In this new book, historian Gordon S. Wood distills a lifetime of work on constitutional innovations during the Revolutionary era. He illuminates critical events in the nation's founding, ranging from the imperial debate that led to the Declaration of Independence to the
revolutionary state constitution making in 1776 and the creation of the Federal Constitution in 1787.
... masterly ... Power and Liberty is based on a series of lectures that Wood, a professor emeritus at Brown and a Pulitzer Prize winner, gave at Northwestern University in 2019 ... Can America be truly great if we are built on a foundation that includes slavery? [W]ood would say that while the Constitution contains that terrible defect, it also contains the cure for democracy’s wrongs — if we choose to use it.
The Pulitzer and Bancroft winner delivers another masterful book of Revolutionary War–era history ... This introduction to the formative half-century of American history maintains a taut focus on the nation’s early constitutional development ... while he may receive criticism for overlooking much of the social and cultural history produced by other historians, no one will be able to ignore the power of his arguments. A fresh, lucid distillation of Wood’s vast learning about the origins of American government.
Pulitzer winner Wood (Friends Divided) surveys the 'politics and constitution-making' of the Revolutionary era in this astute if somewhat familiar history based on a series of lectures he gave at Northwestern University in 2019 ... Wood has made these arguments before, but they’re restated lucidly and concisely here. The result is a welcome distillation of an influential career.
