Customer Reviews

The American Revolution: Revised Edition

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Countryman's central thesis in this book is that there was no one universal aspect about the people, the politics, or the process of the American Revolution. Whereas earlier historians had tried to reduce the Revolution to, variously, its leaders, its framers, its people, its rich, or its poor using universal sentiments or examples to define all, Countryman sets out by embracing the diversity and difference of motives and experiences during the Revolution. Whereas previous historians had single issues in mind when writing their books, Countryman encompasses the entire "grand transformation" without slighting, or skipping the interests of a particular group of people. He can do this because he does not attempt to speak for any one group, or define the entire set of changes from the point of view of one group. His simplicity and brevity make his eloquence and it is this beauty which embraces the past of many different groups while acknowledging the inadequacy-in human terms-of its reach. His attitude towards the past is one we should have towards our present and our future as Americans: an attitude of acceptance of the diversity around us and recognition of our inability to embrace it all.

Contrary to Mr Randolph's and Marina's opinions, I found this book to be well-written and very readable - and I'm in fact reading it for my first course in the history of the Revolution, although it wasn't recommended by the lecturer!

Certainly the book doesn't contain as much new research as some scholars would expect, and is instead a synthesis of previous work on different aspects of the period (as Countryman's Acknowledgements and Bibliographical Essay suggest). That includes his own research on New York that won the Bancroft Prize in 1982.

If you're uncomfortable with the lack of footnotes, Countryman isn't the only one to do this. John Fairbank did the same with some of his books on China (but of course you'll reply that Fairbank was a giant in his field). In any case, most of Countryman's facts can be verified by referring to earlier works in this field. His assertion about pre-marital pregnancies was borrowed from Robert Gross' "The Minutemen and their world", where the proper statistics are included in detail.

If you find jumps in chronology and unconventional details distracting, that would rule out much of the fine historical writing of the last 40 years, wouldn't it? Countryman was aiming for a thematic, rather than purely narrative, history of the Revolution, and military history was secondary to his argument - hence the sparse attention paid to it. Personally, I'm glad I got this book as it's a lively and stimulating read for anyone new to the subject - unless you love reading footnotes, that is.

The American Revolution as a large mob. I've never thought of it that way before. Though, as Countryman argues, very convincingly, that mob was highly organized and had the cause and will to fight their British cousins. Countryman provides a very good argument that the founding fathers were simply using the mobs of urban and rural areas to create a new nation. Now while this is not his entire thesis it proves to be interesting.

The author also makes sure to point out the current political, economic and social climate during the period after the French and Indian/Seven Years' War. I found the social elements to be the most intriguing as Countryman tells the story Americans came to despise any form of British culture or entertainment, especially the theater. Which makes a great deal of sense since the greatest playwright of all time was English.

In general, Countryman provides a great overview as to the causes, military campaigns and aftermath of the American Revolution. There are indeed no footnotes; however this should not trouble the reader as this is a short abstract overview of the entire American Revolution. If one is looking for footnotes and citations be prepared to tackle the much larger work (I recommend Middlekauff's excellent "The Glorious Cause").

Ultimately, the American Revolution is nicely summed up by John Adams when he stated that: One-third was for it, one-third was against and one-third didn't care either way.

In this historical narrative of the American Revolution, Edward Countryman explores multiple facets of British Colonial America, from social and economic issues to legislation and geographical statistics. The American Revolution serves as a synthesis of current scholarship on the Revolution and argues that the events of American independence were as much about internal conflict and change as about independence for Britain. (xiii)

Edward Countryman is currently a University Distinguished Professor at Southern Methodist University and has written extensively about 18th century America and awarded the Bancroft Prize in 1982 for The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760-1790. At the time of publishing, very few works on the social aspects of the American Revolution had been seen and Countryman has contributed a substantial amount to this subfield of United States history.

Countryman brings his concepts together in this work, skipping over the details of bloody battles and tells the stories of the men that fought them. Exploring rural and urban communities, socially, very little is not covered. Mob mentality is explained fully and how it affected 18th century legislation and public opinion. He makes claims that, with the help of individuals like Thomas Paine and his work Common Sense, the mob is actually what shifted public opinion to support organizations such as the Sons of Liberty and eventually the Continental Congress and military campaigns. The American Revolution is written in an easy to follow, chronological manner geared to academia and greater readership offering both detailed statistical information and class analysis.

In previous works, the successful founding of the United States has typically been credited to the founders. Countryman does offer credit here, especially to Thomas Jefferson, but relies heavily on crediting other, much lesser known names and provide a much more balanced view of how American life, identity, and culture transformed from that of its British brothers and sisters. He also raises questions and is critical of what the framers of the Constitution had to personally gain, sharing the ideas of progressive American historian Charles A. Beard in that the Constitution marked not much more than a triumph for men who were on their way to wealth at other men's expense.

In works such as this, it is difficult to be critical. However, in a time when slavery and Indian relationships with both Colonial and British armies had a huge impact on social life in America, Countryman's work concerning this leaves some to be desired. Although books and articles have been written on specific geographical areas, Countryman strives to cover all areas east of the Appalachians. New England and the middle states receive the majority of the attention in The American Revolution, leaving the southern states out in most instances, even when nothing but statistics are shown.

In this comprehensive work, the author offers a fresh look into previous publications in comparisons to each other with a fresh analyzation of the establishment of America. To speak of the Revolution in terms of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Jay and Thomas Jefferson is to understand the work of heros. Countryman's The American Revolution is a well documented, vivd narrative that proves it was far more than that.

