"The founding fathers were unsettled and fearful not because the American Revolution had failed but because it had succeeded, and succeeded only too well. [...] The very fulfillment of these revolutionary ideals [freedom, independence, and prosperity] - the very success of the Revolution-made it difficult for those who benefited from that success, for ordinary people and their new democratic spokesmen, to understand the apprehensions of the founding fathers. The people looked back in awe and wonder at the revolutionary generation and saw in them leaders the likes of which they knew they would never see again in America. But they also knew that they now lived in a different world, a democratic world, that required new thoughts and new behavior. We cannot rely on the views of the founding fathers anymore, Martin Van Buren told the New York convention in 1820. We have to rely on our own experience, not on what they said and thought."

For me, this book really proved its main thesis in that the American Revolution was just as radical as other social movements in that era like the French and Haitian Revolutions. This book proved in some ways, that the American Revolution was more radical than these previously mentioned revolutions in just how changed American society and culture became after the Revolution. Wood effectively shows how the seeds of modern American society were planted by the Revolution and began to take root in the decades following. For example, in their quest to become a republic, the founding fathers inadvertently laid the groundwork for the American people to pursue their own self-interests which in turn helped American society to become more capitalist and also egalitarian.

I particularly enjoyed Wood's final analysis of the founding fathers and their astonishment and ultimate disappointment in the democracy they had created, as the passage above reveals. The American republic the founding fathers wanted to create, led by a disinterested people who were wholly dedicated to public service, was ultimately a failure. Instead, they created the most egalitarian society ever seen at the time, with more and more lower class citizens entering politics, but one who also began to leave behind the thoughts and ideas of the Enlightenment. This analysis reveals the shortcomings of the founding fathers as they "found it difficult to accept the democratic fact that their fate now rested on the opinions and votes of small-souled and largely unreflective ordinary people."

This quote reveals the main facet of what made the American Revolution so radical. The power of government had now shifted into the hands of ordinary people for good or ill. The world had turned upside down, proving just how radical the American Revolution truly was.

The Radicalism of the American Revolution, like Wood's earlier The Creation of the American Republic, stresses a discontinuity between the republicanism of the revolutionary generation and the democratic modern world that emerged-says Wood-as a result of the revolution. In Creation, this change was presented as a decline. In Radicalism, this change is presented in a more positive light. If in Creation Wood came across as a detached communitarian intellectual in an inhospitable modern world, in Radicalism this loving interpreter of republicanism serenely accepts the legitimacy of the democratic middle class order.

In Radicalism, how does Wood go about reevaluating the shift from republicanism to democracy?

Wood starts by emphasizing the monarchical aspects of colonial society. This allows him to contextualize republicanism as but a transitional phase in a movement from monarchy to democracy. Republicanism, in Wood's account, proved better at dissolving an old order than at establishing a new one.

Secondly, Wood significantly alters his presentation of republicanism. The republican vision in Radicalism is less strongly communitarian than it was in Creation. There are fewer self-sacrificial political demands, and the vision is no longer anti-capitalistic. Society is also now emphasized over politics as the proper sphere of republicanism. Wood speaks of the "domestication of virtue," and in a revealing quote says "The importance of this domestication of virtue for American culture can scarcely be exaggerated. It was not nostalgic or backward-looking, but progressive. It not only helped reconcile classical republicanism with modernity and commerce; it laid the basis for all reform movements of the nineteenth century, and indeed for all subsequent modern liberal thinking. We still yearn for a world in which everyone will love one another." (p.218) Because of Wood's reinterpretation of republicanism and his insistence on a "domestication of virtue" that bridged the republican and democratic eras, the differences between republican idealism and the democratic future are significantly played down. The most basic remaining division between republicanism and democracy in this new account seems to involve the existence and status of a natural aristocracy.

Third, though republicanism aspired to a natural aristocracy, Woods argues that "the republicanizing tendencies of eighteenth century thinking actually challenged the age old distinction between the aristocratic few and the common many." (p.235) The notion that moral sense was egalitarian, which Jefferson supported and used to justify the common man's ability to accurately select their "betters," turned out to be "the real source of democratic equality," (p.240), undercutting the very notion that there were "betters." In Radicalism then, Wood treats natural aristocracy as a concept republicans could not maintain against democratic arguments, much less democratic pressure. For Wood, this seems a strong indication of the intrinsically untenable nature of republicanism. Democracy in this account emerges in some sense as profoundly just, and republicanism, paradoxically, helped make this irresistibly apparent.

