Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

== Summary ==
This
book argues that Americans’ “habit of thinking” that all men are equal in their
rights created the American Revolution. The Americans of the Revolutionary
generation created not only new forms of government, but also new conceptions
of politics, one that took them out of an essentially classical and medieval
world of political discussion into one that was recognizably modern. Wood says
that the American Revolution was a "republican" revolution and was
one of the great “utopian movements in American history.” By that he means that
it had intellectual roots ranging from ancient Greece and Rome to the English
Commonwealth, and that it was more communal (the public good) than
individualistic (liberty) (Republicanism). The political landscape started
from that of "classical"
republicanism that reflected the immutable ordering of society, moved to
a radical Whig reaction towards direct
democracy that took place in the 1770s and early 1780s in the form of
state constitution-building, and finally resulted in a more conservative Federalist reaction that
emphasized government-building based on functionality and tried to restrain
democratic excesses through a new separation of powers. An intellectual
aristocracy, social counterrevolution, thus subverted this radical republic
revolution (the constitutional crisis as a class conflict; a conflict between
aristocracy and democracy). 
Republicanism defined: “the sacrifice of individual interests to the greater good
of the whole,” the dependence on public virtue, the principal of equality
(talent and opportunity rather than family origin) – shaped how Americans
understood the Revolution. Republicanism as the “whole character of society.” 
See also: Bernard Bailyn (advisor), Gary Nash, Linda Kerber. Challenged by: Woody Holton