Not Your Usual “Founders”

Abstract

Revolutionary Founders is, to my mind, one of the best recent books on the American Revolution, and one that, unlike so many others, could actually be of use in the college classroom. It includes an introduction by the editors, an afterword by Eric Foner, and twenty-two essays, each by a different scholar, focused on an individual or group of individuals who played a role in the Revolution and whose story highlights some aspect of the event. The essays are divided into three sections—Revolutions, Wars, and The Promise of the Revolution. That gives the book range: it goes from the organization of resistance to Britain through the war to the impact of the Revolution, particularly of its promise of equality. The essays are, as a whole, historically sophisticated and readable. Most essays are well researched, activate the imagination and, even for this seasoned scholar, deepen knowledge of the time. Moreover, although the book has no overt political agenda, only a peculiarly insensitive reader will miss the similarity between the issues that concerned some of the essays’ protagonists—the maldistribution of wealth, for example—and those of today.