Our First Revolution

Describes the influence of Britain's Glorious Revolution of 1688 and 1689 on America's founding fathers, detailing the impact of the era on the evolution of representative government and the concept of individual liberty.

"A fast-paced, often riveting account of the military and political events leading up to the Declaration of Independence and those that followed during the war ... Brands does his readers a service by reminding them that division, as much as unity, is central to the founding of our nation."—The Washington Post From best-selling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands comes a gripping, page-turning narrative of the American Revolution that shows it to be more than a fight against the British: it was also a violent battle among neighbors forced to choose sides, Loyalist or Patriot. What causes people to forsake their country and take arms against it? What prompts their neighbors, hardly distinguishable in station or success, to defend that country against the rebels? That is the question H. W. Brands answers in his powerful new history of the American Revolution. George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were the unlikeliest of rebels. Washington in the 1770s stood at the apex of Virginia society. Franklin was more successful still, having risen from humble origins to world fame. John Adams might have seemed a more obvious candidate for rebellion, being of cantankerous temperament. Even so, he revered the law. Yet all three men became rebels against the British Empire that fostered their success. Others in the same circle of family and friends chose differently. William Franklin might have been expected to join his father, Benjamin, in rebellion but remained loyal to the British. So did Thomas Hutchinson, a royal governor and friend of the Franklins, and Joseph Galloway, an early challenger to the Crown. They soon heard themselves denounced as traitors--for not having betrayed the country where they grew up. Native Americans and the enslaved were also forced to choose sides as civil war broke out around them. After the Revolution, the Patriots were cast as heroes and founding fathers while the Loyalists were relegated to bit parts best forgotten. Our First Civil War reminds us that before America could win its revolution against Britain, the Patriots had to win a bitter civil war against family, neighbors, and friends.

In 1957, as Americans obsessed over the launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite, another less noticed space-based scientific revolution was taking off. That year, astrophysicists solved a centuries-old quest for the origins of the elements, from carbon to uranium. The answer they found wasn’t on Earth, but in the stars. Their research showed that we are literally stardust. The year also marked the first conference that considered the origin of life on Earth in an astrophysical context. It was the marriage of two of the seemingly strangest bedfellows—astronomy and biology—and a turning point that award-winning science author Jacob Berkowitz calls the Stardust Revolution. In this captivating story of an exciting, deeply personal, new scientific revolution, Berkowitz weaves together the latest research results to reveal a dramatically different view of the twinkling night sky—not as an alien frontier, but as our cosmic birthplace. Reporting from the frontlines of discovery, Berkowitz uniquely captures how stardust scientists are probing the universe’s physical structure, but rather its biological nature. Evolutionary theory is entering the space age. From the amazing discovery of cosmic clouds of life’s chemical building blocks to the dramatic quest for an alien Earth, Berkowitz expertly chronicles the most profound scientific search of our era: to know not just if we are alone, but how we are connected. Like opening a long-hidden box of old family letters and diaries, The Stardust Revolution offers us a new view of where we’ve come from and brings to light our journey from stardust to thinking beings.

The original rebels: “Brings into clear focus events and identities of ordinary people who should share the historic limelight with the Founding Fathers.” —Publishers Weekly According to the traditional telling, the American Revolution began with “the shot heard ’round the world.” But the people started taking action earlier than many think. The First American Revolution uses the wide-angle lens of a people’s historian to tell a surprising new story of America’s revolutionary struggle. In the years before the battle of Lexington and Concord, local people—men and women of common means but of uncommon courage—overturned British authority and declared themselves free from colonial oppression, with acts of rebellion that long predated the Boston Tea Party. In rural towns such as Worcester, Massachusetts, democracy set down roots well before the Boston patriots made their moves in the fight for independence. Richly documented, The First American Revolution recaptures in vivid detail the grassroots activism that drove events in the years leading up to the break from Britain.

Details the experiences of the first generation of Americans who inherited the independent country, discussing the lives, businesses, and religious freedoms that transformed the country in its early years.

Historians have viewed England's Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689 as an un-revolutionary revolution--bloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all, sensible. Steve Pincus refutes this traditional view. He demonstrates that England's revolution was a European event, that it took place over a number of years, and that it had repercussions in India, North America, the West Indies, and throughout continental Europe. His rich narrative, based on new archival research, traces the transformation of English foreign policy, religious culture, and political economy that, he argues, was the intended consequence of the revolutionaries of 1688-1689. James II's modernization program emphasized centralized control, repression of dissidents, and territorial empire. The revolutionaries, by contrast, took advantage of the new economic possibilities to create a bureaucratic but participatory state, which emphasized its ideological break with the past and envisioned itself as continuing to evolve. All of this, argues Pincus, makes the Glorious Revolution--not the French Revolution--the first truly modern revolution.--From publisher description.

How are we to assess Gordon Campbell’s decade-long premiership of British Columbia? While to many he was an ideologue set on revolutionizing provincial politics, he was a far more complex figure – polarizing and unpopular, but also a shrewd party manager and successful political operator. Beginning with a detailed account of Gordon Campbell’s pre–Liberal Party political activities, The Campbell Revolution? then takes a broad look at the policy options open to him in the context of the neoliberal revolution that swept across Canada and elsewhere in the 1980s and 1990s. Contributors discuss the Campbell administration's reforms in social, environmental, and economic policies, focusing on tax system reform, the arts and culture sector, healthcare, and urban development in the context of the 2010 Winter Olympics. More than just a narrative of the career of an enigmatic public official, this book looks at specific public policy examples and asks whether Campbell led a revolution or simply rode a wave of change that had begun years before he came to power. A comprehensive examination of Gordon Campbell’s leadership and governance style and the ideological underpinnings of BC’s Liberal Party, The Campbell Revolution? examines how the Campbell administration attempted to transform politics in British Columbia in the twenty-first century.