This book takes an impartial view of the American Revolution, the kind we aren't used to hearing about. We're used to a more romanticized version of events, one with war heroes and hard-fought battles, followed by the intellectual leaders who shaped our great country. What isn't often told are the failures, debates, and differences in ideology that separated large amounts of people during our nation's founding. We certainly were not united against the British Empire. And no matter how much we like to think the founding fathers were all on the same page as a collective group of influential geniuses, the answer is anything but that. Conflict and dissent gripped our country long before the revolution, continuing on through it, stemming a long, arduous path of bickering that ultimately led to the Civil War.
Author Alan Taylor takes a less intimate, realist approach to telling the story of America's foundation. Not just in the United States either. The plurality of the title alludes to several revolutions that took place in the western hemisphere during that time period, including that of Haiti. Instead of an adventurous telling of events, which might include vivid descriptions of famous battles, or the biographies of our founders, Taylor dissects what went on behind the scenes, in political, moral, economic, and cultural terms; namely, it's the social burdens of the people that are highlighted, not the heroes who fought for them. It's a refreshing look at something that has been so overly-glamorized that we automatically call the founding fathers geniuses when they were really just as divided as we are.
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