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Title: The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89, Third Edition
Author: Edmund S. Morgan
Publication Date: 1992 (for this edition)
Number of Pages: 206 including end matter I mostly skipped; 156 otherwise
Genre: history
Book Number/Goal: 1/12 books on United States history (no countable progress on other goals)
Review: Edmund S. Morgan was (he died in 2000) a famous US historian who wrote an essay I was assigned in my history class, "Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox." It's about how the same white American men who went on about freedom and equality during the US War of Independence were able to perpetuate slavery at the same time. I really liked that essay and recommend it to anyone who's curious about that question (it was published in The Journal of American History in 1972 and is available through JSTOR).
That was why I decided to read this history of the origins of the United States when I saw it on sale. I liked this book too, although not nearly as much as the essay. It is very handsomely written and not crankily libertarian (something you have to watch out for with this sort of US history). Its narrative structure coincides so much with the way my textbook described the relevant parts of this period that I think either Morgan's version has become the accepted way of telling the story, or Morgan just did a very good job of synthesizing the agreed-upon narratives.
I recommend it for being a readable way of learning the standard version of how the US became a nation. I wish I had read it concurrently with my textbook's version, because it cleared up some confusions I had at that time (for example about how the distinction between internal and external taxes was relevant). It also has a very nice bibliographical essay and an appendix containing the texts of the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.
What it does NOT have is any information at all about the contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, or white women to events between 1763 and 1789. My textbook (Liberty, Equality, Power, fifth edition) did a much better job about that--even with regard to Native Americans, although I've complained in my own journal about its minimal coverage of their histories. This book does not tell the full story--it just does a good job of telling the standard story, which of course is one about the actions of propertied white men.
(I was momentarily surprised by this when I thought about the essay I'd read, and then I realized that the essay, while very good, is really about how the presence of black people and poor white people affected the political philosophies of propertied white men.)
Morgan was also one of those writers who assumes that everyone--the historian, the subjects of history, and whoever might be reading or thinking about history--can be labeled with a masculine pronoun. (I wonder what his wife, Helen M. Morgan, who occasionally wrote history with him, thought about this.)
So, recommended--for people curious about this sort of thing--with reservations. Read it and then read something else about what Morgan left out.
Author: Edmund S. Morgan
Publication Date: 1992 (for this edition)
Number of Pages: 206 including end matter I mostly skipped; 156 otherwise
Genre: history
Book Number/Goal: 1/12 books on United States history (no countable progress on other goals)
Review: Edmund S. Morgan was (he died in 2000) a famous US historian who wrote an essay I was assigned in my history class, "Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox." It's about how the same white American men who went on about freedom and equality during the US War of Independence were able to perpetuate slavery at the same time. I really liked that essay and recommend it to anyone who's curious about that question (it was published in The Journal of American History in 1972 and is available through JSTOR).
That was why I decided to read this history of the origins of the United States when I saw it on sale. I liked this book too, although not nearly as much as the essay. It is very handsomely written and not crankily libertarian (something you have to watch out for with this sort of US history). Its narrative structure coincides so much with the way my textbook described the relevant parts of this period that I think either Morgan's version has become the accepted way of telling the story, or Morgan just did a very good job of synthesizing the agreed-upon narratives.
I recommend it for being a readable way of learning the standard version of how the US became a nation. I wish I had read it concurrently with my textbook's version, because it cleared up some confusions I had at that time (for example about how the distinction between internal and external taxes was relevant). It also has a very nice bibliographical essay and an appendix containing the texts of the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Constitution, and Bill of Rights.
What it does NOT have is any information at all about the contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, or white women to events between 1763 and 1789. My textbook (Liberty, Equality, Power, fifth edition) did a much better job about that--even with regard to Native Americans, although I've complained in my own journal about its minimal coverage of their histories. This book does not tell the full story--it just does a good job of telling the standard story, which of course is one about the actions of propertied white men.
(I was momentarily surprised by this when I thought about the essay I'd read, and then I realized that the essay, while very good, is really about how the presence of black people and poor white people affected the political philosophies of propertied white men.)
Morgan was also one of those writers who assumes that everyone--the historian, the subjects of history, and whoever might be reading or thinking about history--can be labeled with a masculine pronoun. (I wonder what his wife, Helen M. Morgan, who occasionally wrote history with him, thought about this.)
So, recommended--for people curious about this sort of thing--with reservations. Read it and then read something else about what Morgan left out.