Fourth, in numerous ways, Wood emphasizes the real and varied benefits the emerging democratic world brought to common people, and stresses that advances brought about by democracy in one generation would often expand outwards to other groups in later generations.

Despite Wood's new, more positive evaluation of the shift from republicanism to democracy, Radicalism remains sensitive to the pain engendered by the collapse of republican hopes. Wood speaks quite enthusiastically-especially in chapters 11 and 12-about the noble, cosmopolitan, enlightened, benevolent, progressive, meritocratic and utopian vision of the Founders. (This description to me almost reads like the self-interpretation of a group of young, modern day, starry-eyed academics.) The dismay these leading lights felt at the materialism, rootlessness, and anti-intellectualism of the triumphantly emergent democracy is vivid in Wood's account. The world had changed in radical ways, and often seemed unrecognizable. Many of the figures most committed to republican idealism despaired at this world they could not control, and in yet another highly paradoxical development, some of them found their only true solace and comfort in the the wildly popular Christianity which they had previously held at arm's length.

Wood's book can certainly be challenged on any number of historical grounds. The tripartite division of American history seems a bit too tidy. Wood's new account of republicanism, like his old account, can be questioned. (Maybe both of these interpretations are simply creative misreadings of the Founders?) And surely one could question the centrality of the revolution for the far reaching changes occurring in American life during this time period.

However, there is much I admire about this book, despite the many ways that it can be challenged. (And as for that, it's well to remember that every major work of synthesis is problematic.) In general, Wood provides a much healthier outlook in Radicalism than in Creation. He now comes across as reconciled to the world he inhabits, whereas before he offered a detached pose. (Such detachment is not uncommon among historians, it would seem to me.) The legitimation of democratic middle class order is effectively rendered in Radicalism, especially in the the way that Wood pulls the rug from under the feet of self-styled natural aristocrats (both past and present) through his dissolution of the distinction between the few and the many. Finally, Wood bravely offers a vision that differs remarkably from an old work of his that remains incredibly well regarded in academic circles and comfortably aligned with academia's left leaning center of gravity. Wood was not afraid to veer in a different direction, and he was not afraid of ruffling some feathers.

This is a vital, brave, thought provoking work by a major historian.

Gordon Wood, again. While you may or may not buy his argument that the American Revolution was radical, it's still a fun journey to get to his conclusion. I've read it twice, and I'm still on the fence.

A fresh (at least it was fresh for me) nuanced perspective showing how the migration of sentiment across generations forces change to existing social and governmental structures. It added necessary weight to my understanding of our history. It was limited to the white experience by the nature of the analysis and the one-sided view of the history we have been taught. The victims of our success and their experiences are only now becoming part of the complete narrative. Their challenges to the dogma we have been indoctrinated with will necessarily produce new social tensions, whose resolution will further enhance or detract from the achievement of our original promise that 'All Men Are Created Equal' and the broadened accuracy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the United Nations Charter that 'All Human Beings' are included in the promise of freedom.

What a read! I have read a lot of American Revolutionary War history but no e of them dug as deep as Mr. Wood. He tells us what the founding fathers and ordinary Americans were thinking and feeling as they all struggled to understand and determine what America was and was going to be. Simply fascinating. I feel I can identify and relate to early Americans much more after reading and their struggles were not too far removed from our struggles today.

This Pulitzer Prize-winning analysis of the American Revolution is among the most engaging, most thought-provoking and most erudite history books I’ve ever read. Nothing dry, parched or plodding to be found here. This is history that reads more like literature and will trap your attention into the folds of its narrative flow like sailor falling into Charybdis.

Mr. Wood, together with David McCullough (John Adams)and Barbara Tuchman (The Guns of August), constitute the ruling council on my shelf of historical treatments and I don’t see their power waning any time soon given my love of their work. Despite the myriad of histories and biographies picking over the remains of this pivotal moment in world history, Wood manages to distinguish this piece by boldly and brilliantly recasting the historical, cultural and societal underpinnings of the colonies break with England. And he does so while thoroughly entertaining his reader with his smooth, polished prose.

For fans of history, in general, or the American Revolution, in particular, this is not a book to be missed.

