, Bernard Bailyn
Illuminating History, Bernard Bailyn
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Illuminating History
A Retrospective of Seven Decades

Author: Bernard Bailyn

Narrator: Tom Parks

Unabridged: 8 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/07/2020

Synopsis

Over a remarkable career Bernard Bailyn has reshaped our understanding of the early American past. Inscribing his superb scholarship with passion and imagination honed by a commitment to rigor, Bailyn captures the particularity of the past and its broad significance in precise, elegant prose. His transformative work has ranged from a new reckoning with the ideology that powered the opposition to British authority in the American Revolution to a sweeping account of the peopling of America and the critical nurturing of a new field, the history of the Atlantic world.

Illuminating History is the most personal of Bailyn's works. It is in part an intellectual memoir of the significant turns in an immensely productive and influential scholarly career. It is also alive with people whose actions touched the long arc of history. Among the dramatic human stories that command our attention: a struggling Boston merchant tormented by the tensions between capitalist avarice and a constrictive Puritan piety; an ordinary shopkeeper who in a unique way feverishly condemned British authority as corrupt and unworthy of public confidence; and a charismatic German Pietist who founded a cloister in the Pennsylvania wilderness. Here is vivid history and an illuminating self-portrait from one of the most eminent historians of our time.

About Bernard Bailyn

Bernard Bailyn is Adams University Professor and James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History, emeritus, at Harvard University, where he received a PhD in 1953 and then taught for more than fifty years. His many distinguished works have been awarded two Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Humanities Medal. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, he received an AB from Williams College in 1945 after serving in the Army Signal Corps and the Army Security Agency during World War II. He lives in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Richard on May 19, 2020

There is a point in the later third of this haphazard intellectual memoir where Bernard Bailyn marvels at the breadth and depth of Fernand Braudel's knowledge. One cannot help but be astounded that someone like Bailyn would be gobsmacked by anyone else's erudition and intellect. This book is one of......more

Goodreads review by Matthew on August 15, 2020

Collections of essays are often the culmination of a career well-spent in academia. They can provide a sense of fulfillment and a culmination of a distinguished career. Illuminating History: A Retrospective of Seven Decades, (New York: WW Norton and Co., 2020, 274pgs, $28.95 US, $38.95, Can) by Bern......more

Goodreads review by Boone on March 17, 2025

This book is pretty clearly slapped together - a mix of essays Bailyn wrote for other venues, reminisces, and excerpts. To me, the retrospective of the title was worth the price of admission. Over the course of 5 chapters, Bailyn traces the five projects which have defined his career by looking at k......more

Goodreads review by Dave on February 21, 2023

Part history lesson, part memoir, this collection of essays by historian Bernard Bailyn provides a look at his studies over a long career and a glimpse of a career I can only envy. A lot. I was especially taken by his outlining the development of the field of Atlantic History - an area that he was i......more

Goodreads review by Chris on May 01, 2020

Terrific read. A brief glimpse into the seven decades of one of our preeminent historians. At times funny, informative, and always, genuine. Terrific read.......more

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List