The Cause

The Cause by Joseph J Ellis Phd

George Washington claimed that anyone who attempted to provide an accurate account of the war for independence would be accused of writing fiction. At the time, no one called it the “American Revolution”: former colonists still regarded themselves as Virginians or Pennsylvanians, not Americans, while John Adams insisted that the British were the real revolutionaries, for attempting to impose radical change without their colonists’ consent. With The Cause, Ellis takes a fresh look at the events between 1773 and 1783, recovering a war more brutal than any in American history save the Civil War and discovering a strange breed of “prudent” revolutionaries, whose prudence proved wise yet tragic when it came to slavery, the original sin that still haunts America. Written with flair and drama, The Cause brings together a cast of familiar and forgotten characters who, taken together, challenge the story we have long told ourselves about our origins as a people and a nation.

"The Cause comes across as a special gift, the book the author most wanted to write to the reader from the great scholar" -- Robert S. Davis - The New York Review of Books
"Masterly... [Ellis] deftly foreshadows all the issues that would complicate America’s trajectory and ends with a historical cliffhanger: Would the Republic survive? It did, but only when the Constitution became the embodiment of The Cause....Can America be truly great if we are built on a foundation that includes slavery?... [Ellis] 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." -- Richard Stengel - The New York Times Book Review
"No one would accuse Joseph J. Ellis of making history dull. He is a masterly story-teller." -- T. H. Breen - The Times Literary Supplement

Joseph J. Ellis is the best-selling author of twelve previous books, including American Sphinx, which won the National Book Award, and Founding Brothers, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, and Plymouth, Vermont.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781631498985
ISBN 10	1631498983
Title	The Cause
Author	Joseph J Ellis Phd
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	WW Norton & Co
Year published	2021-10-26
Number of pages	400
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable