History of the American Revolution Vol 1: Vol. 1 (Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War) - Softcover

Ramsay, David

9781429017411: History of the American Revolution Vol 1: Vol. 1 (Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1429017414 ISBN 13: 9781429017411

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing (SC), 2009

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Review

The History of the American Revolution has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the last twenty-five years. We learn from Ramsay the interpreter of his present and his past. We learn about the intellectual predilections of the eighteenth-century historian: the values, assumptions, principles, and expectations of one who lived and wrote amidst the events he narrated. We learn from the ways in which he shaped history; his use of language, his sense of the significance of people and events, his narrative style, his use of history as propaganda, as exhortation, and as fiction. As Cohen explains quite clearly, we do not rely on Ramsay to tell us what happened during the Revolution. In most respects we know a great deal more about what happened than he did, particularly since we are now the arbiters of what is significant. We rely on Ramsay not for information, but for the ways in which he reveals the sensibility through which the events of his era were filtered.

SirReadaLot.org
June 2006