E Pluribus Unum: The Formation of the American Republic, 1776–1790 - Softcover

McDonald, Forrest

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0913966592 ISBN 13: 9780913966594

Publisher: Liberty Fund, 1979

Synopsis

"An extraordinary book."

—Gordon S. Wood, Brown University

Having won independence from England, America faced a new question: Would this be politically one nation, or would it not? E Pluribus Unum is a spirited look at how that question came to be answered.

That the American people introduced a governmental system adequate to check the very forces unleashed by the Revolution—this, writes Professor McDonald, "was the miracle of the age. . . . The French, the Russians, the Italians, the Germans, all the planet's peoples in their turn, would become so unrestrained as to lose contact with sanity. The Americans might have suffered a similar history had they followed the lead of those who, in 1787 and 1788, spoke in the name . . . of popular 'rights.' But there were giants on the earth in those days, and they spoke in the name of the nation. . . ."

Forrest McDonald is Professor of History at the University of Alabama.

About this title

About the Author:

Forrest McDonald is Distinguished University Research Professor of History at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. He is the author of many books on American history including A Constitutional History of the United States, E Pluribus Unum, and Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution.

Review:

"A fresh, vivid, and penetrating recreation of the crucial fourteen years in which a new nation was born. . . . With an awesome command of detail and meticulous story (especially of the newspaper sources) he tells of the story of the shaping of the Articles and of what he calls 'The Completion of the Revolution' state by state."
New York Times Book Review

"Original and stimulating"
American Historical Review

"A provocative and stimulating work with will lead scholars to reassess some of their assumptions about the formative years of the American republic."
Annals of the American Academy

"A worthwhile and illuminating book, highly readable and highly recommended."
Library Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Liberty Fund
• Publication date: 1979
• ISBN 10: 0913966592
• ISBN 13: 9780913966594
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 386