Welcome to America

The John Adams miniseries got me interested in the early history of these United States, so I asked for some book recommendations. Having gone through Barnard Baillyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Gordon Wood's The Creation of the American Republic, and Don Cook's The Long Fuse I can now happily report that I understand this country perfectly.

All are recommended for those interested in the subject, but obviously you won't have time to read any of them because you'll be busy with Heads in the Sand.

Comments

Matt, essentially every university course on the Revolution, including the one I took at UChicago and the ones my friends at Harvard took, these days uses Gordon Wood's Radicalism of the American Revolution.

So you should also look at that.

Posted by Greg | April 19, 2008 2:50 PM

If I take HITS out from the library will you hate me forever?

Posted by Freddie | April 19, 2008 2:52 PM

Well, Bailyn's a good source, and he did get some of Gordon Wood, but I would definitely read his Radicalism book.

Also, a rather slim volume, but a crucial one, is Eric Foner's Tom Paine and Revolutionary America. Just so that the founding-fatherism gets leavened with a little genuine radicalism.

Posted by StevenAttewell | April 19, 2008 3:18 PM

but obviously you won't have time to read any of them because you'll be busy with Heads in the Sand.

Wait a minute - didn't you *just* tell us that we only had to buy the thing, and that we didn't have to read it?

Posted by McKingford | April 19, 2008 3:34 PM

I would also recommend The Genius of the People by Charles L. Mee, about the Constitutional Convention. Also, Ron Powers biography of Hamilton, and Willard Sterne Randall's of Washington. Angel in the Whirlwind by Benson Bobrick is a nice overview of the entire period. I also recommend American Sphinx by Joseph Ellis, but I wouldn't suggest that as the first book to read about Jefferson.

And if you feel really drawn to the period, Cincinnatus by Garry Wills, and by Henry Wiencek. The former is Garry Wills on Washington -- what else do you need to know? The latter focuses on Washington and Slavery.

It's a source of constant wonderment to me that this period in our history, so fascinating and, yes, inspiring, is rendered so dull in our schools and our history books. And the level of ignorance about it in this country is inexcusable. Could it be after all this time the true nature of our Founders and their accomplishments is still a source of fear to a certain kind of person?

Posted by Roddy McCorley | April 19, 2008 3:36 PM

You also might like T. H. Breen's Marketplace of Revolution, though it's a pretty dense read.

Posted by brian | April 19, 2008 3:50 PM

I've just got HITS, and - first things first - I notice there' not much of a 'thank you' to the loyal blog commenters who've stuck with MY.com over all these years. Maybe I'll take it back to the store.

Posted by otto | April 19, 2008 3:54 PM

Or, one could (re)read something written by a guy who was there, and saw us in our raw state.

Posted by cmholm | April 19, 2008 4:22 PM

Reading HITS myself.

You should definitely read Struggle for Power by Theodore Draper. It goes really with The Long Fuse. It also made the Constitution make a lot more sense to me.

Posted by chris | April 19, 2008 4:23 PM

There seems to be a popular sentiment amongst Iowans I know that they absolutely despise caucus season because of the constant campaign aggrivation via their televisions, radios, telephones, and front doors. The result is that if a given candidate pesters voters too much, there is the real possibility of a backlash against the candidate.

I think the same might be happening with Matt's book. Every new shameless plug is making me less disposed to buy it.

Posted by Shochu John | April 19, 2008 4:27 PM

I've tried to get into Tocqueville but just can't get started. Is it really worth the effort?

Posted by chris | April 19, 2008 4:39 PM

I noticed the three books on your list basically go up to the constitution. I'd also recommend The Age of Federalism, which gives a good account of the Washington and Adams admins. Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Burr, and the French Revolution, it's really interesting stuff.

Posted by AJ | April 19, 2008 4:53 PM

John Adams got me interested in the same. I'm not much for books. so instead I just read THE ENTIRE WIKIPEDIA AS IT PERTAINS TO THE FOUNDING FATHERS. Needless to say, this took a while, but I definitely feel I have a much more thorough understanding of who these guys are. :P

Posted by wiretapp | April 19, 2008 5:21 PM

As Will Hunting said in "Good Will Hunting," "you want to read a book that will really blow your mind? Try a "People's History of the United States," by Howard Zinn."

I read it in high school. Zinn get a bad rap, but the book really does blow your mind.

so there you go.

