American Revolutions

A Continental History, 1750-1804

By: Alan Taylor

Narrated by: Mark Bramhall

Length: 18 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, a fresh, authoritative history that recasts our thinking about America’s founding period.

The American Revolution is often portrayed as a high-minded, orderly event whose capstone, the Constitution, provided the ideal framework for a democratic, prosperous nation. Alan Taylor, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, gives us a different creation story in this magisterial history of the nation's founding.

Rising out of the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies, Taylor's Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britain's mainland colonies, fueled by local conditions, destructive, hard to quell. Conflict ignited on the frontier, where settlers clamored to push west into Indian lands against British restrictions, and in the seaboard cities, where commercial elites mobilized riots and boycotts to resist British tax policies. When war erupted, patriot crowds harassed loyalists and nonpartisans into compliance with their cause. Brutal guerrilla violence flared all along the frontier, from New York to the Carolinas, fed by internal divisions as well as the clash with Britain. Taylor skillfully draws France, Spain, and native powers into a comprehensive narrative of the war that delivers the major battles, generals, and common soldiers with insight and power.

With discord smoldering in the fragile new nation through the 1780s, nationalist leaders such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton sought to restrain unruly state democracies and consolidate power in a federal Constitution. Assuming the mantle of "we the people", the advocates of national power ratified the new frame of government. But their opponents prevailed in the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, whose vision of a Western "empire of liberty" aligned with the long-standing, expansive ambitions of frontier settlers. White settlement and black slavery spread west, setting the stage for a civil war that nearly destroyed the union created by the founders.

©2016 Alan Taylor (P)2016 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"An epic, landmark history that places the American Revolution on a global stage while never losing sight of the struggles and sufferings of major and minor characters…. Taylor’s range is masterful. (Jill Lepore, author of Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin)

"American Revolutions is a game changer - a sprawling, ambitious history that forever alters our understanding of the Revolutionary War era." (Elizabeth Fenn, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People)

"As masterful as its author and as pluralist as its title, American Revolutions combines strong narrative drive with a kaleidoscopic array of settings and characters. In vivid prose animated by prodigious research, Taylor reveals the fight for the independence of the United States as a bloody civil war in which violence and division were the norms and clarity of purpose the exception. This is a sweeping synthesis for a new century." (Jane Kamensky, author of A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley)

Narrator tone a bit off

Great narrator, but his tone was often a bit negative, condescending, and/or sardonic. Think it was direction, not voice actor choice.

absolutely fascinating! Masterful storytelling

it was such a concise storytelling and easy to follow and understand the complex history

Provocative

As a 69 year old American History major, what I found most fascinating were the quotations drawn from letters and newspaper that revealed the ambivalence, contradictions, and inconsistencies of viewpoints that a study of history based on carefully crafted documents does not. I will buy a hard copy and look forward to reading the footnotes and bibliography. Purity of thought and actions are of course myths, and ideals are aspirational.

Awesome

Great book. One of the best, most informative, thought provoking histories I have ever read.

Very detailed and informative

What made the experience of listening to American Revolutions the most enjoyable?

It was thought-provoking to find out that Indian tribes fought for the British as they felt it was a better choice of two bad ones and also intriguing to find out that George Washington, this "holy" person in school books, hunted down and killed Indians in a Custer way. He had probably no choice at that time but it makes one wonder. The superpower of its time, Great Britain mobilized additional groups to fight for them, like freed slaves but also locals and often often it came down to pure civil war as loyalist fought against Patriots.

This book is full of fact like these, many of which I had no clue of. I guess lots of things Europeans like me no nothing of, Americans learn in school, either way this book is full of history put forward in very nice way.

What other book might you compare American Revolutions to and why?

To Try Men's Souls: A Novel of George Washington and the Fight for American Freedom is the first book in Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen trilogy about some of the same era, mostly around the declaration of independence. There is history brought to live by looking at the persons and giving them voice - based on facts or active history I believe the authors call it. American Revolutions by Alan Taylor takes on much longer period and it is full of detailed narrative, full of facts and interesting things, maybe a bit to much at times. Both these books are nevertheless great in my opinion whereas one is pure history lesson and the other is a history lesson wrapped in fact based drama.

Packed with historical insight

The book dives deep into many aspects of early American life. Good read for anyone who enjoys American history.

Brilliantly synthesis

Taylor places the American Revolution in a broader context and enables his reader to make new connections with older knowledge.

Good book

The author writes a very in-depth history of the Americas and the world in the 1700s. Good read but due to several cherry picked facts in some topics and what feels like a left leaning take on the period. I seemed like he was trying to give sympathy to the British in a war where both sides fought brutally he highlights the colonials brutality and skins over the British. Great book though, I have listened to it a few times and probably will again.

The Revolutionary experience through a kaleidoscop

The author examines the period surrounding the American Revolution though the eyes of many actors, not just the American revolutionaries and British government, but American Loyalists, the governments and colonies of France and Spain, the enslaved, native nations, women and the working poor. An impressive work and we'll worth slogging through, although the effort is sometimes a task. The author undermines himself by a tendency to "pick sides" and snear at the oppressor or victimizer, with some actors getting a chance to be both heroes and villains depending on the side of various societal clashes Taylor supports at that point in the book. The performance is fair, but undermined by the reader's tendency to LITERALLY snear at Taylor's villains, often performing their quotes with cartoonish foppish or thuggish accents, depending on their social station or nationality. Worth a listen despite it defects.

comprehensive history

the book is long but comprehensive. I like that the author does not shy away from the difficult topics like the patriots' and settlers' treatment of Native Americans and Blacks. He also covers the years before and after the revolution as well as other parts of the world besides just what happened in the 13 colonies themselves.
The reader is good but, in differentiating quotations from the narrative text, he uses different voices and accents, which at time sound a little cheesy. My favorite is when he is speaking as a Native American. Overall, a tremendously informative book that will remove those myths of the Revolution that some of us learned in school, and replace them with facts and reality based on primary sources.