Customer Reviews

In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American Hist)

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Waldstreicher is a fantastic writer who crafts a masterpiece of American history. It takes more than a revolution to make a nation and Waldstreciher clearly demonstrates how diverse peoples with divergent interests formed a shared sense of nationalism.

While the author obviously spent (too much?) time in the archives, when it came to sitting down and writing the book he could not resist engaging in what is now literally an all-too-common academic exercise: making what should have been a straightforward cultural tale into a jargon-laden, convoluted tome that lacks clarity. Instead of tortured sentence construction and the employment of a host of academic buzzwords, Waldstreicher should have just said what he had to say! He didn't (not uncommon in his profession) and thus this book, consequently inaccessible, is anything but lucid.