Description:
A Pulitzer Prize winner's classic, compact, authoritative account of the origins of America
In The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89, Edmund S. Morgan shows how the challenge of British taxation started Americans on a search for constitutional principles to protect their freedom, and eventually led to the Revolution. By demonstrating that the founding fathers' political philosophy was not grounded in theory, but rather grew out of their own immediate needs, Morgan paints a vivid portrait of how the founders' own experiences shaped their passionate convictions, and these in turn were incorporated into the Constitution and other governmental documents. The Birth of the Republic is the classic account of the beginnings of the American government, and in this fourth edition the original text is supplemented with a new foreword by Joseph J. Ellis and a historiographic essay by Rosemarie Zagarri.This book is the perfect introduction for students or general readers wanting to learn more about the events that led to the American republic.Brief description:
Edmund S. Morgan (1916-2013) was Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and past president of the Organization of American Historians. His many books include The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth-Century New England; The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles; The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop; American Slavery--American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia; The Challenge of the American Revolution; Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America; and, with Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis.
Review Quotes: "No better brief chronological introduction to the period can be found than Edmund S. Morgan's The Birth of the Republic: 1763-89."
-- "Wilson Quarterly"