From Booklist
Spanning the period between the Stamp Act of 1765 and Thomas Jefferson's inauguration as president in 1801, veteran historian Ferling surveys the politics and politicians of the American Revolution and early republic. Addressing readers already well grounded in the disputes leading to the formation of the U.S., Ferling focuses on the process of signal events, particularly the continual reevaluation of power, motive, and future expectations that political players make. An example is Ferling's examination of the Boston Tea Party of 1773, in which he introduces Samuel Adams and outlines the radical's political touch. Figures less eager to break with Britain also populate Ferling's narrative, such as Benjamin Franklin, who moved adroitly to the cause of independence, and others less nimble, who lost all in the subsequent war. Briefly summarizing the war's military course, Ferling focuses on the politics of financing the war and the postwar debt, restoring to significance a host of historical personages in the tier below the Founders. A scholarly but accessible work for large collections. Gilbert Taylor
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Book Description
It was an age of fascinating leaders and difficult choices, of grand ideas eloquently expressed and of epic conflicts bitterly fought. Now comes a brilliant portrait of the American Revolution, one that is compelling in its prose, fascinating in its details, and provocative in its fresh interpretations. In A Leap in the Dark, John Ferling offers a magisterial new history that surges from the first rumblings of colonial protest to the volcanic election of 1800. Ferling's swift-moving narrative teems with fascinating details. We see Benjamin Franklin trying to decide if his loyalty was to Great Britain or to America, and we meet George Washington when he was a shrewd planter-businessman who discovered personal economic advantages to American independence. We encounter those who supported the war against Great Britain in 1776, but opposed independence because it was a "leap in the dark." Following the war, we hear talk in the North of secession from the United States. The author offers a gripping account of the most dramatic events of our history, showing just how closely fought were the struggle for independence, the adoption of the Constitution, and the later battle between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. Yet, without slowing the flow of events, he has also produced a landmark study of leadership and ideas. Here is all the erratic brilliance of Hamilton and Jefferson battling to shape the new nation, and here too is the passion and political shrewdness of revolutionaries, such as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, and their Loyalist counterparts, Joseph Galloway and Thomas Hutchinson. Here as well are activists who are not so well known today, men like Abraham Yates, who battled for democratic change, and Theodore Sedgwick, who fought to preserve the political and social system of the colonial past. Ferling shows that throughout this period the epic political battles often resembled today's politics and the politicians--the founders--played a political hardball attendant with enmities, selfish motivations, and bitterness. The political stakes, this book demonstrates, were extraordinary: first to secure independence, then to determine the meaning of the American Revolution. John Ferling has shown himself to be an insightful historian of our Revolution, and an unusually skillful writer. A Leap in the Dark is his masterpiece, work that provokes, enlightens, and entertains in full measure.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In A Leap in the Dark, John Ferling offers a magisterial new history that surges from the first rumblings of colonial protest to the volcanic election of 1800. Ferling's swift-moving narrative teems with fascinating details. We see Benjamin Franklin trying to decide if his loyalty was to Great Britain or to America, and we meet George Washington when he was a shrewd planter-businessman who discovered personal economic advantages to American independence. Here, too, is all the erratic brilliance of Hamilton and Jefferson battling to shape the new nation. John Ferling has shown himself to be an insightful historian of our Revolution, and an unusually skillful writer. A Leap in the Dark is his masterpiece, a work that provokes, enlightens, and entertains in full measure.

SYNOPSIS

In this political history of the American Revolution, Ferling (history, State U. of West Georgia) seeks the roots of the federalism that emerged from the cauldron of American politics. Paying particular attention to the role of leaders in shaping political movements, he explores the attempts to define the meaning of events and the political future of the country. His narrative covers the period 1754 to 1801, just after the adoption of the Constitution. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

The Washington Post

Every generation of Americans deserves a first-class history of the revolutionary era, and John Ferling has supplied it for this one. Those 2 million readers of David McCullough's John Adams, captivated by Adams's ardent patriotism and fiery opinions, will especially benefit from returning to the subject under the firm direction of a historian with a command of the scholarship that is matched by his gifts as a writer. — Joyce Appleby

The New Yorker

This deft account of the American struggle for independence dispels the aura of inevitability that usually surrounds such histories by beginning its narrative not on the verge of the Revolution but twenty years earlier. Ferling demonstrates how the thought of independence emerged only gradually out of the fight against unfair taxation and British indifference. The endless clashes with Colonial authorities turned cautious merchants and gentlemen farmers who thought of themselves as loyal British subjects into genuine revolutionaries. Still, a sense of uncertainty persisted well after the British surrender, and Ferling vividly evokes the political turmoil of the post-Revolutionary years. Even as he takes the Founders off their pedestals, their accomplishments only gain in stature.

Library Journal