Revolutionaries

Revolutionaries

Inventing an American Nation

Summary

In this remarkable book, Jack Rakove offers a new and revealing perspective on the men who shaped the idea of an American nation. Each portrait brims with fresh and fascinating insights: Washington as a flawed tactician but expert manager; Jack Laurens as a slave trader's son who developed a plan to recruit black soldiers; Jefferson as a powerful critic of Europe's social order but a voracious consumer of its culture.

Spanning the most crucial decades of the country's birth, Revolutionaries uses the stories of famous (and not so famous) men to capture - in a way no single biography ever could - the intensely creative period of the republic's founding.

By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution.

Reviews

  • Jack Rakove's book is a superb account of the forces that turned the colonists from loyal subjects into revolutionaries... A first-rate read
    Simon Shaw, Daily Mail

About the author

Jack Rakove

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