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The idea of America : reflections on the birth of the United States / Gordon S. Wood.
Historical Society of Pennsylvania - Closed Stacks E 302.1 .W77 2011
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- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Wood, Gordon S., author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- United States. Constitution.
- United States.
- United States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783--Influence.
- United States--Politics and government--1775-1783.
- United States--Politics and government--1783-1809.
- Democracy--United States.
- Democracy.
- Republicanism--United States.
- Republicanism.
- Constitution (United States).
- Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.).
- Politics and government.
- Genre:
- History.
- Physical Description:
- 385 pages ; 25 cm
- Place of Publication:
- New York : Penguin Books, 2011.
- 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:
- Part I The American Revolution
- Rhetoric and reality in the American Revolution
- The legacy of Rome in the American Revolution
- Conspiracy and the paranoid style: causality and deceit in the Eighteenth century
- Part II The making of the Constitution and American democracy
- 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
- Part III The early republic
- 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.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 339-371) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9781594202902
- 1594202907
- 9780143121244
- 0143121243
- OCLC:
- 678537224
- Online:
- Contributor biographical information
- Publisher description
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