T here is a discrepancy between the popular narrative of the American Revolution familiar to most Americans and its academic interpretations. In the popular understanding, a unified group of colonists heroically expelled the foreign British and then quickly agreed on a new plan of self-government that was an instant model for the world. Academic interpretations have stressed how divided the people actually were over the break with Britain and over how to govern themselves afterward. In this book of essays, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian Gordon Wood synthesizes the scholarly interpretations and then attempts to reconcile his own work with the popular understanding.
