★★★★★ 5
An essential work in putting American history in perspective
Format: Hardcover
This is a great book. It is not a book for everyone, however. If you don't know the difference between the Pilgrims and the Puritans, and I don't mean just when they arrived, try something simpler. It is a fascinating read if you already have some knowledge. For example, had I not been familiar with Hudson River geography and history, I'm not sure I would have been able to follow Bailyn's account of New Netherland.
Naturally, as in any history, the most interesting stories are those you haven't heard before. For me, that was the information about New Sweden; I even read that section first. What makes Bailyn's book great, however, is his ability to make one see material one already knows a great deal about in new ways. Although he never addressed this question per se, he helped me answer a question that has been on my mind for at least fifteen years, and on which I've done considerable research - why did the Puritans, who arrived in 1630 as staunch Presbyterians, deriding their Separatist/Congregationalist Pilgrim neighbors, declare themselves Congregationalists in 1648 in the Cambridge Platform? (In part, the answer Bailyn helped me surmise is simply that when two or three Puritans gathered together, they had at least four different theological positions. It was hard enough to reconcile them in a single congregation; a presbytery would have been impossible.) The book also caused me to reassess my whole viewpoint on early Connecticut, and I certainly came to appreciate the importance of John Winthrop, Jr. beyond his role there. It is amazing too that Bailyn covers such a wide range of issues while devoting relatively few pages to each.
The review in The New York Times Book Review, at least as I recall it, was wrong. While that reviewer praised the Virginia, Maryland and New Sweden/New Netherland portions, the New England portion (about 40% of the book) was dismissed as being only of interest to genealogists. While it is true that the earlier sections were more reflective of the book's subtitle, "The Conflict of Civilizations," the New England section would be of interest to a rather small portion of the genealogical community. (For example, I learned nothing new about my only ancestor discussed in the book, William Vassall.) I doubt if that reviewer has ever seen an on-line genealogy, which frequently contain claims such as that so and so was born in 1585 in the United States. As I have already said, the New England section, like the rest of the book, does a marvelous job of putting information in perspective; something that anyone interested in history needs to do.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2013
