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Summary
Summary
Author of the New York Times best-seller April 1865, Jay Winik is universally praised for his ability to transform historical events into compelling narratives. In his ambitious The Great Upheaval, