The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783 [Hardcover]

Masterly.... Underscore[s] that the signers failed to deal with some awfully big problems.... Deftly foreshadows all the issues that would complicate Americas trajectory and ends with a historical cliffhanger: Would the Republic survive? It did, but only when the Constitution became the embodiment of The Cause.... As Ellis points out, the word 'democracy' back then was more suggestive of mob rule than reasoned deliberation. [A] carefully wrought, highly engaging reality check on the elusive character of the American Revolution... Ellis, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for previous works, is sensitive to contested vocabularies... [He] knows that words always matter and that the Revolution wasnt all glorious or miraculous. He regularly reminds us of what it wasnt.... With its combined examination of tactics and atmospherics, Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling historian Joseph J. Ellis superbly captures the issues, personalities and events of the American Revolution... Using rigorous scholarship, Ellis offers vivid portraits of and penetrating insights about this period in history, while challenging our conventional understandings of it... This riveting, highly recommended book by one of Americas major historians will change how you see the American Revolution. [A] speedy retelling of the nations stumbling, fractured founding, through evocative profiles of British loyalists, slaves, Native Americans and soldiers uncertain of what was being founded. The colonists didnt describe their war for independence as the American Revolution, Pulitzer winner Ellis ( With his characteristically graceful prose, Ellis offers a short, straightforward history of a critical decade in the nations youth.... [from] a master storyteller known for perceptive detailing. As is always the case with Ellis, he is brilliant at short takesevents, decisions, individuals.... True to his own skills at bringing people alive, Ellis also includes sympathetic mini-lÏ