A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American RepublicOxford University Press, 2003 M06 12 - 576 páginas It was an age of fascinating leaders and difficult choices, of grand ideas eloquently expressed and of epic conflicts bitterly fought. Now comes a brilliant portrait of the American Revolution, one that is compelling in its prose, fascinating in its details, and provocative in its fresh interpretations. In A Leap in the Dark, John Ferling offers a magisterial new history that surges from the first rumblings of colonial protest to the volcanic election of 1800. Ferling's swift-moving narrative teems with fascinating details. We see Benjamin Franklin trying to decide if his loyalty was to Great Britain or to America, and we meet George Washington when he was a shrewd planter-businessman who discovered personal economic advantages to American independence. We encounter those who supported the war against Great Britain in 1776, but opposed independence because it was a "leap in the dark." Following the war, we hear talk in the North of secession from the United States. The author offers a gripping account of the most dramatic events of our history, showing just how closely fought were the struggle for independence, the adoption of the Constitution, and the later battle between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. Yet, without slowing the flow of events, he has also produced a landmark study of leadership and ideas. Here is all the erratic brilliance of Hamilton and Jefferson battling to shape the new nation, and here too is the passion and political shrewdness of revolutionaries, such as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, and their Loyalist counterparts, Joseph Galloway and Thomas Hutchinson. Here as well are activists who are not so well known today, men like Abraham Yates, who battled for democratic change, and Theodore Sedgwick, who fought to preserve the political and social system of the colonial past. Ferling shows that throughout this period the epic political battles often resembled today's politics and the politicians--the founders--played a political hardball attendant with enmities, selfish motivations, and bitterness. The political stakes, this book demonstrates, were extraordinary: first to secure independence, then to determine the meaning of the American Revolution. John Ferling has shown himself to be an insightful historian of our Revolution, and an unusually skillful writer. A Leap in the Dark is his masterpiece, work that provokes, enlightens, and entertains in full measure. |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-5 de 85
Página xiii
... never been trusted with public office to be elected as public officials, or to cast aside the habits of the Anglo-American colonial past. Each step was uncertain and chancy. The success of the American Revolution was far from inevitable ...
... never been trusted with public office to be elected as public officials, or to cast aside the habits of the Anglo-American colonial past. Each step was uncertain and chancy. The success of the American Revolution was far from inevitable ...
Página 7
... never before had experienced combat, was “unmanned,” as the historian Fred Anderson has observed, possibly by the shocking carnage that he had just unleashed, including the realization that he had just killed, or mortally wounded ...
... never before had experienced combat, was “unmanned,” as the historian Fred Anderson has observed, possibly by the shocking carnage that he had just unleashed, including the realization that he had just killed, or mortally wounded ...
Página 15
... never more than a defensive league against regional Indian tribes. Outside New England, each province dealt unilaterally with nearby Native Americans, but when Britain's struggles with France and Spain began, plans of union and calls ...
... never more than a defensive league against regional Indian tribes. Outside New England, each province dealt unilaterally with nearby Native Americans, but when Britain's struggles with France and Spain began, plans of union and calls ...
Página 23
... never displayed much affection for him. The residents of Boston, a city of 15,000, looked on Oliver as imperious and unapproachable, a man of great wealth who lived like a grandee and utilized his influence as a public official ...
... never displayed much affection for him. The residents of Boston, a city of 15,000, looked on Oliver as imperious and unapproachable, a man of great wealth who lived like a grandee and utilized his influence as a public official ...
Página 26
... never left the homeland, and who were busily reshaping the Old World culture that had initially been brought across the Atlantic. This new American, Crèvecoeur added, acted “upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas and ...
... never left the homeland, and who were busily reshaping the Old World culture that had initially been brought across the Atlantic. This new American, Crèvecoeur added, acted “upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas and ...
Contenido
1 | |
23 | |
3 17661770 To Crush the Spirit of the Colonies | 53 |
4 17701774 The Cause of Boston Now Is the Cause of America | 87 |
5 17751776 To Die Freemen Rather Than to Live Slaves | 123 |
6 17761777 A Leap Into the Dark | 167 |
7 17781782 This Wilderness of Darkness Dangers | 209 |
8 17831787 The Present Paroxysm of Our Affairs | 247 |
10 17901793 Prosperous at Home Respectable Abroad | 315 |
11 17931796 A Colossus to the Antirepublican Party | 355 |
12 17971799 A Game Where Principles Are the Stake | 405 |
13 17991801 The Gigg Is Up | 451 |
14 1801 An Age of Revolution and Reformation | 477 |
Abbreviations | 489 |
Notes | 493 |
Index | 539 |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic John Ferling Vista previa limitada - 2003 |
A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic John Ferling Vista previa limitada - 2003 |
A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic John Ferling Sin vista previa disponible - 2003 |
Términos y frases comunes
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