American Revolutions

A Continental History, 1750-1804

By: Alan Taylor

Narrated by: Mark Bramhall

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, a fresh, authoritative history that recasts our thinking about America’s founding period.

The American Revolution is often portrayed as a high-minded, orderly event whose capstone, the Constitution, provided the ideal framework for a democratic, prosperous nation. Alan Taylor, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, gives us a different creation story in this magisterial history of the nation’s founding.

Rising out of the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies, Taylor’s Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britain’s mainland colonies, fueled by local conditions, destructive, hard to quell. Conflict ignited on the frontier, where settlers clamored to push west into Indian lands against British restrictions, and in the seaboard cities, where commercial elites mobilized riots and boycotts to resist British tax policies. When war erupted, Patriot crowds harassed Loyalists and nonpartisans into compliance with their cause. Brutal guerrilla violence flared all along the frontier from New York to the Carolinas, fed by internal divisions as well as the clash with Britain. Taylor skillfully draws France, Spain, and native powers into a comprehensive narrative of the war that delivers the major battles, generals, and common soldiers with insight and power.

With discord smoldering in the fragile new nation through the 1780s, nationalist leaders such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton sought to restrain unruly state democracies and consolidate power in a Federal Constitution. Assuming the mantle of “We the People,” the advocates of national power ratified the new frame of government. But their opponents prevailed in the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, whose vision of a western “empire of liberty” aligned with the long-standing, expansive ambitions of frontier settlers. White settlement and black slavery spread west, setting the stage for a civil war that nearly destroyed the union created by the founders.

Critic reviews

An epic, landmark history that places the American Revolution on a global stage while never losing sight of the struggles and sufferings of major and minor characters… Taylor’s range is masterful.—Jill Lepore, author of Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin

American Revolutions is a game changer—a sprawling, ambitious history that forever alters our understanding of the Revolutionary War era. —Elizabeth Fenn, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People

As masterful as its author and as pluralist as its title, American Revolutions combines strong narrative drive with a kaleidoscopic array of settings and characters. In vivid prose animated by prodigious research, Taylor reveals the fight for the independence of the United States as a bloody civil war in which violence and division were the norms and clarity of purpose the exception. This is a sweeping synthesis for a new century. —Jane Kamensky, author of A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley

The new standard work—essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the complicated beginnings of our national history.—Peter S. Onuf, coauthor of “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination

Provocative

As a 69 year old American History major, what I found most fascinating were the quotations drawn from letters and newspaper that revealed the ambivalence, contradictions, and inconsistencies of viewpoints that a study of history based on carefully crafted documents does not. I will buy a hard copy and look forward to reading the footnotes and bibliography. Purity of thought and actions are of course myths, and ideals are aspirational.

Awesome

Great book. One of the best, most informative, thought provoking histories I have ever read.

Great all around history from all aspects of the revolution

I loved how it used quotes and evidence from all of the people involved: colonists, Britains, slaves, women, natives etc! Changed my understanding of American history!

Narrator tone a bit off

Great narrator, but his tone was often a bit negative, condescending, and/or sardonic. Think it was direction, not voice actor choice.

absolutely fascinating! Masterful storytelling

it was such a concise storytelling and easy to follow and understand the complex history