The Memory of ’76: The Revolution in American History - Hardcover

Hattem, Michael D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300270879 ISBN 13: 9780300270877

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2024

Synopsis

The surprising history of how Americans have fought over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution for nearly two and a half centuries
 
Finalist, George Washington Book Award
 
Americans agree that their nation’s origins lie in the Revolution, but they have never agreed on what the Revolution meant. For nearly two hundred and fifty years, politicians, political parties, social movements, and a diverse array of ordinary Americans have constantly reimagined the Revolution to fit the times and suit their own agendas.
 
In this sweeping take on American history, Michael D. Hattem reveals how conflicts over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution―including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution―have influenced the most important events and tumultuous periods in the nation’s history; how African Americans, women, and other oppressed groups have shaped the popular memory of the Revolution; and how much of our contemporary memory of the Revolution is a product of the Cold War.
 
By exploring the Revolution’s unique role in American history as a national origin myth, Hattem shows how the meaning of the Revolution has never been fixed, how remembering the nation’s founding has often done far more to divide Americans than to unite them, and how revising the past is an important and long‑standing American political tradition.

About this title

About the Author

Michael D. Hattem is a historian of early America and author of Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution. He is the associate director of the Yale–New Haven Teachers Institute and lives in New Haven, CT.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300270879
• ISBN 13: 9780300270877
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 360