The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the…

I'm learning a lot about the revolutionary activities that led up to the American Revolution. The stuff we learned in school was so tame compared to much of what this book covers.

Nash's retelling of the American Revolution focuses on the disenfanchised: women, Negroes (slave and free), Native Americans, and men of modest means--mariners, artisans, small merchants, farmers. He relates these people's stories to the received narrative to describe how the people that won the war may have lost the revolution, as a real possibility existed at the time for the abolition of slavery, enhancement of the rights of women (though probably not full citizenship), honorable treatment of the natives and construction of a political/economic system that did not privilege wealth.

Nash doesn't denigrate (nor do I) what was achieved in the American Revolution, but only recounts what may have been a series of lost opportunities. My take is that although the War for Independance has been over for centuries, the Revolution is still underway. I highly recommend this book. ( )

Recommended by Language Hat as the "best history book I've read in a long time", recommended "to anyone who wants to understand the Revolution in anything other than the usual triumphalist terms."