From the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner a fresh authoritative history that recasts our thinking about Americas 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 nations founding.
Rising out of the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies Taylors Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britains 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 Fr