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Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America |  | Author: Jack Rakove
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Category: Book
List Price: $30.00
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Rating:  25 reviews
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 496
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.6
ISBN: 0618267468
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.3
EAN: 9780618267460
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Product Description
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, the 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.
A Q&A with Jack N. Rakove, Author of Revolutionaries
 Q: What surprised you most about our "founding fathers?" A: When all is said and done, when we grant this generation its fair share of shortcomings, the basic fact remains that the enterprise of completing the Revolution summoned a pretty remarkable group of men into positions of leadership. No one set out to become a revolutionary by ambition, but all found themselves thrust into events by a situation that moved rapidly from protest to war within a matter of months. Here they were, living these quietly provincial lives in the rustic backwaters of North America. Yet when a crisis escalated beyond anyone's expectations they discovered a remarkable array of talents that each individual applied to his own particular tasks and duties. Whether it involves making sense of Washington's sense of strategy, Hamilton's brilliant grasp of public policy, Jefferson's deep though not untroubled commitment to equality, Madison's sophisticated constitutional thinking, Franklin's pioneering ideas of cultural diplomacy, or the slavery dilemma that vexed the Laurenses, it is impossible to come away from reconstructing the course of American history after 1774 without being impressed by the quality of their responses. Q: You give us a glimpse of many of the founders before they did the work that made them famous. From your vantage point, who was most transformed by the Revolution? A: This is a tough one, since in one sense, they were all transformed and there's no handy scale of measurement. One could knock out some of the older characters and say that Mason, Laurens, and Franklin simply moved into new roles that became available to them. There's a strong case for Washington as the dominant political figure for the whole generation, someone who has put his youthful military interests behind him and becomes the commander of both the Army and eventually the Republic. Jefferson would have been happy as an occasional public servant and master of his plantation; instead he becomes a legislative draftsman, then a diplomat, and finally, and I still think somewhat surprisingly, the leader of a whole political movement. And there's something to be said for the younger generation. It wasn't clear where Madison was going with his life at all in the early 1770s, yet ultimately he becomes the leading modern constitutionalist. Hamilton, in the absence of the Revolution, would;probably have stayed in New York and become a legal giant; instead he becomes a leading architect of public policy, and in his way, probably more ambitious than any of his contemporaries. Since I'm a well-known Madisonian, I suppose I have a bit of sympathy there, but it is a tough question and readers might want to think about it themselves. Q: You write about a man named Jack Laurens, who might be unfamiliar to readers. What about his story compelled you, and why is he a worthy subject? A: Jack Laurens is an attractive figure in so many ways, not least because he did have a sort of militarized death wish that led to his meaningless death in a minor skirmish at a moment when there were no consequences worth risking. It speaks volumes for his sensitivity to the brutality of American slavery that he was willing to go as far as he did, particularly coming from a society in South Carolina that was destined to play a depressing role in later events. Yet his attitude toward slavery, and the pragmatic doubts his father cast upon it, also suggest something of the limitations within which he was working. Slavery was unjust, a condition imposed on captives who were hardly responsible for their fate; yet freedom from its grasp was something they had to earn, at great risk, and not merely something they deserved. Yet at the same time, one has to wonder whether Laurens might have embodied the kind of leadership class the South might have had but failed to develop. Q: Have you ever speculated as to what might have happened had these crises been avoided and the Revolution averted? A: More than many of my colleagues, I happen to think that the whole Revolution was easily avoidable--which is why I really wanted to put the little passage on Edmund Burke's analysis of the errors of British policymaking at the end of the first chapter. There were, it is true, some deep considerations in Britain that made the desire to use Parliament to buttress imperial authority in North America an attractive, if badly considered, option, so that perhaps, on some other occasion, the same conflict might have erupted. But I also think that the specific, decisive crisis of 1774 really did rest on the very peculiar circumstances in Massachusetts, on Governor Hutchinson's decision to stand on the law where officials elsewhere figured out ways to avoid it, and on considerations in London that a more thoughtful government could easily have avoided. No Tea Party, no crisis in 1774, no raft of parliamentary legislation, no need for Congress...and so it goes. Q: Of the various legacies you discuss, from the Constitution to our relationship with the outside world, which has been the most important/lasting? A: As a constitutional scholar, it would be extremely difficult for me to suggest that there could be anything other than the Constitution that would fit this bill--it's just the inner Madison in me, I suppose. But perhaps that begs the question somewhat. American nationality is not something we should take for granted: it was very much the product of the Revolution, and the Constitution was in some ways a seal upon something that had already been decided, though also essential to its very preservation. Q: What's the one message you'd most like readers to take away from Revolutionaries? A: To think what it was like to have been pursuing the kinds of lives these men led, caring about public affairs yet primarily devoted to the pursuit of private visions of happiness, and then to be sucked into a political vortex in 1774 and given the opportunity to join in the formation of an independent national republic. (Photo © Linda A. Cicero/Stanford News Service)
Product Description
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, the 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 countryâs 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 republicâs 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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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 25
 A Generation's Portrait May 11, 2010
Thomas Veil (Cleveland, OH)
86 out of 88 found this review helpful
Jack Rakove (seen recently on The Daily Show) provides in these pages the portrait of a remarkable generation (yes, remarkable) and their role in our nation's founding. Revolutionaries traces the story of the United States of America from a brief but informative prologue in the colonial period well past the Revolution, into the tumultuous 1790s.
