The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Praise for earlier editions:

“In every area of Bernard Bailyn’s research—whether Virginia society of the 17th century or the schools of early America—he transformed what historians had hitherto thought about the subject. In The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, the most famous of his works, Bailyn uncovered a set of ideas among the Revolutionary generation that most historians had scarcely known existed. These radical ideas about power and liberty, and deeply rooted fears of conspiracy, had propelled Americans in the 1760s and 1770s into the Revolution, Bailyn said. His book, which won the Pulitzer and Bancroft prizes in 1968, influenced an entire generation of historians. For many, it remains the most persuasive interpretation of the Revolution.”—Gordon S. Wood, Wall Street Journal

“One cannot claim to understand the Revolution without having read this book.”—New York Times Book Review

“A distinguished achievement. Mr. Bailyn writes with the authority and integrity that derive from a thorough mastery of the material. His meticulous scholarship is matched with perceptive analysis.”—New York Review of Books

“Tightly written and politically sophisticated… In the field of American Revolutionary Studies, Bailyn’s book must henceforth occupy a position of first rank.”—Saturday Review

“The most brilliant study of the meaning of the Revolution to appear in a generation.”—History

“With this reading of the American Revolutionary Experience, Mr. Bailyn has substantially and profoundly altered the nature and direction of the inquiry on the American Revolution. In the process he has also erected a new framework for interpreting the entire first half-century of American national history… A landmark in American historiography.”—American Quarterly