In his incredibly readable fashion, Gordon Woods utterly demolishes the common “myth” that the American Revolution was some "conservative" tweaking of governmental rule that merely replaced one group of rich white men with another. Au contraire, Wood argues, the American Revolution was an extreme and radical departure from the English regime. Wood takes the reader step by step through the make up and various constituencies among the colonists and how it was a growing disconnect between the cultural antecedent and “modus operandi” of the English system and the burgeoning sense of individuality and social maneuverability that had taken hold in the colonies. By deconstructing of the social, economic and political systems in place in America before, during and after the break with England, Wood demonstrates in no uncertain terms how "monumental" an upheaval was the American Revolution.

Without regurgitating the wonderful detail Wood imbues in the narrative, below is a brief sketch of his depiction of the colonies that give to his central argument. Pre-Revolution America in 1750 had the following characteristics:

1. Colonists were intensely proud to be British subjects due to the sense of unprecedented freedom that British subjects had in the world.

2. Love and respect (and to some extent even deification) of the King.

3. There were few separate factions as everyone was divided into essentially two large groups: gentlemen (i.e., the aristocracy) and commoners (i.e., the rest of us).

4. Patriarchal Dependence. Women, children, indentured servants and slaves were all dependent upon the head of the family who ruled “like a king” over the family unit. This familial arrangement helps partially explain two important aspects of the colonial mindset. First, it sheds light on why slavery was not widely condemned as inherently evil. Since, to a large degree, all of society was formed along the lines of a de facto class system, slavery was simply another rung on that ladder and differed from other arrangement only by a matter of degree. Second, this ordering of the family unit also lends explanatory force to the love and deference of the people to the King as the "patriarch" of the country.

5. Patronage. Business and commerce in the pre-Revolution colonies was almost wholly dependant on relationships between people rather than impartial factors like price and quality.

6. Political Authority was tied to relationships. Family members and patrons were routinely given political offices and this nepotism was not looked on with disfavor.

In Post-Revolution America, all of the above characteristics had been completely transformed. By 1820, in less than 70 years, the Revolution had created what readers will recognize as the beginning of modern America (both good and bad). When describing the U.S. today in terms of the characteristics mentioned above, Wood makes a powerful case that the American Revolution was the most radical (and the most important in terms of true individual freedom) revolution in history.

This is a fascinating book and one that makes me want to read a lot more about our founding fathers and this critical period in U.S. History.

5.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!

Wood’s unique history of the American Revolution focuses on societal change rather than the battles and the headline events. I found his analysis absolutely fascinating. It changed my perspective on what the American Revolution was about and what it achieved. Enlightenment principles cast on a distinctly fertile American culture set the stage for the American Revolution. The founding fathers believed they were establishing a new republic guided by benevolent rationalism. After the dust settled they were stunned to find their philosophies cast aside as a proletarian democracy dominated by commercial interests took over. Wood emphasizes ideas and painstakingly explains rapidly changing cultural norms, foregoing the patriotic drama of other accounts of the period. Thus it can be a slow read at times, but it is well, well worth it.

Wood starts off by introducing us to American society in the mid-eighteenth century, a society much different than our own. To understand the events and ideas of the Revolution and how truly radical they were we must understand the times that spawned them. Monarchy was the accepted form of government and it determined the relationships of people. Unlike today where people identify and collaborate in horizontal groups such as teachers, blue collar workers, homemakers, etc., relationships in the eighteenth century were vertical from the top (king) down to the bottom (slave or servant). This system was patriarchal. Power was vested with the male heads of elite families who controlled everyone connected to that family. Everybody, wife, child, laborer, tenant, etc., had a specific place in the pecking order. Strict norms dictated how one related to those above and below them in the pecking order. Communities and towns were small and run by a few powerful men in a well-defined hierarchy. This was a world in which many wives called their husbands sir, in which labor was commonly produced by indentured or apprenticed workers who could be bound over for any offense. It was difficult to run away because you had no place to go. There was no privacy. Everyone knew everyone else and their business. Tradesmen relied on patronage rather than customers. They were there to meet the demands of the rich. If they stopped selling to a dominant family, no customer was likely to take their place. Conversely, if a dressmaker had run out of work, her patrons recognizing her reliance on them would typically place orders just to keep her solvent. The top families lent out significant portions of their estates for income but just as important to exercise control over their communities. This was a world of dependence. Freedom as we understand it today was unknown. The elite families also controlled politics. Political appointments were a favorite form of patronage. High political offices of course went to family members and many offices were essentially hereditary. Commoners were not allowed to occupy any important office since it would denigrate gentlemen to deal on important matters with a commoner.

