The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America - Hardcover

Nash, Gary B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670034207 ISBN 13: 9780670034208

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2005

Synopsis

An exploration of the ideas and radical sentiments that prompted the American Revolution cites uprisings within every facet of American society, arguing that the war was a people's revolution and civil war, as well as an insurrection against colonial control. By the author of Red, White, and Black. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Gary B. Nash, professor of history at UCLA and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, is the author of many distinguished works of American history, including Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America, First City, History on Trial, American Odyssey, Race and Revolution, Forging Freedom, Quakers and Politics, Landmarks of the American Revolution, and The Urban Crucible.

Reviews

The history of the American Revolution that most of us have absorbed is but "a fable," writes UCLA historian Nash. In this insightful, challenging "antidote to historical amnesia," Nash (Race and Revolution) deftly illustrates that while the Revolution has been implanted in our collective memory as the idealized "Glorious Cause," in reality it was more a chaotic and bloody civil war, replete with fragile alliances, a multitude of fronts and clashing cultures. He especially succeeds in detailing the crucial role and often overlooked plight of Native Americans, adding the obscure names of men such as Cornplanter, Dragging Canoe and Mohawk chief Joseph Brant, who allied the Iroquois nation with the British, to the pantheon of the Revolution's players. By 1789 Washington was forced to commit a third of his army to destroying the Iroquois, explicitly ordering that their villages "not be merely overrun but destroyed." Of course, Native Americans who remained neutral or fought alongside the Americans fared no better later at the hands of settlers. Tightly though densely written, this expertly researched tome shakes the "stainless steel" history of the American Revolution to its core. (June 27)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670034207
• ISBN 13: 9780670034208
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544