Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
Surrendering at Yorktown, the fifers for the beaten British Army played "The World Turned Upside Down." It was an appropriate tune - in seven years of war, the Americans could barely claim even three military victories of any consequence. But the British could no longer sustain their efforts. They had more urgent battles to fight in Europe and they had no more money and lives to spend quelling a rebellion that, thanks to blunder after blunder, they could never quite finish off. But history is written by the winners, and in the two hundred years since the Revolution, a web of myth and legend has grown up around the struggle, glorifying it beyond recognition. John Tebbel set out to get as close as possible to the truth about how this country was born and what its people were like on both sides. He helps the reader discover why the Revolution was by far the most unpopular war this nation ever fought, and in some ways the most savage.
From this perspective, the Revolution turns out to be like other wars - not a glorious, high-minded struggle, but one (for both sides) in which initial enthusiasm quickly fades, the gap between soldiers and citizens widens, and the distance between illusion and reality becomes ever greater. Yet the Revolution produced authentic heroes and a cast of other characters that would dwarf any Hollywood extravaganza for sheer variety, if nothing more. The War for Independence was a unique event in our history, one that deserves to be understood much better if we are to understand ourselves as a people and a nation.
Check nearby libraries
Buy this book
Previews available in: English
Showing 1 featured edition. View all 1 editions?
Edition | Availability |
---|---|
1
Turning the World Upside Down: Inside the American Revolution
1993, Orion Books
Hardback
in English
- 1st ed.
0517589559 9780517589557
|
aaaa
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. 431-432) and index.
Classifications
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Source records
Internet Archive item recordLibrary of Congress MARC record
Promise Item
marc_columbia MARC record
Work Description
Based largely on eyewitness accounts, this reconstruction of the best known and least understood major event in our history'' depicts the American Revolution not as a rational movement based on Locke's ideas--but as a conflict buffeted by the passions of unruly men. The title refers not only to the song played by the British at their Yorktown surrender but also to the upheaval caused by the eight-year conflict. Although his descriptions of the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party push his narrative off to a rousing, iconoclastic start, Tebbel (coauthor, The Magazine in America, 1991, etc.) doesn't expand the pre-Revolutionary era beyond the Massachusetts theater and can't quite maintain the breathless pace of these set pieces. In his eagerness to save the American Revolution from mummification, he uses present tense and colloquial narration, sometimes to arch effect (And where is our boy Lafayette?''). He also exaggerates our contemporary glorification of the war (every schoolkid still knows that these were the times that try men's souls''). But Tebbel does detail to often stunning effect the problems that plagued the patriots: starving and badly paid soldiers; a citizenry as apathetic as it was opportunistic; a dithering and impotent Continental Congress; recruiting scandals; profiteering contractors; and vicious attacks and reprisals by rebels and loyalists. Although the author admires George Washington for his dogged perseverance and Daniel Morgan for his buckskin charisma, he takes pleasure in the portrait dipped in acid-- including ones of Samuel Adams, the Boston firebrand never squeamish about bending truth in the service of propaganda; John Paul Jones, the tyrannical sea-dog-turned-legend by refusing to give up the battle; and General Charles Lee, Washington's one-time second-in-command, a misanthrope who loved dogs more than people- -and who, while in prison, plotted to betray the rebels. Not quite the bottom-rail view of history to which it aspires, nor as revisionist as it hopes--but often vividly impressionistic. (Four maps)
Community Reviews (0)
Feedback?History
- Created April 1, 2008
- 10 revisions
Wikipedia citation
×CloseCopy and paste this code into your Wikipedia page. Need help?
July 23, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
December 4, 2022 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
November 15, 2020 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
August 20, 2019 | Edited by mountainaxe1 | Edited without comment. |
April 1, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from Scriblio MARC record |