Overview
For five decades John M. Murrin has been the consummate historian's historian. This volume brings together his seminal essays on the American Revolution, the United States Constitution, and the early American Republic. Collectively, they rethink fundamental questions regarding American identity, the decision to declare independence in 1776, and the impact the American Revolution had on the nation it produced.By digging deeply into questions that have shaped the field for several generations, Rethinking America argues that high politics and the study of constitutional and ideological questions--broadly the history of elites--must be considered in close conjunction with issues of economic inequality, class conflict, and racial division. Bringing together different schools of history and a variety of perspectives on both Britain and the North American colonies, it explains why what began as a constitutional argument, that virtually all expected would remain contained within the British Empire, exploded into a truly subversive and radical revolution that destroyed monarchy and aristocracy and replaced them with a rapidly transforming and chaotic republic. This volume examines the period of the early American Republic and discusses why the Founders' assumptions about what their Revolution would produce were profoundly different than the society that emerged from the American Revolution. In many ways, Rethinking America suggests that the outcome of the American Revolution put the new United States on a path to a violent and bloody civil war. With an introduction by Andrew Shankman, this long-awaited work by one of the most important scholars of the Revolutionary era offers a coherent interpretation of the complex period that saw the breakdown of colonial British North America and the founding of the United States.
Full Product Details
Author: John M. Murrin (Professor of History Emeritus, Professor of History Emeritus, Princeton University) ,
Andrew Shankman (Associate Professor of History, Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University- Camden)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 23.40cm
, Height: 3.30cm
, Length: 16.30cm
Weight: 0.680kg
ISBN: 9780195038712
ISBN 10: 0195038711
Pages: 424
Publication Date: 10 May 2018
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Reviews
Ten of John Murrin's imaginative essays are worth dozens of historical monographs. --Gordon S. Wood, author of Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson John Murrin is a masterly essayist who poses penetrating questions about all major aspects of American colonial, Revolutionary, and early national History. And his answers in Rethinking America--whether he's arguing for the integration of the British Empire before 1760, the long-term radical impact of the Revolution, or the inevitability of the 1861-1865 crisis--always demonstrate that early American developments are deeply relevant today. A must read! --Richard S. Dunn, author of A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia No one writes better historical essays than John Murrin. Those collected here--full of wit, insight, and learning--are as fresh today as when they were first written. Rethinking America is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand the origins of the United States and how those origins continue to influence the nation today. --Daniel K. Richter, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania In the last half-century no American historian has thought more deeply about the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods than John Murrin; few if any can compare to him in the capacity for creative synthesis, and none in impish wit. Every serious student of American history should read this book. --Fred Anderson, University of Colorado, Boulder
Rethinking America reminds us of the power wielded by historians and their studies. It and Murrin both offer a compelling explanation for the transformative power of the American Revolution and suggests why it places so prominently in scholarship, political maneuvering, and in the public imagination. Rethinking America deserves significant praise and further critical attention in light of new developments in the field of early American history. At its core, the ten essays collected in Rethinking America explore how British North American colonists turned-citizens of a Republic developed ideas of how to act as British and American citizens. By virtue of its publication, this book asks historians to seriously consider Murrin's place in the pantheon of great historians yet still to test the endurance of his numerous insights. * Society for U.S. Intellectual History * Rethinking America does not disappoint. Through Murrin's deep and thoughtful analyses, these essays challenge historians to continue rethinking early America in order to better understand their time and our own. * Heather Sommer, Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective *
Ten of John Murrin's imaginative essays are worth dozens of historical monographs. --Gordon S. Wood, author of Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson John Murrin is a masterly essayist who poses penetrating questions about all major aspects of American colonial, Revolutionary, and early national History. And his answers in Rethinking America--whether he's arguing for the integration of the British Empire before 1760, the long-term radical impact of the Revolution, or the inevitability of the 1861-1865 crisis--always demonstrate that early American developments are deeply relevant today. A must read! --Richard S. Dunn, author of A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia No one writes better historical essays than John Murrin. Those collected here--full of wit, insight, and learning--are as fresh today as when they were first written. Rethinking America is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand the origins of the United States and how those origins continue to influence the nation today. --Daniel K. Richter, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania In the last half-century no American historian has thought more deeply about the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods than John Murrin; few if any can compare to him in the capacity for creative synthesis, and none in impish wit. Every serious student of American history should read this book. --Fred Anderson, University of Colorado, Boulder
Ten of John Murrin's imaginative essays are worth dozens of historical monographs. --Gordon S. Wood, author of Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson John Murrin is a masterly essayist who poses penetrating questions about all major aspects of American colonial, Revolutionary, and early national History. And his answers in Rethinking America--whether he's arguing for the integration of the British Empire before 1760, the long-term radical impact of the Revolution, or the inevitability of the 1861-1865 crisis--always demonstrate that early American developments are deeply relevant today. A must read! --Richard S. Dunn, author of A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia No one writes better historical essays than John Murrin. Those collected here--full of wit, insight, and learning--are as fresh today as when they were first written. Rethinking America is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand the origins of the United States and how those origins continue to influence the nation today. --Daniel K. Richter, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania In the last half-century no American historian has thought more deeply about the colonial, Revolutionary, and early national periods than John Murrin; few if any can compare to him in the capacity for creative synthesis, and none in impish wit. Every serious student of American history should read this book. --Fred Anderson, University of Colorado, Boulder Here is a timely gift to the coming generation of early American historians: Andrew Shankman and Oxford University Press have published a splendid collection of great essays by the greatest living essayist in the field of American history. John M. Murrin is a brilliant, generous, and unpretentious master of American colonial and revolutionary history...Unlike most of his peers, Murrin wrote essays, not books, and for this reason his impact might easily be lost on a new generation already weighed down by...hundreds of 'must-read' monographs...Sparkling images, trenchant criticism, impish good humor, excellent prose, and genuine mastery of the subjects under review-these qualities characterize the Murrin essays in this collection...Detail, narrative, and analysis are brought together in fine-grained mosaics made not of impressionistic dots but of hardedged bits of evidence. --John L. Larson, H-Early-America, H-Net Reviews
Author Information
John M. Murrin is one of the foremost scholars of early America. He was professor of history at Princeton University for thirty years and is the author of over fifty essays and the co-author of the textbook Liberty, Equality, Power. Andrew Shankman is associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Camden. He is the author of Original Intents: Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the American Founding (OUP, 2017), among other titles.
