 Unreservedly recommended |
| Review Date: August 10, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Peter G. Keen, virginia usa |
Other reviewers have provided thoughtful and comprehensive reviews of the content of this excellent book. I'll focus my own on the book as a Good Read. It's perhaps the best on U.S. history that I've read since Daniel Howe's What God Hath Wrought, the next one in the Oxford series, which has the same virtues. It is beautifully written and flows well; the style is precise and compact rather than elegant, but a model of measured exposition. The examples mesh beautifully into its superbly modulated flow of argument. Just about every paragraph has a point to make that is convincing and clear. This slows it down in some ways, all good ones. First, it's long and it will take months rather than days to go through and it needs active engagement and reflection by the reader. It's not skimming material. Second, it builds its picture in a way that precludes fast skipping.
It doesn't have an axe to grind. It's a fairly centrist analysis that has no debunking and takes the leading political figures as essentially honorable individuals - almost all male, of course - working their way honestly to make the transition from the society and social hierarchies they were brought up in to the creation of a unique republic that fused the many interests and differences of American diversity. He places less emphasis than Howe on the economic and social dynamics underlying the cancerous issue of slavery, though his chapter, Between Slavery and Freedom, is a fine summary of how and why the Revolutionary leaders were so misguided in their conviction that it would just fade away. The last paragraph of the over 700 pages concludes that "The Civil War was the climax of a tragedy that was preordained from the time of the Revolution."
He shows how the new "middling class" became so pivotal in the shaping of a new society. He talks of this as the momentous social struggle that underlay so much of the moves to create a republic of law and freedom but also of liberal values. There is a superb balance between the political, social and judicial portrayals and a downplaying of the Great Men psychodramas, with a more useful analysis of their beliefs and intentions. The book is perhaps a little light on economic development and its political dimensions.
As other reviewers note, it requires a fairly solid prior knowledge of US history. It's not academic in the pejorative sense but neither is it a quick guide. It assumes that the reader has a fair understanding, for instance, of the personalities and biographies of Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and Hamilton (whose restoration as a major figure seems to be a common thread in recent scholarship.) I would not expect students or casual readers to enjoy it. I am not a specialist in the field, though I read widely and often in it. I found that it crystallized and threw new light on what I already knew and pointed to many aspects of the period that I did not know.
I hope you get as much out of it as I have. It's a model of how to fuse "popular" and scholarly history.
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Rip Van Winkle's America
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| Review Date: September 4, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Robin Friedman, Washington, D.C. United States |
At the outset of his history of the United States between 1789 - 1815, Professor Gordon Wood aptly describes his subject as "Rip Van Winkle's America". Van Winkle, of course, was the subject of a story by Washington Irving. Rip goes to sleep in his small village prior to the American Revolution and wakes up 20 years later to find a vastly changed United States, larger in size, disputatious, commercial, and substantially more democratic than had been the case when Rip began his long nap.
Rip's story captures the development of the United States as Wood portrays it. Beginning with the adoption of the Constitution, which was designed to cure the excesses of individualism and local government under the Articles of the Confederation, Wood sets a theme of the increasing democratization of the United States, as political parties come to play a central role in American life and Thomas Jefferson is elected president in 1800 on a platform of equality (for white males, in any event) and of a limited role for the central government. What Wood describes as the "middling" class as opposed to the budding aristocracy of Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and some of the other Founders, comes to set the dominant tone of American life.
Besides his use of the story of Rip Van Winkle, Wood sets the tone of his book with its title, "Empire of Liberty." Wood uses this term in a chapter titled "The Jeffersonian West" which describes the great expansion of the United States achieved by the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson himself used the term "Empire of Liberty" to describe his vision for the United States. As Wood explains the term: "`Empire" for [Jefferson] did not mean the coercive domination of alien peoples; instead, it meant a nation of citizens spread over vast tracts of land. Yet the British Empire had given enough ambiguity to the term to lend some irony to Jefferson's use of it. (p. 357, footnote omitted) Thus, another theme of Wood's study, in addition to democratization, is expansion. The United States grows in both area in population. The United States gradually frees itself of domination by foreign powers, both Britain and France, to form a growing sense of itself as an independent nation. At the end of the book, following what appeared to be a lucky avoidance of disaster in the War of 1812, the United States became "A World within Themselves", to use the title of Wood's insightful concluding chapter, as Americans looked to themselves rather that to Europe as the source of trade, economic growth, and culture.
