America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It

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America's Revolutionary Mind is the first major reinterpretation of the American Revolution since the publication of Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Gordon S. Wood's The Creation of the American Republic. The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to elucidate the logic, principles, and significance of t

Reviews

From one of Americas most astute scholars comes an extraordinarily rich study of the ideas that propelled the United States into existence, and to greatness. C. Bradley Thompson understands not just that ideas have consequences, but that, a quarter of a millennium later, the revolutionary mind retains its relevance.George F. Will, columnist and author of The Conservative Sensibility

A bold new interpretation of the political and moral theory of the American Revolution. It is sure to be provocative.Gordon S. Wood, author of the Pulitzer Prizewinning The Radicalism of the American Revolution

Behind the American Constitution is the Declaration of Independence, Lincolns apple of gold in a picture of silver. Brad Thompson here explains the apple of gold, the American revolutionary mind, and how to recover its moral power as well as its principles from the studied denigration current today. With strong argument, broad evidence, and shining clarity, this is a book that will last.Harvey C. Mansfield, Kenan Professor of Government, Harvard University; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford

Since Bernard Bailyns and Gordon Woods work a half century ago, no study has appeared that takes us on so fruitful a voyage of rethinking, at a deep level, the moral, civic, and cultural causes and meaning of the Revolutionary era. At once eloquent and erudite, this book argues for and exemplifies a refreshingly distinguished method, or way of practicing the historians craft: the new moral historyemphasizing the thinking, judging, choosing, and acting of individuals as the true moral agents of history, rather than large-scale social processes moved by unseen tidal forces.Thomas Pangle, Joe R. Long Chair in Democratic Studies, University of Texas at Austin

Author Bio

C. Bradley Thompson is Professor of Political Philosophy at Clemson University and the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He received his Ph.D at Brown University, and he has also been a visiting scholar at Princeton and Harvard universities and at the University of London. He is the author of the award-winning John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty as well as Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea.