Skip to main content

As If an Enemy's Country

By

It seems the Oxford University Press is one of the best places to turn for American history, especially early American history.  Here's another title by OUP that caught my attention,

Archer captures the popular mobilization under the leadership of John Hancock and Samuel Adams that met the oppressive imperial measures--most notably the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act--with demonstrations, Liberty Trees, violence, and non-importation agreements. When the British government decided to garrison Boston with troops, it posed a shocking challenge to the people of Massachusetts. The city was flooded with troops; almost immediately, tempers flared and violent conflicts broke out. Archer's vivid tale culminates in the swirling tragedy of the Boston Massacre and its aftermath, including the trial and exoneration of the British troops involved.
 
A thrilling and original work of history, As If an Enemy's Country tells the riveting story of what made the Boston townspeople, and with them other colonists, turn toward revolution.

Comments

  1. avrdsJanuary 7, 2010 at 4:11 PM

    I'll keep an eye out for it. I have at least one book on Adams, who also interests me. Hopefully Tripster will post something on Hancock.

    I recently ordered Empire of Liberty which is part of the Oxford Series on American history which always seems to be interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. RickJanuary 8, 2010 at 2:45 PM

    I have James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom, which is volume 6 of this series and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988.

    ReplyDelete
  3. avrdsJanuary 8, 2010 at 3:32 PM

    Plus, you can almost be guaranteed (like the McPherson)that it will be good history.

    Gintaras, you are a bad influence. Now I"m lining up to buy books that aren't even in print! This book looks very good, but it's not released until next month.

    ReplyDelete
  4. James FergusonJanuary 8, 2010 at 3:48 PM

    The later books in the series are very good as well, Freedom from Fear, Great Expectations, and Restless Giant. Sorry av.

    ReplyDelete
  5. avrdsJanuary 8, 2010 at 4:02 PM

    Maybe that's a way we could focus our group readings -- start a series like that?

    I'm going to my local used bookstore today to pick up Bradbury's The History Man, which I think I may have read when it came out and, if it's the one I'm thinking of, is a complement of sorts to the Russo.

    I'll try to stay out of the history section but it's right next to the fiction..... And they may have the Zinn, although it's not listed online.

    ReplyDelete
  6. James FergusonJanuary 9, 2010 at 11:31 AM

    Av, since I have 3 or 4 of Gordon Wood's books already, I find myself leaning toward Archer's book, as this is a part of history I'm not well acquainted with, even though I spent sometime up in the Boston area.

    ReplyDelete
  7. avrdsJanuary 9, 2010 at 4:31 PM

    Yes, the other sounds more interesting and focused. This one is more like a text book in its coverage -- although Wood is such a good writer I'm assuming it will be a good read. And good history.

    Maybe we should try for Archer (although it's not released until Feb). Something about occupation might have a double meaning these days. (I bought the William Polk book, Birth of America, for that reason -- he's a specialist in the Middle East.)

    And Zinn could certainly be counted on to contribute to that story as well.

    In the meantime, back to the History Man which looks like it's going to be a slice of history on its own.

    ReplyDelete
  8. avrdsJanuary 14, 2010 at 5:28 AM

    This is in stock at Amazon, so I added it to my order with Wills et al.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more