Product Description

The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically acclaimed volume--a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize--offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic.
Beginning with the French and Indian War and continuing to the election of George Washington as first president, Robert Middlekauff offers a panoramic history of the conflict between England and America, highlighting the drama and anguish of the colonial struggle for independence. Combining the political and the personal, he provides a compelling account of the key events that precipitated the war, from the Stamp Act to the Tea Act, tracing the gradual gathering of American resistance that culminated in the Boston Tea Party and "the shot heard 'round the world." The heart of the book features a vivid description of the eight-year-long war, with gripping accounts of battles and campaigns, ranging from Bunker Hill and Washington's crossing of the Delaware to the brilliant victory at Hannah's Cowpens and the final triumph at Yorktown, paying particular attention to what made men fight in these bloody encounters. The book concludes with an insightful look at the making of the Constitution in the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 and the struggle over ratification. Through it all, Middlekauff gives the reader a vivid sense of how the colonists saw these events and the importance they gave to them. Common soldiers and great generals, Sons of Liberty and African slaves, town committee-men and representatives in congress--all receive their due. And there are particularly insightful portraits of such figures as Sam and John Adams, James Otis, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and many others. This new edition has been revised and expanded, with fresh coverage of topics such as mob reactions to British measures before the War, military medicine, women's role in the Revolution, American Indians, the different kinds of war fought by the Americans and the British, and the ratification of the Constitution. The book also has a new epilogue and an updated bibliography.
The cause for which the colonists fought, liberty and independence, was glorious indeed. Here is an equally glorious narrative of an event that changed the world, capturing the profound and passionate struggle to found a free nation.
The Oxford History of the United States
The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize winners, a New York Times bestseller, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. The Atlantic Monthly has praised it as "the most distinguished series in American historical scholarship," a series that "synthesizes a generation's worth of historical inquiry and knowledge into one literally state-of-the-art book." Conceived under the general editorship of C. Vann Woodward and Richard Hofstadter, and now under the editorship of David M. Kennedy, this renowned series blends social, political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, and military history into coherent and vividly written narrative.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18770 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 752 pages

Amazon.com Review
Many histories of the American Revolution are written as if on stained glass, with George Washington's forces of good battling King George III's redcoat devils. The actual events were, of course, far more complex than that, and Robert Middlekauff undertakes the difficult task of separating the real from the mythic with great success. From him we learn that England taxed the colonials so heavily in an attempt to retire the massive debt incurred in defending those very colonials against other powers, notably France; that the writing of the Constitution was delayed for two years while states argued among themselves in the face of massive military losses; and that demographic shifts during the Revolution did much to increase America's ethic diversity at an early and decisive time. Vividly told, this is a superb account of the nation's founding.

Review

"This is narrative history at its best, written in a conversational and engaging style.... A major revision and expansion of a popular history of the American Revolutionary period."--Library Journal
"[A] tour de force. Middlekauff has the admirable ability to capture historical truths in vivid images and memorable phrases.... Middlekauff's empathy enhances this massive book's cumulative power. The cause was glorious; the book is too."--Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World
"The reader in search of a wide-ranging overview of the Revolution would be better off turning to any number of earlier books (from Trevelyan's classic 'American Revolution' to more recent works like 'The Glorious Cause' by Robert Middlekauff)."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times, in a review of 1776
Acclaim for the First Edition:
"One of the best one-volume accounts of the Revolutionary war."--The New York Times
"A striking success. Middlekauff is both elegant and eloquent. Whether he is describing the making of British policy, or sketching the character of Washington or Pitt, or explaining why Daniel Morgan positioned the American troops at Hannah's Cowpens so retreat would be impossible, he does in a few paragraphs or pages what others might struggle through a chapter to get right."--The New Republic
"A first-class narrative history. There is probably no history of the Revolution that better combines a full account of the military course of the war with consideration of all the other forces shaping the era." --The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Middlekauff's energy and clarity often make us read as eagerly as if we did not know how this struggle will come out."--The New Yorker
"Writing with a grace and clarity that recall Samuel Eliot Morison, Middlekauff gives us classic entry into the critical period of American history." --The Los Angeles Times
"His narrative account goes along at a fast pace. He moves with agility from profound political and philosophical disputes of the period to the scenes of battle and the problems of military strategy. A welcome addition to the history of the Revolution." --The Washington Post Book World
"First-rate narrative history--one can hardly imagine a better one-volume introduction to the period. Graced with plentiful illustrations, gracefully written and long enough (at nearly 700 pages) to afford ample attention to detail, this book is highly recommended to the general reader." --Newsday

About the Author

Robert Middlekauff is Preston Hotchkis Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. The winner of a Bancroft Prize for The Mathers, he was Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University and also served as Director of the Huntington Library, Art Gallery, and Botanical Gardens.

Customer Reviews

A Modern Classic
Middlekauf's book is the best single treatment of the American Revolution in print. He is fair and equitable in his treatment of all sides in this conflict. In fact, he might have gone too far in these efforts. One puts the book down feeling the British officials were often wronged by the American colonialists. Middlekauf devotes about half the book to the coming of the war, forty percent to the military conflict itself and about ten percent to the post-war years, including the writing of the U.S. Constitution. He gives everyone their moment in the story, including loyalists, sailors, and militiamen, but the core of his account is the battle between the two conventional armies. He breaks the mold and gives enough attention to actions in the South to inform his readers that the war was not one by New England alone. Perhaps the best thing about this book is how Middlekauf integrates political and military issues together. He shows that this conflict was political in nature and how military operations affected sentiment in both America and the United Kingdom and how that sentiment often determined what a commander could or had to do. This integration is one of the reasons the U.S. Naval War College uses this book as a required reading despite its limited discussion of naval operations.

Classic, Very Patriotic Opus
This standard work provides a good general read on the events surrounding the Rev War. The author writes well, which makes reading the sometimes detailed narrative a joy. Like most American works on the subject it is very patriotic, and more than a little biased in its views.

The core of the book centers on the war itself, and while the author omits some details, he does provide good background information. The constant references to the Glorious Cause the rebels were involved in became a bit annoying after a while, and such sentiments do reveal the very strong bias of the author in telling his story. Basically you're not going to find many works that give a balanced perspective of both sides in this conflict. So for a starting place this book does provide a comprehensive background and a good narrative of the war. Some chapters do go behind the scenes to try and examine the sinews of the war and these do make for good reading.

Over all a classic and quite extensive work that provides a good read on the events leading up to and including the Revolution, with some good emphisas on the military campaigns. Those readers just wanting to learn about the Founding Fathers and the political reasons of the conflict might find the book strays from those points, but for a comprehensive albeit pro-rebel account this is a classic. The story is carried through the conclusion of the war up to the internal bickerings that result in the framming of the Constitution. Cogent arguments concerning why the colonies opted to surrender their powers in favor of a more centralized government make for instructional reading. Discussions about Virginia and the status of slaves and why these issues were not included in the Constitution make for interesting discussion. The author is not a revisionist, so his views try to examine these issues within the context of their time. While the great men of events get their due, much is still left from the perspective of the commoner. This book makes for a very good starting place for any study of the Rev War period.

Complete history, well written
This is a good, well written history of the War of Independence primarily from the American veiwpoint. Siince there is much already written about this subject, there are fewer new insights than in some of the other books in this series. The best books in this Oxford series are "What has God wrought" and "Freedom from Fear."