Clear, crisp, original portraits of familiar names like John Adams, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington emerge in the book, but so too do people lost from view today. Particularly enjoyable is Rakove's depiction of figures like John Dickinson and Jack Laurens, who only rarely receive the veneration accorded to their peers. Also emerging with particular clarity is the much-maligned John Jay.
Revolutionaries moves adroitly between colonial politics, the wartime struggle, and the myriad dilemmas of post-Revolutionary life. Throughout, it offers a vivid, flowing and remarkable (yes, remarkable) depiction of a generation's struggle to shape the world around it.
At a time when Americans seem to expend more energy celebrating the founders than understanding them, Revolutionaries is a welcome window into the tumult of the 18th century. We owe it to them not just to put them on a pedestal, but to understand their world, their dilemmas, and the real differences between them. Revolutionaries, like Gordon Wood's Empire of Liberty, is a vital tool for this task.
How the Founding Fathers came to be Founding Fathers May 10, 2010
Todd Bartholomew (Atlanta, GA USA)
68 out of 71 found this review helpful
With "Revolutionaries" Stanford professor Jack Rakove attempts to somewhat demythologize the Founding Fathers by stripping away the hagiography that has been built up around them over the 200 plus years since the Revolution. Rakove is particularly interested in how these men from varied, yet largely unexceptional backgrounds came to become Revolutionary leaders. None particularly desired or sought to be thrust into the crucible of their age, and yet once propelled in this maelstrom all excelled in their particular roles. Most were largely private men, engaged in their respective professions, who became immensely public persons as a result of their support of the Revolution. They were in essence fairly ordinary men made extraordinary as a result of the Revolution and "Revolutionaries" is the story of how they came to be.
Rakove traces the evolutionary changes many of the Founding Fathers went through from the early years of the 1770s through to 1792, and readers of his earlier books The Beginnings of National Politics: An Interpretive History of the Continental Congress (1979) and Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1996 and a Pulitzer Prize winner) will likely see much here that is familiar. Unlike revisionist historians Rakove isn't here to reinterpret the Founding Fathers or demonize them, but to remind us they weren't always Founding Fathers and that their courses of action during the Revolution weren't necessarily pre-ordained. Any of these men could just have easily become a Loyalist as many of their contemporaries did. While Rakove is hardly breaking new ground here it is well presented in a prose that is easily accessible to lay readers as well as historians and scholars.
The Best Introduction to the Founding Fathers May 15, 2010
T. Carlsen
53 out of 55 found this review helpful
I have read several biographies and histories of the Founding Fathers, and this book by Jack Rakove is the best book about the Founding Fathers. If you want to learn about the founders for the first time, start with Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America. What I like is that the well-researched history shows that the founders were men of ideas at a pivotal moment in history, and what they created was remarkable. This book gives you the summary of these people as leaders and thinkers during the American Revolution, with a great portrait of the emerging republic. Highest recommendation!
Too often I hear someone state, "The Founding Fathers believed ________" to make a point as though the founders were monolithic in their views. Actually, they sometimes disagreed. Who's views? Jefferson? Adams? Hamilton? Madison? The founders shared many ideals, but they also possessed differing views and agendas that sometimes clashed. Political fights ensued. Sometimes the founders changed their plans as events evolved. Some issues were debated and then a solution compromised. The Constitution was a compromise document among competing views and interests. The most successful leaders were generally the most clever leaders. Rakove seeems to have the highest regard for the intellect and skills of James Madison. This book is a great introduction to the major players, including some lesser-known leaders like John Dickenson. This book is more complete and balanced than the Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, which also shows the founders to be real people with differing ideas but has too narrow of a focus (and objective).
Rakove previously won the Pulitzer Prize for "Original Meanings" and wrote a fine biography of James Madison, but the writing was dry. Revolutionaries, in contrast, is more readable. Still, readers should be able to read at a 12th grade reading level to absorb the material.
I would follow this fine book with the outstanding Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (Oxford History of the United States) by Gordon Wood, who also won the Pulitzer Prize and is THE leading historian of the American Revolution.
Also consider the wealth of great biographies of the Founding Founders, including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison.
Rakove hits it out of the park! May 12, 2010
A. Turpin (Washington, DC)
35 out of 40 found this review helpful
I admit that I am not usually drawn to American history. Most of my reading is about Middle Eastern history, and America's role(s) in it. But this book made me excited about my own country's history, more than any other book in a long time (except, perhaps, the great one about Adams that came out a bit ago). It's incredibly well written; it is a page-turner, without losing any academic rigor, and it's rich with historical insight, not surprising from a Pulitzer Prize winner. I encourage anyone grappling with the modern "Tea Party" movement to sit down with Revolutionaries. This is what it was actually about.
brilliant retelling of the earliest days of the republic May 10, 2010
City Girl (Brooklyn, NY)
28 out of 32 found this review helpful
Rakove, a Pulitzer-prize winning historian, weaves a spell-binding, vivid and authoritative tale. He upends many of our previously held notions of who the revolutionaries were. A terrific read.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 25
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