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Revolution Song: The Story of America's Founding in Six Remarkable Lives Kindle Edition
“An engaging piece of historical detective work and narrative craft.” —Chicago Tribune
At a time when America’s founding principles are being debated as never before, Russell Shorto looks back to the era in which those principles were forged. In Revolution Song, Shorto weaves the lives of six people into a seamless narrative that casts fresh light on the range of experience in colonial America on the cusp of revolution. The result is a brilliant defense of American values with a compelling message: the American Revolution is still being fought today, and its ideals are worth defending.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherW. W. Norton & Company
- Publication dateNovember 7, 2017
- File size4249 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
― Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Witches: Salem, 1692
"An engaging piece of historical detective work and narrative craft."
― Chicago Tribune
"Amazing: Russell Shorto shows us what a diverse, fascinating, cosmopolitan place this country has been since its founding."
― Charles C. Mann, author of 1491
"Shorto’s achievement is a remarkable one. The intertwined stories of Revolution Song give a sense of how far-reaching a phenomenon the War of Independence was. It leaves to readers the pleasure of judging what each of the figures in the book―or perhaps the combination of them all―contributed to an event that changed the world."
― New York Times Book Review
"Russell Shorto’s engaging new book appears at a moment when basic concepts of rights and equality are routinely disparaged. As if in response to our troubled political culture, he invites readers to return to the American Revolution to understand better how an 18th-century commitment to freedom took root and became a fundamental, unifying value in our nation’s history. . . . [Shorto has] produced a compelling work that reads almost like a good detective story. . . . Shorto deserves praise for reminding us of the complexity of freedom’s claims."
― Brian Greer, American Scholar
"Brilliant, captivating and fast-paced, Revolution Song is a wonderfully original take on the American Revolution that reads like a thriller. I couldn’t put this book down."
― Amy Chua, Yale Law School professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
"Russell Shorto has long had an astonishing talent for adjusting the focus in ways that make familiar swaths of history seem intriguingly foreign and fresh. With Revolution Song, he’s worked his magic again. Through his vigorous language, his mastery of archival sources and the pleasing interweave of his six carefully chosen characters, Shorto has composed a powerful polyphonic story, simultaneously grand and intimate, that makes us hear (and see and feel) the tumult of our nation’s founding as never before."
― Hampton Sides, New York Times best-selling author of In the Kingdom of Ice
"An engaging, readable and surprisingly complete account of the American Revolution. A tour de force."
― Gordon S. Wood, author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution
"With symphonic sweep, cinematic detail and compelling, superbly researched real-life characters, Shorto shows how our struggle for freedom began and why it remains so sadly unfinished. If Spielberg wrote history, this is how it would read."
― Howard Fineman, NBC News analyst and author of The Thirteen American Arguments
About the Author
Russell Shorto is the author of several books of nonfiction, including Gospel Truth, about the search for the historical Jesus; Saints and Madmen, about psychiatry and religion; and The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America. He has written for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, and many other publications.
Product details
- ASIN : B071R8JJVL
- Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company (November 7, 2017)
- Publication date : November 7, 2017
- Language : English
- File size : 4249 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 639 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #721,770 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #150 in 18th Century World History
- #242 in Revolutionary History
- #546 in US Revolution & Founding History (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
RUSSELL SHORTO's latest book is "Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom," which Gordon S. Wood calls "an engaging, readable and surprisingly complete account of the American Revolution" and "a tour de force." He is also author of the bestseller "The Island at the Center of the World" and of "Amsterdam: A History of the World's Most Liberal City." His books have been published in fourteen languages. From 2008 to 2013 he was the director of the John Adams Institute in Amsterdam.
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P 3: “Three thousand miles away [America - England],” is really more like 4000 miles away, with rounding. Maybe 3000 “nautical miles,” a nautical mile being 1.15 miles. Then, too, ships didn't travel in a straight line. P 83: “4000 miles across that same ocean…[Anomabo (West Africa) - Long Island (New York)”: 5000 miles (with rounding) as the crow flies (over some land), must be 4000 nautical miles, but the journey was by sea, so the distance traveled was even longer. P 91: “…their leader was the brother of Jumonville….” Really was older half-brother. P 125: “So, as he had done in copying out the ‘Rules of Civility’ at age sixteen,…” Was done before the age of 16, as at that age he was off on a surveying trip. Copied “Rules” sometime between the age of 13-15. P 179: …”rum, molasses, a barrel of limes and, to please Martha and her sons,…” But in 1766, Martha had only one son. P 232 “He [Germain] had replaced Gage with William Howe, and sent Howe to Boston with new orders.” No, Howe was already in Boston, having fought at Bunker Hill and then replacing Gage. P. 242: “Perhaps as many as a third of Americans were still loyal to Britain.” OK for general debate and possibly true at a moment or two, but this percentage comes from a misused comment by John Adams. Modern historians say 10% revolutionaries, 10% loyalists, and 80% either just wanting to be left alone or going with the ever-changing wind. P 252 “…declaration the members of the Continental Congress had signed five days earlier [4 July].” No, it was printed on that date, having been signed earlier only by John Hancock and the congressional secretary Charles Thompson. P 253: “…neither [Germain and Washington] was especially a man of ideas…” Highly disputed, especially for Washington, the visionary who imagined and constructed the United States of America. P 364: One of his [Washington’s] generals lamented that….” Why not just say Nathaniel Greene? P 384: “He [Cornwallis] wrote to both Clinton and Germain ensuring them…” Typo: should be “assuring.” P 401: “…one of Washington’s junior officers….” I’m not sure I would classify Colonel Lewis Nicola as a junior officer. P 476 “…dentures…made of human teeth held together with ivory and gold.” Mount Vernon describes Washington’s dentures as follows: “Human teeth, probably horse and cow teeth, ivory (probably elephant), lead tin alloy, copper alloy (possibly brass), silver alloy. Just a few human teeth; no gold is mentioned. P 476: “Washington himself had fueled the divide by installing leaders [Hamilton and Jefferson] of the two parties…” Confusing, IMHO, as the parties were formed after Washington had installed the two men. P 477 “…Thomas Paine felt at liberty to air long-standing grievances….” This was a 1796 open letter. How long-standing the grievances were is hard to determine, given Paine’s often profuse praise for Washington earlier. Certainly, Washington’s refusal to directly help Paine out when Paine was “headed” for the French guillotine (by accident he lucked out in the last hours) certainly fueled Francophile Paine’s imagination. P 478 “Abolitionists accused him [Washington] of being the ultimate hypocrite [regarding holding slaves]….” The author fails to address the vast complexity of Washington’s slave-holding situation and that he was unique among the slave-holding founders as to having freed what slaves he could in his will. The author personalizes this charge when on page 506 he faults Washington for “his failure to live up to that ideal [individual freedom]. I can only trust that the facts about the five other characters covered were more or less accurate.
And, of course, adding the characters' pictures (even B&W) would be great. Bottom-line, though, I enjoyed the book. Well-sung!
Not far in, but I'm guessing George Washington may have become a revolutionary due to lack of promotion from the British for whom he'd initially worked (before our Revolution).