The Radicalism of the American Revolution: Pulitzer Prize Winner

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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Aug 24, 2011 - History - 464 pages
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 II
11
Patricians and Plebeians
24
Patriarchal Dependence
43
Patronage
57
Political Authority
77
The Republicanization of Monarchy
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
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About the author (2011)

Gordon S. Wood is 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 writes frequently for The New York Review of Books and The New Republic.

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