New Releases by Bernard Bailyn

The brilliance of a master historian shines through this “elegant and engaging memoir” of a lifetime’s work (Richard Aldous, Wall Street Journal). Over a remarkable career Bernard Bailyn has reshaped our understanding of the early American past. Inscribing his superb scholarship with passion and imagination honed by a commitment to rigor, Bailyn captures the particularity of the past and its broad significance in precise, elegant prose. His transformative work has ranged from a new reckoning with the ideology that powered the opposition to British authority in the American Revolution, to a sweeping account of the peopling of America, and the critical nurturing of a new field, the history of the Atlantic world. Illuminating History is the most personal of Bailyn’s works. It is in part an intellectual memoir of the significant turns in an immensely productive and influential scholarly career. It is also alive with people whose actions touched the long arc of history. Among the dramatic human stories that command our attention: a struggling Boston merchant tormented by the tensions between capitalist avarice and a constrictive Puritan piety; an ordinary shopkeeper who in a unique way feverishly condemned British authority as corrupt and unworthy of public confidence; a charismatic German Pietist who founded a cloister in the Pennsylvania wilderness famous for its strange theosophy, its spartan lifestyle, and its rich musical and artistic achievement. And the good townspeople of Petersham, whose response in 1780 to a draft Massachusetts constitution speaks directly to us through a moving insistence on individual freedoms in the face of an imposing central authority. Here is vivid history and an illuminating self-portrait from one of the most eminent historians of our time.

"The past has always been elusive: how can we understand people whose worlds were utterly different from our own without imposing our own standards and hindsight? What did things feel like in the moment when outcomes were uncertain? How can we recover the uncertainties of the past, before the outcomes were known? What kind of imagination goes into the writing of transformative history? Are there latent trends that distinguish the kinds of history we now write? How unique was North America among the far-flung peripheries of the early British empire?" --From publisher''s website.

Sin fijar nuestra atención en las mutaciones acaecidas en las ideas acerca de la Revolución durante el último tercio del siglo XX no sería posible entender el destino singular que ha tenido un libro como Los orígenes ideológicos de la Revolución norteamericana. Pues si, en el momento de su aparición, pudo parecer la obra de un señor con corbata de pajarita, un texto cuyo objetivo no iba más allá que el de realizar una erudita aclaración de ciertos aspectos pertenecientes a la parte más altamente retórica de una controversia histórica ya superada, en breve esa visión cambió. Y lo que una vez pudo ser considerado una indagación en un mundo intelectual muerto y enterrado, la invocación de una ideología burguesa, iusnaturalista e inevitablemente demodé, pronto pasó a ser visto como algo dotado de un sentido inaugural y del todo diferente: un texto que, contra las apariencias iniciales, tocaba de cerca aspectos básicos de la experiencia política moderna; que de verdad ofrecía aquello que prometía en su portada; un libro en el que se dilucidaban cuestiones importantes acerca de la ideología, de los orígenes e incluso de la propia Revolución.

Presents an account of the first great transit of people from Britain, Europe, and Africa to the North American British colonies, evaluating its diversity, the survival struggles of immigrants, and their relationships with the indigenous populations of the Eastern seaboard.

Ce grand classique de la littérature historique américaine, lucide et incisif, a fait profondément évoluer le regard sur les fondements de la République américaine. Au-delà des idées des Lumières qui ont pu inspirer les révolutions du XVIIe siècle, c''est la voix des porte-parole de la révolution que fait ici entendre Bailyn. Ces pamphlétaires, essayistes ou commentateurs n''étaient pas des philosophes, mais des hommes actifs : politiciens, commerçants, hommes de loi, planteurs ou pasteurs, à la fois " humanistes civiques " et " libéraux ", attachés à la vertu comme à la propriété privée. Des milliers d''écrits - pamphlets, sermons, articles de presse - témoignent de cette confrontation entre idéologie révolutionnaire et construction d''un gouvernement national. Dans une postface à cette dernière édition, Bailyn souligne toutes les contradictions d''une forme singulière de patriotisme dont le fil court jusque dans l''Amérique d''aujourd''hui. Ce livre a reçu aux États-Unis deux récompenses prestigieuses : le Prix Pulitzer et le prix Bancroft.

Two time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Bernard Bailyn has distilled a lifetime of study into this brilliant illumination of the ideas and world of the Founding Fathers. In five succinct essays he reveals the origins, depth, and global impact of their extraordinary creativity. The opening essay illuminates the central importance of America’s provincialism to the formation of a truly original political system. In the chapters following, he explores the ambiguities and achievements of Jefferson’s career, Benjamin Franklin’s changing image and supple diplomacy, the circumstances and impact of the Federalist Papers, and the continuing influence of American constitutional thought throughout the Atlantic world. To Begin the World Anew enlivens our appreciation of how America came to be and deepens our understanding of the men who created it.

Weaving elements of early modern European, African, and American history, Atlantic history embraces essentials of Western civilization, from the first contacts of Europe with the Western Hemisphere to independence movements and the industrial revolution. Bailyn explores the subject''s origins, rapid development, and impact on historical study.

Bailyn, a professor at Harvard and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, writes of the impossibility of teaching history without bias, and that history itself is constantly open to new interpretations and viewpoints.

Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Bernard Bailyn brings us a book that combines portraits of American revolutionaries with a deft exploration of the ideas that moved them and still shape our society today.

Essays on Harvard''s history provide sample glimpses of a part still significant in the twentieth century.

The paradoxical and tragic story of America''s most prominent Loyalist - a man caught between king and country.

Common Sense is the most brilliant pamphlet written during the American Revolution, and one of the most brilliant pamphlets ever written in the English language. Its phraseology is deeply involving - at times clever, at times outrageous, frequently startling in imagery and penetration - and becomes more vivid as the pamphlet progresses.