I found the witches section, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington the most interesting. I only got through this book by having to re-read 50% of the sentences due to the verbiage. This book is mostly analyzing the way history has been documented through subjective and objective historians with extremely very little documented personal accountings and will make assumptions where facts are missing to make some sense from events. Retrieving history is complex and sometimes even historians trying their best to provide an accurate accounting of the past can show different perceptions of the same story.

This is a compilation of essays that Morgan wrote from 1974-2002 in the New York Review of Books. He took the occasion to write these essays as he was reviewing new history books that appeared in the literary journal. The articles, except for two, all concern books in the early national or colonial history of the United States. Morgan was a student of Perry Miller at Harvard in the 1930s and he retained the influence Miller gave him on intellectual history. Morgan makes ideas come alive in these essays because it is those ideas which compel people to action. The old saw that everything in politics is local is true but it is the formulation of ideas in the lifestyles and wallets of people that make them hue to one ideology or another. In this day and time, we must be careful to separate ideas that benefit the country at large from ideas that ideas that only benefit a person's sense of themselves. In other words, we should be able to think of our country as a whole with all of its people as an integral part of the nation. Too many times, people confuse "me" with "we". Morgan's essays are a corrective to that and we should all be thankful for his diligence in truth finding in history.

This is a collection of essays written by prominent historians along with their critical review by one of America's most famous historians Edmund Morgan. This is very challenging both for the Author and Reader.

I especially enjoyed his insight into the South which like England had its own Aristocracy (Planters, Plantation Owners) versus the North and West whose people were much more mobile in class, wealth. It was as if the last vestiges of England in USA were being defeated in our Civil War.

The books name refers to an essay on George Washington (Genuine Article) where the insight is that his greatest skill is an uncanny ability to perform all tasks in such a way to establish his legacy. He was not a great military man nor political; neither was he amazing intellectual nor writer but he was a man possessing all of the foremention as solid skills but his timing to employ those skills to maximum legacy effect was extraordinary.

This is easily a four star plus book. Not for the light reader in history but excellent for the Reader who loves history and craves deeper insight.

This was a most interesting read. The author, Edmund S. Morgan, was one of the great historians of early American history and he wrote this book to review the works of some eminent figures of Americana. In doing so, he also argues for his own historical perspectives, so the reader gets a double hit of the Puritans and the beginnings of American thought.

Lifelong anxiety and self-deprecation became the hallmarks of the American Puritan. The only way to be sure was to be unsure.

Morgan starts it off with the Pilgrims who came over from the wicked Old World so they could start bossing around anyone available in the New World (including the natives). He argues that without the corruptness of England, they discovered their own sins and their own corrupt nature. This laid a path for the rigid framework of the Scarlet Letter and the incessant work ethic which still defines the United States today. Although the Puritans stayed mostly within the New England area, they defined a view of the New World as one where improvements could be made with hard work. While they no doubt suffered with the first winters and the fears of a new environment, they still improved their life expectancy by up to twenty years. By contrast, the other early American settlers in Virginia were more likely to die in their first year. These same Puritans bequeathed a future nation with a concept of fear that has never gone away. Morgan also sees them as a little too full of themselves. Before leaving England they had made a nuisance of themselves by demanding more sermons than the church was willing to offer.

Where Morgan really makes a hit is his review of the southern American economies. Initially the workers in the South were indentured servants, the poor and the criminal of England, who were cheap enough for the South to build tremendous profits. But in time, slavery became more profitable so that the serfs became the poor white underclass who became too expensive for southern agriculture. The ruling plantation class took advantage of this by instilling the belief of white superiority in the local communities, thus allowing the dispossessed poor whites to pour their fears and anger on to the enslaved blacks.

Oppressors commonly blame the oppressed, and if they or their descendants feel guilt they blame that too on the oppressed.

This leads to the concept of "guilt", which continues to influence the American way of life centuries later. Morgan believed that while there is much feeling of guilt by current Americans, there is little respect for the descendants of slaves. The South instituted a labor system that essentially was a form of a lottery and the winners held all the lucky numbers. This bred a feeling of superiority which bred a feeling of guilt. We still see it today, especially with the hypocrisy of gentrification, or as I like to call it, the Slat Fence Mindset whereby young millennials take over old neighborhoods by kicking out the African American residents and then have the audacity to place anti-racist placards in their front yards (highlighted, of course, by slat fences). There is a HUGE difference between guilt and respect and until America can get to that point, there will never be an equal society for Black Lives.

...they have never quite been confided in as fellow subjects, have never quite been forgiven for the embarrassment of their ancestors' sufferings.

While some of the later essays in the book felt a bit boring, Morgan's writings on the Puritans and the slavery system were great, couldn't stop reading. He also wrote a lovely sentence which is very relevant in today's mind-boggling political environment.

n  The representative who loses touch with his constituents loses office, but the representative who sacrifices the national trust to local prejudice or to the changing winds of popular opinion betrays all the people for some of the people.n

Hallelujah.

Book Season = Autumn (walking the tightrope)

A collection of book reviews by a preeminent historian of early American history. These were published in The New York Review of Books, which encourages reviewers to expound on the book's material. The cumulative result is a brief but informative look at the reviewed books subject matter, at Morgan's views and at the state of American history in the late 20th century (the reviews are from the late 1970's to 2002.)
The reviews are divided into sections dealing with the Puritans, the South, and the Revolution. There is much more documentation from New England prior to the 19th century than from the South. The Puritans were given to much introspection, Southerners were more inclined to practical matters. Another reason for Southern reticence was their desire to avoid the embarrassment of discussing slavery. The result was that the Puritan and New England experience became embedded early on as the major strain in the American story. This was altered after the Civil War by Southern apologists, Western myth makers and Progressive debunkers. However, the idea of "a city on a hill" remains basic to our understanding of ourselves.
Morgan was a student of Perry Miller, the historian who in his "The New England Mind" restored the Puritan's intellectual reputation. Although an atheist himself, Miller argued that the beliefs and arguments of men like John Winthrop and Cotton Mather should be taken seriously and at face value. In the 1960's Bernard Bailyn did the same for the Revolutionary generation, as he refuted Progressive historians like Charles Beard, for whom the Founders rebelled for purely economic reasons. Morgan argues that there was a genuine constitutional argument, not understood by England, that led to the Revolution. The most difficult task of the historian is to perceive history in the context of the actors, yet relate them in terms relevant to his contemporaries. Morgan points out that a listing of George Washington's accomplishments cannot explain the awe that his contemporaries held him in. It may be fun to debunk "the marble man" by today's standards, but it cannot be denied that even men who disagreed with him, thought him special.