A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic [Paperback]

Henry Mayer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1992

Patrick Henry was a brilliant orator whose devotion to the pursuit of liberty fueled the fire of the American Revolution. As a lawyer and a member of the Virginia House of Burgess, Henry spoke eloquently of the inalienable rights all men are born with. His philosophy inspired the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and, most significantly, the Bill of Rights. Famous for the line "Give me liberty or give me death!" Patrick Henry was a man who stirred souls and whose dedication to individual liberty became the voice for thousands. A Son of Thunder is as eloquent, witty, charged, and charismatic as its subject.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 529 pages
• Publisher: University Press of Virginia (January 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813913764
• ISBN-13: 978-0813913766
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,936,472 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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68 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Does not supercede earlier works by R. Meade, R. Beeman, April 28, 2001

By 

Kevin Hardwick "va_history_prof" (Harrisonburg, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic (Paperback)

Few biographies manage to avoid the perils of the genre, and this one is no exception. Mayer celebrates his subject, misunderstanding Henry as a fore-bearer of Jacksonian democracy and failing adequately to appreciate Henry's conservative commitment to social hierarchy, genteel leadership, and religious establishment. As a consequence, Mayer cannot convincingly explain Henry's espousal of Federalist politics in the 1790s, which makes sense only if we abandon any lingering neo-Whiggish inclination to find in Henry a self-conscious commitment to democracy.

There have been numerous other biographies of Patrick Henry. I would still recommend Moses Coit Tyler's 1887 PATRICK HENRY, which was reprinted by Chelsea House in 1980 with an introduction by Lance Banning. William Wirt Henry's three volume PATRICK HENRY, LIFE, CORRESPONDENCES, AND SPEECHES (originally published in 1891 but recently republished) should be used with care, since W.W. Henry incorrectly attributes a number of letters and other sources to Patrick Henry which more recent scholarship has established were written by others. Richard Beeman wrote a good analytic biography, PATRICK HENRY: A BIOGRAPHY, in 1974, which provides an excellent brief introduction to Henry's politics. The most comprehensive modern scholarly biography remains Robert Meade's two volume master-work, PATRICK HENRY (1959, 1967).

Mayer's prose is far more sprightly than Meade's, but Meade provides the more balanced and judicious treatment, and Meade's documentation of his conclusions is much superior. While Mayer updates Meade and Beeman in a number of places, his work does not supercede theirs, and should be read in conjunction with the earlier scholarship. Mayer's is a good book, especially as an introduction to a general audience. It is not, however, a work of historical biographical scholarship in the same class as, say, Drew Gilpen Faust's biography of James Henry Hammond, nor is it researched with the same meticulous care as Meade's account of Henry.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing Life of the Man Behind the Speech, September 26, 2000

By 

Andrew S. Rogers (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic (Paperback)

There's much more to Patrick Henry than 'Give me liberty or give me death,' the most famous line from his most famous speech. But if ever a one-liner summed up a man's philosophy, this was the line for this man.

Sadly, many of the great figures of America's early history have faded from public understanding. Maybe we remember the ones who became President, but truly great and influential men like Patrick Henry and George Mason are all but forgotten. Mayer's excellent book shows what a tragedy this is.

From his early career as a Virginia lawyer, to the way his beliefs and oratory were shaped by circuit-riding nonconformist Christian ministers, Mayer lays the foundations for Henry's later greatness. But most absorbing, to this reader, was Mayer's depiction of the fight in the Virginia Assembly over the ratification of the Constitution. Henry's prescient warnings of the growth of centralised power at the expense of the sovereign states leads one to wonder if maybe the anti-federalists weren't right after all.

Vital insights into a vital figure in a vital period of our history.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Compelling and informative, showing a complex man of action, November 30, 1998

By A Customer

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This review is from: A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic (Paperback)

Son of Thunder shows the evolution of both the man as well as the evolution of individual liberty as a political reality. The author covers enough of Henry's youth to show how it helped create the patriot and rabble-rouser, then moves quickly to the defining events leading to revolution (this includes Henry's own conflicts with being an advocate of freedom while being a slave owner). Henry's political force was a brick in the foundation of our Bill of Rights. This work shows how this came to be and why it was vitally important to the birth of the nation. Highly recommended for the amateur historian, constitutional scholar, or modern day patriot.