MixedThe Washington Post... an ambitious if sprawling survey ... emphases accurately reflect dominant themes in contemporary scholarship, and they laudably expand our conception of the depth and complexity of the revolution. Yet they also come at a certain cost. Most important, they make it harder to explain why the revolution happened or to identify its lasting consequences for American politics ... he gives us sharp assessments of the war’s commanders and sobering descriptions of its brutality, and reveals a keen eye for the battlefield ... This section has a narrative verve that the other parts of the book lack ... The great weakness of Liberty Is Sweet rests with its approach to...traditional political concerns. Like his Progressive predecessors, Holton does not take constitutional arguments very seriously ... There are several problems with Holton’s account of the origins of the revolution ... In the end, one leaves Holton’s book wondering whether he deems the revolution worth commemorating at all.
