Turning The World Upside Down: Inside the American Revolution - Hardcover

Based largely on eyewitness accounts, this reconstruction of ``the best known and least understood major event in our history'' depicts the American Revolution not as a rational movement based on Locke's ideas--but as a conflict buffeted by the passions of unruly men. The title refers not only to the song played by the British at their Yorktown surrender but also to the upheaval caused by the eight-year conflict. Although his descriptions of the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party push his narrative off to a rousing, iconoclastic start, Tebbel (coauthor, The Magazine in America, 1991, etc.) doesn't expand the pre-Revolutionary era beyond the Massachusetts theater and can't quite maintain the breathless pace of these set pieces. In his eagerness to save the American Revolution from mummification, he uses present tense and colloquial narration, sometimes to arch effect (``And where is our boy Lafayette?''). He also exaggerates our contemporary glorification of the war (every schoolkid still knows that these were ``the times that try men's souls''). But Tebbel does detail to often stunning effect the problems that plagued the patriots: starving and badly paid soldiers; a citizenry as apathetic as it was opportunistic; a dithering and impotent Continental Congress; recruiting scandals; profiteering contractors; and vicious attacks and reprisals by rebels and loyalists. Although the author admires George Washington for his dogged perseverance and Daniel Morgan for his buckskin charisma, he takes pleasure in the portrait dipped in acid-- including ones of Samuel Adams, the Boston firebrand never squeamish about bending truth in the service of propaganda; John Paul Jones, the tyrannical sea-dog-turned-legend by refusing to give up the battle; and General Charles Lee, Washington's one-time second-in-command, a misanthrope who loved dogs more than people- -and who, while in prison, plotted to betray the rebels. Not quite the bottom-rail view of history to which it aspires, nor as revisionist as it hopes--but often vividly impressionistic. (Four maps) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Former journalism professor Tebbel ( Between Covers: The Rise and Transformation of American Book Publishing ) offers a breezy, present-tense account of the American Revolution as though from the perspective of the ordinary men and women who lived through it. Merchants, mothers, and foot soldeirs dominate these pages to the virtual exclusion of generals and statesmen. Together, their viewpoints portray the Revolution not as an expression of high-minded patriotism but as an experience to be endured and survived. Denying any pretentions to original research or interpretation, Tebbel nevertheless makes a strong case that great achievements can arise from mundane people and events. General readers will enjoy this book; scholars may profit from its approach.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.