description: Federalist accounts of U.S. history are like fluoride in water: no strong taste or odor, something ingested in childhood in order to strengthen the civic faith of America's citizens. But Valley Forge, "I cannot tell a lie," and all the other federalist propaganda soaked up in civics classes can be countered with an alternate account of our early history, one that maintains that George Washington was a bald-faced liar and a poor military leader, that Benjamin Franklin was the true "father of his country" and fought with crypto-monarchists Alexander Hamilton and John Adams to preserve republican institutions, and that the Constitution drafted in 1787 was a sorry compromise of the revolution's ideals and an inadequate basis for republican government. All these heresies and more are vigorously argued and defended in Richard N. Rosenfeld's revisionist account of America's revolutionary history, American Aurora. Rosenfeld recounts the controversies surrounding constitutional debates and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 through the pages of the Philadelphia Aurora, a radical newspaper of the 1790s. Packed with original source material, Rosenfeld's history is contentious--even inciteful--and it demonstrates the rich textual history of the United States both in terms of the newspapers he draws from and the story he tells in this expansive narrative history.
language: English
title: American Aurora
titlecomplete: American Aurora
characters: William Duane
genres: History, American History, American Revolution, Politics, Journalism, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 86
publisher: St. Martin's Press