The Unknown American Revolution

The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America

De: Gary B. Nash

Narrado por: David de Vries

In this audacious recasting of the American Revolution, distinguished historian Gary Nash offers a profound new way of thinking about the struggle to create this country, introducing listeners to a coalition of patriots from all classes and races of American society.

From millennialist preachers to enslaved Africans and disgruntled women to aggrieved Indians, the people so vividly portrayed in this book did not all agree or succeed, but during the exhilarating and messy years of this country's birth, they laid down ideas that have become part of our inheritance and ideals toward which we still strive today.

©2005 Gary B. Nash (P)2018 Tantor

A Realistic Look at the American Revolution

I have waited a long time for a non-fiction book like this. It is a warts-and-all look at the revolution. It avoids most of the cliches in other such histories. It does show some of the flaws, or personal interests, in the prominent actors. It also shows that much of the "gentry" who supported the revolution did not do this because of democracy, but in spite of it. It seems as if they were merely after a change in management, from England to themselves. It also shows that much of the progress during and after the revolution was due to the persistence of the common man. I don't know if all of that was Mr. Nash's aim, but that is what I took from the book. I really liked it and will read it again. It is a lot to take in during one reading.

Great reminder of the nuances of history

important read for moving beyond the storybook picture of the infallible revolutionaries and the true panorama of ideas that motivated the initiation of the United States.

No new information

This has no new information in it. Mostly just a collection of all the known philosophy, ideology and activities of the revolutionary era which were hypocritical, unjust, anti liberty and otherwise contrary to the generic and wrong view the era was all fairness and human rights seeking.

wokeness as a theme for the American revolution

I got this book because it was recommended as a view of the common man during the American revolution. I hoped the majority of the book would be from the perspective of militia and Continental soldiers I have studied at length as a career military officer. not so much. certainly, the paradox of slavery and the declaration of independence and the hopes of freedom of people in that situation during the 1770s must be addressed. certainly the roll of women and Indians should be mentioned. that's , to be generous, 3 chapters. after every chapter having some historically revisionist judgement on the founders and America (while the rest of the world lived in servitude) , it became tiresome. I get bored with "men" who have never served in combat writing in judgement on better men because they lived in a different time. disappointed