The last half of the eighteenth century would see dramatic change. Taking hold in England and America were republican ideas with their implicit moral duty to fairness that undercut patriarchal control and dependence. In England republicanism was constrained by an established hierarchy running from the king through Parliament, the nobles and the gentry who controlled their tenants, servants and laborers. Patronage was administered through this structure. Parliament following the 1688 revolution served as the counterpoint to the king but its members had a vested interest in the continuance of the monarchy. Not so in America. Local assemblies did not answer to the king. America’s elites controlled their towns but did not have the English top to bottom all-encompassing network. Republicanism in America would not complement the existing structure but undo it. To the colonists, many of whom left Britain with grudges against the monarchy, the king and Parliament were far away. Patronage was conducted through local institutions and assemblies not answerable to the monarch. And most colonists did not answer to the Anglican Church which the king used to extend his authority. America’s aristocracy was less rich, less connected, less organized and less powerful than its English counterpart. America had readily available land and far fewer tenant farmers, which predominated in England under the control of the aristocracy. America’s commoners were typically free holders, more self-sufficient than their English counterparts. Thus American society was more egalitarian and far more open to republican ideas.

American society was much more fluid than English society. From 1750 to 1770 the population doubled from 1 million to two and doubled again in the next twenty years. This meant people were on the move establishing new homesteads and new communities, breaking established ties and lines of authority. Economic opportunity grew and American commoners were far better off than their English counterparts. With the development of trade between widespread communities, the use of paper money grew, which further cut into the traditional control of the patriarchs that their system of credits had previously provided. Contracts became impersonal instruments with clearly delineated responsibilities replacing the more informal personal agreements between people who knew each other in prior generations. Americans were more independent and less accepting of authority. Increasingly sons and daughters left home for new opportunities diminishing the role of the traditional extended family. New parents were changing their ideas on raising children. John Locke’s writings on education were very influential. The concept of strict control and absolute obedience was being replaced by the idea of parents and children having responsibilities to each other. These new ideas also undercut the idea of a subject’s relationship to his monarch. The relationship was now being viewed as a contract with rights and responsibilities on each party instead of the traditional paternalistic model. All of the preceding applied of course only to white Americans. But the shift in thinking caused for the first time many white Americans to see that slavery was wrong. Before this economic and social transition, everyone accepted slavery as just another category, the lowest in the pecking order, although poor whites, indentured laborers and servants were often not much better off than slaves. As patriarchy was undermined and the principle of social contracts accepted, slavery didn’t fit and it began to be viewed differently. The first anti-slavery society in the world was formed in Philadelphia in 1775.

The founding fathers were well educated in the classics and classical ideals. They were steeped in Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke. For them the Revolution was seen as the fulfillment of the Enlightenment. Naturally they saw their ilk as the leaders of their new creation feeling only the liberal gentlemanly class would be benevolent and fair. They believed that only the educated elite would not be swayed by the narrow interests of everyday commerce and thus be unbiased enough to hold together the new republic. However equality had a different meaning to the common man. It meant that he was as good as anyone and just as qualified to occupy political office. Such notions alarmed the gentry, not because they felt ordinary men lacked ability, but because they felt the farmers, merchants, traders and mechanics of the country could not be above self-interest and thus would tear the government apart.

The Revolution thrust an already rapidly growing economy into many competing market interests that would now use government to increase their profits. From the very beginning the notion of enlightened republicanism was challenged by the reality of everyday parochial commercial interests. Acceptance of the idea that competing self interest in elected officials was the best way to govern signified the demise of classical republicanism and the start of liberal democracy. By the end of the eighteenth century the Federalists who represented the aristocracy had lost most of their power. This was particularly true in the north where laborers and proto-businessmen rose up in egalitarian anger under the Republican banner. A huge shift in the national perception of the value of work was taking place. Once deemed a necessity of plebeians, it was becoming a badge of honor. Increasingly laborers were seen as the true producers of wealth and the idle rich as parasites. Even southern plantation owners, who oddly enough were also Republicans, now described themselves as hardworking.

The first decades of the nineteenth century saw continued rapid population growth, the massive movement westward, the decline of traditional religious denominations and the rise of strident evangelical ones, unprecedented alcoholism, increasing entrepreneurship and dramatic growth of domestic trade. All these disruptive changes broke traditional ties and values. And cohesion was not forthcoming from the federal government which was so weak that for most people it seemed practically non-existent. With very little money, it had to operate by granting private charters for banks, bridges, roads, etc., further fueling private interests that in turn sought control of government and exploited the public. Fortunately the judiciary began eschewing political power and assuming the role of society’s arbiter, a role the founding fathers had envisioned for themselves as elite rulers of the republic.

