The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787

The Creation of the American Republic 1776 1787 Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Williamsburg Virginia

One of the half dozen most important books ever written about the American Revolution.

New York Times Book Review
During the nearly two decades since its publication, this book has set the pace, furnished benchmarks, and afforded targets for many subsequent studies. If ever a work of history merited the appellation 'modern classic,' this is surely one.

William and Mary Quarterly
[A] brilliant and sweeping interpretation of political culture in the Revolutionary generation.

New England QuarterlyThis is an admirable, thoughtful, and penetrating study of one of the most important chapters in American history.

Wesley Frank Craven

User Ratings and Reviews

3 Stars A Good Read
I found this book to be very enlightening. It gives a glimpse into the workings of American Politics. Especially now with the elections coming up. It's good to know where this process came from and how it evolved over time.

4 Stars Thorough description of the events and times
I gave this book as a gift to a friend who is well versed with Williamsburg and he thought the desription of the period was excellent.

5 Stars A bit of a slow read….
mostly due to the archaic language of the source material but the payoff is immense.

This survey of the literature shows how the seemingly contradictory theories of mixed government and republicanism were synthesized by our founders to form our representative system of government.

If you read this the next time someone tells you what our founding fathers intentions were you'll know exactly how accurate they're being.

5 Stars "a true, enduring classic"
Gordon S. Wood is one of the deans of the so-called "intellectual historians" of the Revolutionary era. I just finished reading this book for the third time in the last 15 years, and I am struck by the sweeping nature of it. Wood's thesis is essentially that Americans' thinking about government and politics underwent a remarkable change in the 11 years between the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the framing of the Constitution. In short, through a series of piecemeal changes during this brief period, Americans largely put together a new mode of political thinking. The key to Wood's argument seems to be his discussion of the changes that occurred in the locus of sovereignty, and the separation of political from social authority. "The people" play the key role here. They went from traditionally being "embodied" in one branch of the gov't (the House of Commons in England, for example), to being the source of all governmental authority. This change brought with it changes in the understanding of representation and of separation of powers, and made possible Americans' unique concept of federalism, and the development of an "American science of politics". Wood uses a dazzling array of sources to support his arguments, and in doing so, shows how many hands and brains were involved in this work. The book is long and the general reader may find it a bit difficult, but anyone interested in the development of American political thought cannot neglect it.

5 Stars Extremely Enlightening
I read the Creation of the American Republic for my U.S. Consitutional History Class. Admitedly it is very long, and it is not a book that you can skim through, but every single page has something that will make you think, I have never marked up a book as much as I did while reading this book. This book will definately influence your view on how the constitution was formed and how the the Constitution helps to shape our lives. I would recomend it to anyone and everyone, though if you are not interested in history the subjects may go over your head.

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