by Bernard Bailyn

A modern classic of American historical literature, showing how the ideology that inspired the American Revolution was "a cluster of convictions focused on the effort to free the individual from the oppressive misuse of power, from the tyranny of the state." To the original text, Bailyn has added a substantial essay, "Fulfillment," as a Postscript. Here he discusses the intense, nation-wide debate on the ratifiction of the Constitution, stressing the continuities between the struggle over the foundations of the national government and the original principles of the Revolution. This detailed study of the persistence of the nation's ideological origins adds a new dimension to the book and projects its meaning forward into vital present concerns.

"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

"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

"One cannot claim to understand the Revolution without having read this book." -- New York Times Book Review

Bernard Bailyn is Adams University Professor and James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History, Harvard University.