Posted by Howard Levy | April 19, 2008 5:26 PM

David Hackett Fischer's "Albion's Seed" is indispensable, because it traces key American sectional differences to self-selection in the people how settled the different regions, and traces those processes of selection to key developments in British society politics. Covers everything from politics and religion to cooking and baby names.

Slightly off the main subject, William Hunt's "The Puritan Moment: The Coming of Revolution in an English County," which describes the social, economic, and political context of the development of Puritan dissent in Essex against Kings James I and Charles I in the first half of the seventeenth century, is amazingly helpful in understanding modern-day American conservatism. Read about these whackos in Essex and you could be reading about Georgia today. Plus ca change etc.

Posted by DCBob | April 19, 2008 5:52 PM

Two Ellis books about the revolutionary generation - American Creation and Founding Brothers - are a very compelling read and give a nice human perspective on the events of 1780-1804 or so. Again, the Ellis perspective leaves you thinking that Jefferson is pretty pernicious, so take that with a grain of salt, but both books are highly entertaining and very informative (and also let you roll your eyes at people who say that politics is especially nasty and contentious nowadays).

Posted by SDM | April 19, 2008 6:05 PM

Howard Levy - I believe Zinn gets a bad rap because the book seems explicitly designed to blow the minds of high school students, rather than to actually make interesting or worthwhile arguments about American history.

Posted by John | April 19, 2008 6:30 PM

For something lighter, try Gore Vidal's Burr.

Posted by mad6798j | April 19, 2008 6:55 PM

"If I take HITS out from the library will you hate me forever?"

Only if you keep it - to make sure nobody else ever reads it.

Since all other copies are currently headed for Hwang Hung Lo's Bookstore on Kim Street in Pyongyang, North Korea, that would help.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 19, 2008 9:03 PM

John-You get a bad rap for failing to make a worthwhile argument about Howard Zinn. I've also read "A People's History of the United States" and it makes a powerful argument about how the failure to acknowledge our violent, bigoted and deeply flawed history makes it impossible to solve the problems that still face us today. I'd also recommend reading "Lies my Teacher Taught Me" by James Loewen.

Posted by mike | April 19, 2008 10:52 PM

Mike,

I'm Reading Lowewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me now, a good book but kind of depressing for anyone who enjoyed learning about US history in school.

In the same vein is Jonathan Kwitney's foreign policy book, Endless Enemies: The Making Of An Unfriendly World. I can't praise it enough, I read it as a kid and it made a huge impression on it (in fact, when I woke up this morning I found myself thinking about it).

To quote from an Amazon reviewer:
I agree with the first Amazon reviewer of this book (Marion Delgado in 2002) that reading it will increase your IQ significantly in any discussion of world events. That is even truer today than it was when the book was first published. It's that good. If there were only one book I would make required reading for every United States citizen, this would be the book. It has the advantage of being written and published before the occurrence of the absurdly extreme political polarization of our two party system...

The world today was eminently foreseeable in 1984. "Endless Enemies" saw it all too clearly, even predicting (unknowingly) very specific world events that actually unfolded (Afghanistan > the mujahadeen > 9/11). I recommend this book wholeheartedly to anyone with one caveat - reading it may induce a profound sense of loss, sadness and nostalgia for an American zeitgeist that was still present in 1984. The world that "Endless Enemies" warned us was coming if we did not rectify our foreign policy is upon us..."
http://tinyurl.com/65hccc

Posted by beowulf | April 20, 2008 3:32 AM

Bailyn and Wood are of a piece -- one piece of abstracted ideological analysis of the Revolution-- they both take seriously the whining of the anti-tax and undertaxed(relative to the British) colonists.

Two books other people have mentioned should be read: Foner's Tom Paine (missing from the Adams series) and Elkins and McKitrick's Age of Federalism
(about the Early Republic but the best -- by far -- of the intellectual histories of the era). Federalism also has an interesting mediation on what if D.C. were not made the capital ...

Posted by CharlesBeard | April 20, 2008 1:54 PM

"Read about these whackos in Essex and you could be reading about Georgia today."

I haven't read Hunt's book, but since Fischer (your other recommendation, whom I have read) shows at great length that the Puritan, East Anglian heritage went to New England, not the South, doesn't this remark of yours contradict your other recommendation?

Posted by James Kabala | April 20, 2008 2:34 PM

And if you really want to go off the deep end, there's always JGA Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment and Joyce Appleby's Capitalism and a New Social Order -- standard grad reading in classical republicanism.

Posted by Nathalie | April 21, 2008 12:28 PM