The Radicalism of the American Revolution: Pulitzer Prize Winner

Front Cover
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Aug 24, 2011 - History - 464 pages
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • In a grand and immemsely readable synthesis of historical, political, cultural, and economic analysis, a prize-winning historian describes the events that made the American Revolution. Gordon S. Wood depicts a revolution that was about much more than a break from England, rather it transformed an almost feudal society into a democratic one, whose emerging realities sometimes baffled and disappointed its founding fathers.
 

Contents

Hierarchy
11
Patricians and Plebeians
24
Patriarchal Dependence
43
Patronage
57
Political Authority
77
REPUBLICANISM
95
A Truncated Society
109
Loosening the Bands of Society
124
Benevolence
213
Equality
229
Interests
243
The Assault on Aristocracy
271
Democratic Officeholding
287
A World Within Themselves
305
The Celebration of Commerce
325
MiddleClass Order
347

Enlightened Paternalism
145
Revolution
169
Enlightenment
189
Notes
371
Index
431
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2011)

Gordon S. Wood was Alva O. Way Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University. His books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Radicalism of the American Revolution, the Bancroft Prize-winning The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, and The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History. He wrote frequently for The New York Review of Books and The New Republic. Gordon S. Wood died in 2026.

Bibliographic information