Product Review

In America's Revolution, Patrick Griffin offers a new interpretation, narrative, and historical synthesis of America's most formative period. Exploring the American Revolution from global, Atlantic, and continental perspectives, Griffin focuses on how men and women in local contexts struggled to imagine new ideas of sovereignty as British authority collapsed. He examines the relationship between ideas and social tensions, the War of Independence, the roles of the founders, and the struggles and triumphs of those on the margins. Griffin illustrates how, between 1763 and 1800, Americans moved from one mythic conception of who they were to a very different one, a change that was evident in word and in image. America's Revolution captures these dynamics by exploring origins and outcomes--as well as the violent, uncertain, and liberating process of revolution--that bridged the two.