"This book reinterprets American experience in the formative first half of our history. Emphatically rejecting the notion that America was merely a "second chance" for Europe, that the Revolution was a recapitulation and a preview of European revolutions, Dr. Boorstin finds in the new and unforseen conditions of early American life the roots of a distinctive civilization. The grand vision of democracy, for example, emerges, not as the inspired product...

Examines the relationship of national character and the military demands of the Revolutionary War, revealing much about the mental processes and emotional crises Americans faced.

This book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created...

"A series of brilliant historical portraits combine to create a self-portrait of one of our greatest historians. With characteristic vitality and brilliance, Bernard Bailyn revisits the major phases of his long, pathbreaking career and offers readers new insights into history and his distinctive approach to understanding it. From his early work on the New England merchants through his groundbreaking study of the American Revolution and on into his...