The idea of America
Subtitle: reflections on the birth of the United States
By: Gordon S. Wood
Publisher: Penguin Press
Published: 2011
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 385
ISBN-13: 9781594202902
Subjects: Politics and government; Democracy; Influence; United States; Republicanism; History
Description: A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution explains why it remains the most significant event in our history. In a series of elegant and illuminating essays, Wood explores the ideological origins of the revolution--from ancient Rome to the European Enlightenment--and the founders' attempts to forge an American democracy.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Rhetoric and reality in the American Revolution; title: The legacy of Rome in the American Revolution; title: Conspiracy and the paranoid style; title: Interests and disinterestedness in the making of the Constitution; title: The origins of American Constitutionalism; title: The making of American democracy; title: The radicalism of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine considered; title: Monarchism and republicanism in early America; title: Illusions of power in the awkward era of federalism; title: The American enlightenment; title: A history of rights in early America; title: Conclusion : the American revolutionary tradition, or why America wants to spread democracy around the world.