Wood's long, thorough, and comprehensive study develops his themes in a variety of ways. He offers a political history of the United States beginning with the administration of George Washington and concluding with the administration of the fourth president, James Madison, through the end of the War of 1812. The tumult of this early period frequently is overlooked by those with only a casual familiarity with American history. Political disagreements were sharp, personal, and violent. There were near-wars with both France in Britain and an actual war with Britain in 1812, which sealed the result of the first war - the American Revolution. The era included a disputed presidential election in 1800, the trial of Aaron Burr, Jefferson's first vice-president, for treason, the impeachment of a Supreme Court Justice and much else. With the possible exception of the Civil War era, the early days of the United States were the most difficult time in our history.
Wood also offers insightful chapters on the development of American law and of the doctrine of Judicial Review under the John Marshall, the Great Chief Justice. He spends substantial space on slavery, with both the North and the South tragically miscalculating how this institution would come close to destroying the nation. In several chapters, Wood explores the growth of American culture during this period, a subject frequently overlooked. And there is an important chapter on the Second Awakening and on American religion. Wood shows that the separation of government from denominations, gave religion in the United States its own non-hierarchical, individual character and strengthened it, rather than having religion become a casualty of the Enlightenment.
Wood offers stories of commercialization, ambition and drive on behalf of his "middling" class with anecdotes of people who succeeded through their own efforts and of some individuals, such as Robert Fulton whose inventiveness and ingenuity made them famous. With slavery and its treatment of the Indians, Wood shows that the United States had serious failings. But the overall tone of this book is one of optimism, exuberance and hope for the promise of America. Thomas Jefferson is the single most dominating figure in this book. For all Jefferson's faults and for all the changes in his historical reputation, Wood clearly admires Jefferson immensely. Jefferson's vision, with its goal of democratization and independence, forms the heart of Wood's picture of what the United States could become.
Wood's book is the latest in a series called the "Oxford History of the United States." Each of these volumes is written by a distinguished scholar and presents, for the specialist and the interested lay reader, important and informed studies of periods in our Nation's history. It is a rare pleasure to be able to study American history through these books and through the differing perspectives of their authors. Wood's book, with its scholarship and emphasis on the Jeffersonian vision, is an exemplary addition to this series. I am pleased to have had the opportunity to read and review "Empire of Liberty" here as part of the Amazon "Vine" program.
Robin Friedman |
Making Sense of a Complicated Period
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| Review Date: August 5, 2009 |
| Reviewer: George B. Sears, Cedar City, UT USA |
Americans are fortunate to have many heroic figures in the period when the US came to exist. The difficulty of simply making people like Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton into purely heroic figures is that they existed in a terribly contentious age. This book describes a process by which the American Republic actually came to function.
The things that emerged around the turn of the 19th century, as issues, continue to this day. Who is really supposed to govern this country? Is it elites, people trained to govern, or simply those who represent the everyday interests of working men (mostly then) and women? The first great battle, perhaps, is whether popular Democracy can work at all, or whether America may simply need a king. That king could have been Washington, and some assumed he would be the monarch. But, popular Democracy did emerge.
