American Revolution Book Critique

Wood, Gordon S. The American Revolution: A History. The Random House Publishing Group, 2002.

Gordon S. Wood was born in November 27, 1933 in Concord, Massachusetts. He graduated Tufts University in 1955 where he served as a trustee. He earned his Masters of Arts at Harvard University while he was serving in the United States Air Force in Japan. He studied under Bernard Bailyn and received his Ph.D. in 1964 from Harvard University. Since then he has worked at various university such as Harvard, the College of William and Mary, Cambridge University, and Brown, just to name a few. Other than his twenty-two written books, Gordon has also written influential articles including “Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution” in 1966. Throughout his career he has earned three distinguished awards: Pulitzer Prize in 1993, Bancroft Prize in 1970, and National Humanities Medal in 2010.

The first thing I noticed as I was reading this book was just how easy it was to understand it. I thought I was going to be stuck with a dictionary by my side trying to figure it just what exactly they were trying to say. But it was the complete opposite Wood makes it very readable and indulgent, even to those of us who would rather watch the History Channel then sit down and read a book. The book is separated into seven different chapters: Origins, American Resistance, Revolution, Constitution- Making and War, Republicanism, Republican Society, and The Federal Constitution. The chapters themselves are not very long, but they are filled with interesting views and events. Wood has written it in such a way that is very thought provoking and does such a good job at describing all the cultural and political issues that it gives you a very understanding picture of what happen, even when you have to background knowledge on the subject.

In the preface Wood states that the revolution is not simple to understand. It’s a subject that needs to be explained and understood, not celebrated or...