Wood concludes that, “By the early nineteenth century, America had already emerged as the most egalitarian, most materialistic, most individualistic – and most evangelical Christian – society in Western History.” Jacksonian democracy would complete the transition. Introducing the spoils system, Jackson recast patronage in the context of the modern political party. His successor Martin Van Buren would be the first pure politician to be elected president. This was not the outcome the revolutionary leaders had envisioned and those that survived to see it begin to unfold were appalled. John Adams wrote in 1823, “Where is now the progress of the human mind?....When? Where? How? Is the present Chaos to be arranged into Order?” Jefferson found it a hard fight just to get his state university approved over stiff evangelical opposition and he was terrified that someone like Andrew Jackson might become president. Writing a friend in 1825 Jefferson recognized that America had profoundly changed since the revolution lamenting “a new generation whom we know not, and who knows not us.”

An important and valuable book that undertakes a sociocultural analysis of an event typically examined through political or ideological lenses. Wood's thesis, that the American Revolution, much to the chagrin of its progenitors, had profound democratizing effects on America, challenges the political or economic claim that the revolution was fundamentally conservative in nature, simply replacing a British aristocracy with an American one. I think Wood is generally persuasive in making his case, though some recognition of the stability of the American political character might have strengthened his case.

A fascinating history and perspective on the state of the world and America before, during, and after the revolution. America was very much an aristocracy with a leisure class of gentlemen. Then a few disruptions (like trade) changed it and people started working and making money. Most of the founders were "gentelmen" who changed to believe in participatory democracy. What was most fascinating was at the end of the book where Wood shows how most of the founders thought that the revolution had failed because of populists taking over. Madison was appalled by Jackson for instance. They had not intended so much voting and participation by common people.

This is not your normal history book. The author has an argument to make so it reads more like a lengthy op-ed. But it's a fascinating and informative analysis and summary of life in the United States between roughly 1750-1825 and all of its uniqueness, opportunities, pitfalls, hopes, hypocrisies, dichotomies, and dreams. The book could have though done a better job of including slavery and women into the narrative (though that might have been inconvenient to the argument).

Come to think of it, I guess we did it without pitchforks

Most of the writings I have come across on the American Revolution thus far in my life have been approached quite similarly - snapshots of the founding fathers, early rebellious acts, and highlights of major battles. Gordon Wood comes from an angle that was new for me, which reflected on underlying reasons so specific to the time that enabled this pursuit of independence for the States take place.

The beginning of the book covers the social structure of the colonies that served as the perfect storm toward revolution. It then moves into more ideology that inspired the founding fathers to begin a new nation. Some of those subjects I found interesting, but it somehow seemed to get more and more boring as it went along. I know the material is well worth review, but it was just so darn tough to read after a while. For example, one thing I found most fascinating was the way that the societal elite collapsing in the 1700's really gave way to a new era of what it meant to be gentlemen. But for me to pull apart that analysis without my brain fogging up was a challenge in an of itself

I think if you are not just a history nut, but specifically a US History nut, this is probably the book for you. But unless you are devoted to that level of learning and understanding, stick to history channel docuseries!

"Be radical. Be radical. Be Radical. Be not too radical." In Wood's telling, the Founding Fathers would have embraced Walt Whitman's later celebration of radicalism and warning about not letting it get out of hand. Among the key aspects of the kind of republic that the FFs envisioned that democratization in the US failed to bring about was adopting public interest over private interest. Then there was the anti-intellectualism, the erosion of "truth," the rise of evangelicalism and more. (Some of the founders were horrified by Andrew Jacskon; imagine their response to a Trump or some of the contemporary Senate candidates.)

Interestingly, while David Reynold makes so much of the (religious) split between the Northeastern Purtians and the Southern Cavaliers in leading to the Civil War, Wood writes little about that tension. Indeed, he barely mentions religion at all. (Perhaps he was channeling Hamilton, who when asked why there was so little mention of God in the Constitution, allegedly said: "We forgot.") In any case, Woods make a strong case that the American Revolution was in fact extraordinarily radical -from political, cultural and other perspectives - for better or worse.