The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 (P.S.) | Jay Winik

The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 (P.S.) | Jay Winik | The Great Upheaval- A Great History

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The Great Upheaval...

	The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 (P.S.) Jay Winik Harper Perennial, 2008 - 720 pages average customer review:based on 49 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

the great upheaval

As a recreational history reader,Winik wrote the book that I have would like to have created myself.
It has been noted ,in some of the reviews, that a large number of details are not correct and that the sentence structure is difficult to handle- this is true.
However, I haven't found in any other books Winiks' ability to track these times in parallel. Most studies of these times don't deal with the overreaching "connections" among the Major Powers.
Winik does a great job with this.

The Great Upheaval- A Great History

I am the sort of reader who appreciates a concise summary, and was pleased to find this towards the end of Jay Winik's long history: "Louis XVI had hesitated, the nation then chose violence, and that is what it got. In Russia, Catherine had used massive force against Pugachev but then abandoned all hopes of liberty. In America, Washington acted decisively, but with nuance, and the country got coalitions and politics." In a nutshell, those are the major conclusions to be drawn from this prolix, but powerful study of revolutions fought in the Western world, 1788-1800. I whole-heartedly support this approach. History never happens in a vacuum. If you want a picture of the whole inter-connected world in this formative period, The Great Upheaval is a must read. The author keeps cycling between America, France and Russia. He has a knack of balancing events on a lonley cusp. Sometimes you suspect that history could have unfolded differently had there been a steely gaze or a vigorous retort at several crucial moments. Quite a few men of the world were active in two or three of the arenas. Marquis de Lafayette, Thomas Paine, John Paul Jones, Charles Talleyrand and Citizen Edmond Genet played roles in two or more countries.

The most significant thing I learned about early American politics was how greatly the French Revolution polarized opinion. Hamiltonians or Federalists thought the Jacobin purge dreadful. (Some were repulsed by the whimsical decapitations, but others found the class inversion just as gruesome.) Jeffersonians or Republicans found excuses for the slaughter. (Some cheered the spread of democracy, but others were happy to see the aristocrats suffer.) Young America was greatly abused by both the British and the French in this period, but only the Republicans clamored to take on the English again. And only the Federalists thought the upstart French should be taught a lesson. Wise Presidents Washington and Adams kept us out of both potential wars.

Some people may be put off by Winik's style. He favors long sentences with numerous sub-clauses. If you sip gin or burgundy while reading you will lose the nub of the thesis after the third glass. The occasional sentence, (read stone sober) is so convoluted you can only scratch your head. However, 99% of his prose is lively, sensible and deftly spread. This is one of the best history books I've read in some years.

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Another winner from Winik!

I enjoyed the April 1865 book and this was another winner by Jay Winik. Great read, good history lessons and interesting. I have no problem with a few mistakes in the text...the story was worth the read. Highly recommened.

Fascinating Book, but Atrocious Writing

Though I am hardly an historian, I found this book to contain very little factual information of which I was not already aware. Nonetheless, the author's approach to the narrative -- the interweaving of events in three disparate nations -- did a better job of "tying it all together" than any other popular tome addressing the same era. Nonetheless, the potential reader should be warned:

THIS BOOK IS VERY, VERY HARD TO READ.

I say this not because the concepts are difficult to grasp, but because the author's grammar is atrocious and/or because his editor did a terrible job.

Early in my career, I learned that a writer should re-examine any sentence exceeding some thirty or so words in length, to determine whether the concept would be more "readable" if divided into a larger number of shorter sentences. Apparently, this is a lesson that the author and/or editor of "The Great Upheaval" never learned.

It would seem that Winik, in love with the comma, a quite utilitarian means of punctuation, has had little guidance, from whatever source, be it formal or informal, in the proper use of this helpful tool, and tends, in most instances, to use a multitude of commas, when, under most circumstances, his prose would be far more comprehensible, by either the general populace or the more educated and erudite reader, if the writer would simply use two, three or even four distinct sentences, even in situations where the use of a single, quite long, sentence is possible, but nonetheless cumbersome.

Yes, I wrote that monstrosity of a sentence intentionally. If you had no trouble decyphering it, you will truly enjoy "The Great Upheaval." Otherwise, your enjoyment may be less, because you will find thousands of similar sentences scattered throughout "The Great Upheaval." In fact, you will often find one in each paragraph on any given page.

As a result of the horrid sentence structure, I often found myself re-reading a sentence two or three times to grasp the information that Winik was attempting to convey. Despite this aggravation, I eventually enjoyed the book and give it four stars for the information conveyed and the unique presentation.

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Surprising

Winik's latest was I admit a pleasant revelation. When I saw the book and the time period covered I thought here is yet another book about the 1790s; Do we need another book on the first decade after the constitution? But that was just it. It is not a book just about America's Early Republican period, it is the history of America couched in the swirling, tumultuous worldwide events coeval with the founding years of America.
Winik provides an interwoven narrative of history from 1788-1800 between America, France and Russia. His main point is to tell an interconnected story because contrary to popular opinion from a population of internet junkies and satellite babies, the world of the 18th and early 19th centuries was connected more than we know. In all of this talk of connections, England is curiously left out and this approach might be fruitful for other nations as well (Spain?), but this would be way too much for one book and might well have killed the public history aspect of Winik's project. Who knows maybe that is Winik's next book, American, England and Spain. Despite some missing pieces, the pace and prose of the book are outstanding. With everything from a vivid and at times macabre retelling of the French Revolution (which is extremely helpful to those unfamiliar with the event) to the violent clashes of the czarina Catherine in Turkey, the book at times reads like fiction.
The presentation of the book also forces the reader to use higher cognitive functions in comparing and contrasting the events in America with those in other countries. The result is an illuminating look at otherwise well worn topics such as the Whiskey Rebellion, citizen Genet's visit and the transfer of power from Adams to Jefferson.
At one point in the book after discussing the French Revolution at some length, Winik returns to the American narrative and takes up the familiar Whiskey Rebellion. But instead of simply restating the usual Washington marched on the rebels because he wanted to demonstrate federal superiority, which no doubt was true, he frames the entire event in the context of what examples Washington would have had at his disposal for such action. Winik states that Washington not only wanted to make bare the federal arm but he had Louis XVI's dangerous precedent of wavering and weakness before him and as Winik states, Washington did not want to end up another Louis. I have never once thought in all my time reading and studying history to compare Louis and Washington together but it is extremely revealing.
From such vantage points as the French Revolution and Catherine's Russia fresh vistas and a new sense of frailty unfolds for well known American personalities and events that too often are treated as if mortals knew the script they were acting from and did everything according to a director just off stage. For those readers familiar with the Early Republic, The Great Upheaval will offer many surprises and to those who aren't as familiar with American history there is plenty to gain from such a read. Winik offers a slim ray of hope that trained historians can once again offer the public books that are both readable and reliable. Well done.

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