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Win a Signed Copy of Jack Rakove’s Revolutionaries!
In his outstanding new book, Revolutionaries, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jack Rakove offers a fresh perspective on America’s founding fathers. Last week, he spoke about his latest work at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center just a few blocks away from Independence Hall. We were there, and we’ve got two signed copies of Revolutionaries that we’re giving away to two lucky Art in the Age Twitter followers that reply to @artintheage with “I want a signed copy of Revolutionaries!” during the week of June 17th-25th. Read a summary of the book below.
Prior to the explosive events of the mid-1770s, these men were living quiet, provincial lives in the rustic wilderness of the New World. They were devoted to family, craft, and the private pursuit of wealth and happiness. These men did not set out to become revolutionaries, but when the events in Boston escalated, they found themselves thrust to the forefront of a major crisis, that within a matter of months escalated from protest to full on war.
Most historians tend to concentrate on the military turmoil that won American’s independence, but Rakove is more concerned with the intellectual struggle that was taking place among the leaders of the revolution. The book moves chronologically through the two most crucial decades of the country’s birth, from 1773 to 1792. Rakove shares little-know stories about these famous (and not so famous) men, capturing the intensely creative period of the Republic’s foundling, in a way no single biography ever could. 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 let to a two-party system, Rakove explores the competing views of politics, war, diplomacy, and society that shaped our nation.
Revolutionaries creates personal portraits of the founding fathers, packed full of fascinating insights. Unlike most historians, Ravoke goes beyond accepted notions of these men as godlike visionaries. Washington, Madison, Hamilton, and Adams are revealed before they were fully formed leaders, before the Republic was effectively functioning. Washington is portrayed as a flawed tactician but expert manager, Jack Laurens as a slave trader’s son who developed a plan to recruit black soldier, and vain John Adams, languishing in a Worcester, MA, schoolhouse. The reader is given a look into the collective thought process that went into making some of the most crucial decisions of the Revolution; when and how to break with Britain, how to win a war against the world’s greatest military power, and what exactly the Constitution should say.
Revolutionaries is an excellent 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.
Written by dan on 06/01/2010 in Blog | Book Review | Contests | History
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