book review: The Radicalism of the American Revolution
The Radicalism of the American Revolution
by: Gordon S. Wood
It’s hard for me to rate this book, as it was both incredibly difficult/boring to read, yet it also had some really great information and some angles of looking that things that hadn’t occurred to me yet (such as the way the shift from monarchy to republic to democracy played out in the minds of Americans, and the way the founding fathers felt about their work just a few decades later).
It is definitely not an introductory text – this is part of what made it difficult for me – it really presupposes a familiarity with the details of the events, the persons involved (famous and obscure…) and the sequence of events itself. I quickly gave up on trying to identify the context of a given quote, as the author would frequently jump forward and backwards a decade or two (to what one would presume, from the rest of the descriptions, were very different eras) with the quotes.
So yeah, this was more of a … sociological type angle on history than a straight “history book”, although it certainly read like a history textbook in the sense of sleep inducing boredom.
“Not intended for a layman” is the reasoning for that I guess – to someone with all the requisite background information at the brain’s beck and call it might have read a bit differently.
I’m glad I read it, and will use portions for reference in the future, but I can’t honestly give it a high rating because it was one of the most dreadfully boring history “type” books I’ve read.
TWO AND A HALF STARS
(averaging THREE AND A HALF for informational content, ONE AND A HALF for style)
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