Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America
By Jack N. Rakove
Read by Bronson Pinchot
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In the early 1770s, the men who invented America were living quiet, provincial lives in the rustic backwaters of the New World, devoted primarily to family, craft, and the private pursuit of wealth and happiness. None set out to become “revolutionary” by ambition, but when events in Boston escalated, they found themselves thrust into a crisis that moved, in a matter of months, from protest to war. In this remarkable book, historian Jack Rakove shows how the private lives of these men were suddenly transformed into public careers—how Washington became a strategist, Franklin a pioneering cultural diplomat, Madison a sophisticated constitutional thinker, and Hamilton a brilliant policymaker. Rakove shakes off accepted notions of these men as godlike visionaries, focusing instead on the evolution of their ideas and the crystallizing of their purpose. In Revolutionaries, we see the founders before they were fully formed leaders, as individuals whose lives were radically altered by the explosive events of the mid-1770s. They were ordinary men who became extraordinary—a transformation that finally has the literary treatment it deserves. Spanning the two crucial decades of the country’s birth, from 1773 to 1792, Revolutionaries uses little-known stories of these famous (and not so famous) men to capture—in a way no single biography ever could—the intensely creative period of the republic’s founding. From the Boston Tea Party to the First Continental Congress, from Trenton to Valley Forge, from the ratification of the Constitution to the disputes that led to our two-party system, Rakove explores the competing views of politics, war, diplomacy, and society that shaped our nation. Thoughtful, clear-minded, and persuasive, Revolutionaries is a majestic blend of narrative and intellectual history, one of those rare books that makes us think afresh about how the country came to be, and why the idea of America endures.
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Summary
Summary
In the early 1770s, the men who invented America were living quiet, provincial lives in the rustic backwaters of the New World, devoted primarily to family, craft, and the private pursuit of wealth and happiness. None set out to become “revolutionary” by ambition, but when events in Boston escalated, they found themselves thrust into a crisis that moved, in a matter of months, from protest to war.
In this remarkable book, historian Jack Rakove shows how the private lives of these men were suddenly transformed into public careers—how Washington became a strategist, Franklin a pioneering cultural diplomat, Madison a sophisticated constitutional thinker, and Hamilton a brilliant policymaker. Rakove shakes off accepted notions of these men as godlike visionaries, focusing instead on the evolution of their ideas and the crystallizing of their purpose. In Revolutionaries, we see the founders before they were fully formed leaders, as individuals whose lives were radically altered by the explosive events of the mid-1770s. They were ordinary men who became extraordinary—a transformation that finally has the literary treatment it deserves.
Spanning the two crucial decades of the country’s birth, from 1773 to 1792, Revolutionaries uses little-known stories of these famous (and not so famous) men to capture—in a way no single biography ever could—the intensely creative period of the republic’s founding. From the Boston Tea Party to the First Continental Congress, from Trenton to Valley Forge, from the ratification of the Constitution to the disputes that led to our two-party system, Rakove explores the competing views of politics, war, diplomacy, and society that shaped our nation.
Thoughtful, clear-minded, and persuasive, Revolutionaries is a majestic blend of narrative and intellectual history, one of those rare books that makes us think afresh about how the country came to be, and why the idea of America endures.
Editorial Reviews
Editorial Reviews
Reviews
Reviews
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Informal and Informational
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Damned with faint praise by critics at the publication of the print edition, this book is an episodic and sometimes anecdotal account of the lives and actions of the men who led the American colonial rebellion to a successful conclusion. Rakove brings to the topic a career of close study of the time, a career which included a prizewinning account of the Constitution and other well-regarded books.
You may be pressed to find a better introduction to the backstory of the American Revolution. Without embarking on a PhD (and without need for one), you can get many insights into the characters of the men and the events in which they were involved. You should come away from this book with more appreciation for the well-nigh miraculous success of the rebellion. For it was not the instigators of the rebellion who were instrumental to its ultimate success, but the more conciliatory lawyers and merchants in the "political center" whose movement to the rebel cause ultimately tipped the outcome.
The book is erudite and thoughtful. It looks for the answer to the question of why this political shift occurred, as well as detailing its impact. The answer, I believe, likes in the sum of all the actions and events detailed here, rather than in a 50-word executive summary.
Details
Details
Available Formats : | Digital Download, Digital Rental, CD, MP3 CD |
Category: | Nonfiction/History |
Runtime: | 19.47 |
Audience: | Adult |
Language: | English |
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