I was looking for a compact and conscise book on early American History as an outsider with an interest and relatives in America, without any advice. I browsed many reviews on amazon and went into bookstores in the US.

Partly, I got what I wanted, the book is non-technical, can be read without wide background knowledge. However, it is utterly boring, and not very well edited: the obsession to keep a chronological order makes understanding less than more easy.

The books arguments are not convincing for me. First of all, the author makes no reference on the methodology he chooses his arguments, sources, an underlying theory behind his convictions, and even in such a genereal interest book it worths mentioning in a preface or at least in footnote. The book makes some sweeping claims on a probably vulgarized Marxist social theory with materialistic economic forced at work behind the Framers, but probably it is just some unreflected common sense with a bias. The forces at work are not convincing, the argument for a European reader is one of the we-saw-many-such-narratives.

The book tries to follow the trend and include all people, regardless of race, origin, gender, etc in the great story, however, it is just misguided political correctness, in fact I did not learn anything about the Indians, black people or women in the examined period.

The highest point in the essay is the emphasised problem of the breaking up of the British identity in the ex-colonies and the different social and institutional forms of the would be United States before the federation. This is very valuable and interesting, again, not very deep: I just grasped the significance and the excitement but I did not get a credible narrative. I do not understand how the British identity vanished and the Amercian emerged. Coming from a country with over a 1000 years of recorded history, continous identity crisis and reading the book in the year of the European Convent that drafted our constitution I am very sensitive to this issue and find Countryman's account very shallow.

There is one invaluable part in the book that made it a good deal for me: the bibliographical notes that give a very brief, again chronological overview of the history of American history-writing. It will help me choosing another one to better understand the American Revolution.

it tooks about 1 & 1/2 week to recvd it, book in good condition, there was not any problem with my order.Thank you!

I found this book to be horrible. It puzzles me how this book could be a product of a professor of history. His chief failings are as follows: (1) He fails to use footnotes. I find this to be inexcusable for a serious scholar. He wrote a number of things, for example, that I found to be unbelievable, but because of his failure to provide proper citations, I was unable to follow up and double check him on his work. Just one example: he wrote on page 22 that "50 percent of eighteenth-century New England brides .. were pregnant at their wedding[.]" This is not something that could be known without extensive research. I'm not aware of any statistical surveys or census information that could verify such a claim. I don't think this kind of information would be found in church marriage records. Did someone do an exhaustive study of personal diaries and make a statistical inference? Academic protocol demands a proper citation, and he provided none. (2) His organization was lacking. This is a time period in which I have recently completed a number of readings, and yet I, at times, had a difficult time following where he was going, or ultimately what point he was trying to make. At least I understood many of the specifics of events he alluded to, but a reader unfamiliar with the events would be lost. In my opinion, he lumped too many things together, causing the reader to feel at various times like he was jumping all around chronologically and geographically and, at times, topically. (3) I think the title of the book is misleading. It is less a history and more an essay on how the author views the interplay between the political events of the day and the social dimensions. Many of his points were lost on me. For example, he develops the idea that early Americans lived in a violent world. Well, so? Who didn't know this? Violence pervades most of history. If I were his editor, I would have tried to get the author to focus more on what he was trying to do with this book. Did he want the book to be a history book, a social essay, or what? Anyone wanting to gain a fundamental history of the time period would be well advised to avoid this book. Finally, I hate to be so negative for there is some good content, but I would only read this book if you are already well read on this time period and have nothing better to do, or if you are a professional academician with interest in this field. And for those of you who teach a history course on the American Revolution, please don't inflict this book on your students. For those who do not fall into those two categories above and you would like to read good history on the American Revolution, I recommend the following: for the period up to and including 1776, Merrill Jensen's "The Founding of a Nation," for the time period of the Articles of Confederation, Merrill Jensen's "The New Nation," and for the Constitutional Convention, Forrest McDonald's "Novus Ordo Seclorum" and Catherine Drinker Bowen's "Miracle at Philadelphia." I am not well read enough on the war itself to make a good recommendation.

This book does not really say much about the major events of the revolution but rather describes the intellectual and political forces that cause the rebellion against Britian. The author gives alot of analysis on the factions present in the induvidual colonies. As a result the book seems to jump around alot and it is hard to tie things together. I expected a book about the revolutionary war which was never really discussed at all. The author shows alot of thought but does not really tell the story of what happened. This book would be a good reference for writing a college paper.

Countryman did a good job making the readers think a lot about the subject. I think it's an ideal way, especially for AP students to began their course by reading Countryman over the summer. It even helped me pick up some new vocabulary! Well, tell ya the truth, this book may suck very badly, if one tries to read it in a tight deadline!

One often loses track, cuz Countryman has included some weird stuff in between...which does not make any real sense!

I suggest LaFeber's "The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898", as a complementary reading. Happy reading

This is a typical example of a completely rewritten "revisionist" type of history that totally disregards the main sweep of what really happened. The author deals with a lot of side issues that may be true but disregards and plays down the real heroes, trying to make new heroes. A typical example of a politically correct type of history that brings in every possible ethnic group and yet ignores the main driving forces. It also is very, very boring and I had to skim a lot just to keep going. Yes, this is very sad to find a contemporary history professor teaching this kind of thing in a University. This is what is in vogue and yet shows the real state of what contemporary historians are trying to do. Try reading "1776" by David McCullough for riveting, page-turning, well-documented history, writing that you can hardly put down. Much of the actual letters are included. That's what interested me in trying Countryman's book but how disappointing and pathetic is Countryman compared to McCullough!