The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 | Jay Winik

The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 | Jay Winik | A Treat

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The Great Upheaval...

	The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 Jay Winik Harper, 2007 - 688 pages average customer review:based on 42 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Great, Indeed

One of the great joys in life is to come across that rare book which you simply cannot put down, and once you're forced to, you can't wait to pick it back up again. The Great Upheaval is just such a book. What an absolute joy it was to read!
There are numerous reasons for this. First and foremost is the narrative style of author Jay Winik, which clips and clops energetically along like a horse-drawn carriage over cobblestones.
Second, Winik connects events in the U.S., Russia, and France during the period 1788 - 1800 in a highly original, scintillating way. He shows, for instance, how President George Washington's rather harsh, dictatorial reaction to the Whiskey Rebellion was prompted by the French Revolution. Washington was doing what Louis XVI had not done: responding with strength to rebellious citizens. Washington feared that showing weakness might lead to a much more wide-scale rebellion, such as had happened in France, which could mean the end of the young republic. I never viewed the Whiskey Rebellion in this light.
Third, though familiar with most of the recent writings on the period 1788-1800 in the U.S. (see Joseph J. Ellis, John Ferling, etc.), there was much I learned from Winik. For example, his description of how a bad tooth was removed (p. 449) left me feeling weak.
The Great Upheaval is one of the very best works of history to come along in the last several years, and I cannot recommend it too highly.

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A Treat

I have reached the time of life when I can spend several hours of uninterrupted reading and also can sharpen some distant memories of college history. The Great Upheaval fills both requirements. The hours I spent with this book were treats. I would carry it to Starbucks for my morning coffee and put it aside late in the day when I was tired so I would not miss anything. As I neared the end of it over several weeks I slowed down so I would not finish it.

Now that I have completed this I can reflect upon its strengths. There are several that other reviewers have commented upon. I would like to add that interspersed in the narrative are wonderful short profiles of the leading players during the period. Catherine the Great, Hamilton and Louis XVI to name a few came alive.

The chapters on the French Revolution came alive. I thought this was the best writing in the whole book. It read like a thriller and I could not wait to see how it would end. I felt for Marie Antoinette who previously I felt was the perfect evil individual.

Lastly, the end notes were a wonderful source. As I begin to read more in this area I will continue to consult these notes as a guide for future study..

Thank you Mr. Winck

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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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Good book, but in need of a real editor

Winik does an admirable job of covering a tumultuous 12 years, primarily in the US, France and Russia, and the monumental personalities who formed them. Rather than a history text that falls to listing names and dates, Winik brings the events to life, providing background and mini-biographies of the primary players, their strengths and foibles. That said, this is the first book I've read where at the conclusion, I looked for an acknowledgement of the editor. Where else to place the blame? The book is filled with sentences that don't make sense, breathless adjectives, and an overuse of the writer's crutch "arguably" (one page used the crutch three times). It's a good book, but for me would have been much better without the stylistic distractions.

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