In the first quarter century, the author seems to say, the nation of ideas vaguely disappeared and a commercial entity emerged. The idea of a nation preoccupied with wealth continues today. The Empire of Liberty was Jefferson's view of America controlling (or at least influencing) a vast territory. In this period, the US started on the road to gaining a vast continental geography. But the price of commercial energy, and the need to absorb new land, was extreme tension with the Natives, and a failure to do much about slavery. America became about achievement, about success. Students were pushed along not by the lash, but by a desire to achieve, the author says. The structure of the American economy found a synergy with the structure of government. Newspapers were about commerce and about politics. The cotton economy of the South differed greatly from the urban economies of the rest of the country, and the South grew apart. For a half century after the period covered in this book, these clouds grow darker and darker. The economic progress was mixed, everywhere. There were opportunities on the frontier, but industrialization tended to limit some kinds of advance. How much reform is enough, and what is the basis for reform?
The detail in this book is great, but the flow of the narrative carries all this factual information along extremely well. This is a readable history with a compelling story, validated by the depth of research.
The first half of the book, roughly, is the story of men and ideas, and how a country emerged, a country with tremendous momentum, despite the flaws. The second half is somewhat more conceptual, and more of a social history. The Republic has emerged. There is a sense of stability. The gigantic men and their titanic struggles are not really there so much, though the concept of how judicial review emerged is covered in a full chapter.
If there is a hero of this book it is certainly Jefferson. Washington may have held the country together, and given dignity to a government with little in the way of legitimacy. But Jefferson honed the notion of popular government, a country not run by a governing class. The British returned to monarchy after a failed attempt to move beyond a king. The French killed their king, got anarchy followed by a dictator, and then the king was restored from without. You have to forgive America for some of the flaws, glory in people making the thing work.
For anyone interested in knowing how this country was formed and what made it succeed, this is a great, if serious, book.
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One of the finest works on American history that I have ever read
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| Review Date: September 23, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Robert Moore, Chicago, IL USA |
Gordon Wood's new contribution to the Oxford History of the United States is without any question one of the finest historical works that I have ever read. In fact, I learned so much from the preview copy that I received through the Amazon Vine Program that I intend to buy a copy when it is published next month. I've twice read his classic work THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION as well as his brief book THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: A HISTORY.
This new work picks up at the point where most of Wood's other works have left off. His highly regarded history of the revolutionary period, THE CREATION OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC 1776-1787, for instance, ends with the creation of the American republic, but not the practical working out. If you are familiar with Wood's work the themes that he emphasizes are familiar. The dominant intellectual issues of the age were centered around the shift from a monarchial and hierarchical view of political society to one where republicanism and democracy dominated instead. Much of Wood's book is focused on the ideas of the age. The book is far more an entry in the history of ideas rather than a social history. Wood doesn't completely neglect social and cultural history, but far and away the emphasis of the book is on political history.
There are several crucial periods in American history, but it is hard to top a segment of American history that embraces the presidencies of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison; the Louisiana Purchase and the expedition of Lewis and Clark; John Marshall and his role in forming the American legal system; and the growing role of evangelical religion after its eclipse of the rational religion that was embraced by all of the Founders (Jefferson, for instance, was in despair at the emotional religion that dominated after his presidency, instead of the Unitarianism or Deism that he preferred).
The book contains a wonderful bibliographic essay that will prove invaluable to anyone wanting to expand their reading of the years following the ratification of the constitution. I've read pretty extensively in the period, including biographies of all of the major founders and several surveys of the period, but this is hands down the book I would recommend to anyone on the period if I can recommend only one book. Just as Wood's prior works had established him as perhaps the premiere historian of the revolutionary period, so this work should become the premiere historical work on the federalist and early democratic period. |
childhood of the republic
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| Review Date: August 23, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Robert D. Harmon, Mill Valley, CA |
In this volume, an Oxford History that fills a gap between the Revolutionary period and the early industrial years, Gordon Wood provides us with a multifaceted story. It's not just a linear story of how the U.S. evolved from its new Constitutional rebirth in 1789 through the end of the War of 1812, which, he tells us, definitely broke the U.S. from its British cultural and civic roots.
