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Book

The idea of America : reflections on the birth of the United States

Call Number

  • 973.3 W875.3 (CEN)

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Publication Information

New York : Penguin Press, 2011.

Physical Description

385 p. ; 25 cm.

Summary

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history. In a series of elegant and illuminating essays, Wood explores the ideological origins of the revolution--from ancient Rome to the European Enlightenment--and the founders' attempts to forge an American democracy.

Contents

  • Rhetoric and reality in the American Revolution
  • The legacy of Rome in the American Revolution
  • Conspiracy and the paranoid style
  • Interests and disinterestedness in the making of the Constitution
  • The origins of American Constitutionalism
  • The making of American democracy
  • The radicalism of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine considered
  • Monarchism and republicanism in early America
  • Illusions of power in the awkward era of federalism
  • The American enlightenment
  • A history of rights in early America
  • Conclusion : the American revolutionary tradition, or why America wants to spread democracy around the world.

Subjects