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Title: The Radicalism of the American Revolution

Author: Gordon S. Wood

Narrator: Paul Boehmer

Format: Unabridged

Length: 19 hrs and 1 min

Language: English

Release date: 03-30-11

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 188 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

Pulitzer Prize, History, 1993

Grand in scope, rigorous in its arguments, and elegantly synthesizing 30 years of scholarship, Gordon S. Wood's Pulitzer Prizewinning book analyzes the social, political, and economic consequences of 1776. In The Radicalism of the American Revolution, Wood depicts not just a break with England, but the rejection of an entire way of life: of a society with feudal dependencies, a politics of patronage, and a world view in which people were divided between the nobility and "the Herd." He shows how the theories of the country's founders became realities that sometimes baffled and disappointed them. Above all, Bancroft Prizewinning historian Wood rescues the revolution from abstraction, allowing readers to see it with a true sense of its drama---and not a little awe.

Critic Reviews:

"The most important study of the American Revolution to appear in over twenty years...a landmark book." (Pauline Maier,

The New York Times Book Review)

Members Reviews:

A unique and relevant look at the founding

It is easy to see how this book is relevant to understanding America today - society, politics and government.

Wood doesn't quite say it this way, but his basic argument is this: the founding generation were trying to create a new society, but they failed to create the one they envisioned. Instead, the society they created turned out better - from the perspective of modern Americans - because it is more democratic than they imagined any place ever could be.

The matter of class

What did you love best about The Radicalism of the American Revolution?

This account of the revolution is fascinating for its focus on issues of class which were, on the one hand, much less distinct than those of England, and yet more distinct than we would recognize. It is a useful perspective for me as a history teacher.

What about Paul Boehmers performance did you like?

I prefer readers who don't call attention to themselves in the reading. This fits the bill

Changed the Way I Think

In December 2013, researchers from Emory University published "Short- and Long-Term Effects of a Novel on Connectivity in the Brain." The paper, published in "Brain Connectivity" starts with "Most people can identify books that have made great impressions on them and, subjectively, changed the way they think." The authors, Gregory S. Bern et. al., using functional MRIs, determined that reading a novel literally changes neural connectivity, at least for a short period of time. I believe the same changes take place while reading/listening to a non-fiction work.

If I had been in that study while I listened to Gordon S. Woods' 1993 Pulitzer-prize winning non-fiction book "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," I would have shown those changes, too. This book literally made me think differently, certainly about the American Revolution, but also about common democracy, the birth of nations, macroeconomics and the use of currency . . . & etc. The changes may be long term for me: because of the complexity of what Woods described and his interpretation of what it meant, I was only able to listen for an hour or so at a time, before I set the listen aside to think about what I heard.