It's also a story of many beginnings in American culture and society. We learn that the Federalist movement was not so much a party as a social order, the remnants of an aristocratic way of life exemplified by Washington and Adams, a life and culture that would be subsumed under a republican mindset, a "Republican Party" as Wood terms it (later "Democratic-Republican", later simply Democratic). Indeed, he concludes, at the end of this period, Americans "looked back in awe and wonder at all the Founders and saw in them heroic leaders the likes of which they knew they would never see again in America. Yet they also knew they now lived in a different world, a bustling Democratic world."
Wood also shows how America interacted, not just with its aristocracy and the aristocratic outer world evoked by Britain. We see how the French Revolution both was affected by, and affected, ours. We see how by 1815, with the re-established old order in Europe, that America would become unique, the only democratic republic in the world of the Holy Alliance. We see how, economically, politically and otherwise, it would become a world of its own. We see how the "Jeffersonian West" of the Louisiana Purchase would also devolve from Europe, and emerge, clearly so, as early as 1815, and now the way west would open.
Wood does not neglect the fact that, although post-Federalist America did profess a new equality, it was not so for those who were native American, or women, or slaves. Indeed, the Framers, he shows, seemed to think that slavery would wither, when by 1815 it would become entrenched, a clever observation, but he adds that it maintained a slaveholder aristocracy that was already becoming marginalized and defensive.
He also shows some of the other threads beginning in the Jeffersonian period, the rise of a uniquely American religious culture, freed of the Church of England, that would grow westward and more vigorous. He shows how an independent U.S. judiciary, and the principle of judicial review, was not a given but indeed a development that would rise during the period. "Precisely because of the exuberantly democratic nature of American politics, the judiciary right from the nation's beginning acquired a special power that it has never lost." He shows how this spirited order would drive the early entrepreneurs and canal builders in advance of an industrial age. And, he tells these stories in terms that laypeople would find illuminating - and cohesive.
There's more, but suffice to say that the research seems to be impeccable, and that the writing clear and fascinating. This book is literature and history, and is a worthy addition to the Oxford History series.
Highly recommend. |
Alone at the top of the class
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| Review Date: October 24, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Charles Evans, North Carolina |
Reading "Empire of Liberty" is ambitious. It is not a book that can be breezed through in one sitting. No, it is a very in-depth look at the founding of the United States. It is not just a look at history, a listing of the facts, but it is a philosophical study of the leaders and the impact of their decisions. That is what separates "Empire of Liberty" from other books of this genre it is not a straight-forward chronological telling of history. Each chapter of "Empire of Liberty" is a discrete lesson of American history. One chapter focuses the founding judicial review another focuses on religion. What is so enlightening is Wood's ability to show how each (such as religion) to become a uniquely American.
Some have complained that Wood is overly focused on the republican values (circa 1800 not in today's sense of the word) at the expense of the Federalist. While it is true that much of the material focuses on the Jeffersonian view of a republican society, but I think it is fair and shows the true mood of the country. Wood has a fair approach as it shows the brilliance of Hamilton, but he shows the bias towards England. The Republicans are certainly not given a free-ride as Wood shows the insanity of the trade embargos prior to the war of 1812. The overriding theme is America's obsession with Liberty and how it shaped every decision that was made by the early republic. Again, it is hard to over-emphasize that this is not a traditional telling of American history - it is a commentary of the times.
"Empire of Liberty" is very relevant for today's American. We are constantly exposed to talking heads who state, "The founding fathers believed this" or "The founding fathers believed that". In truth, most of today's issues would be as foreign to Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, and Madison as the concept of nuclear fusion. Wood's gives well-thought commentary on the founders beliefs and the underlying principles that guided them in their decision making. Again, this is not light-reading nor will ever be confused with literary fluff.
Final Verdict - Unlike an book that I have ever read - while this is not something that everyone will enjoy it is a "MUST" for anyone with an interest in American History. I would not be surprised to see another Pulitzer coming to Gordon Wood's bookshelf!
5 Stars |
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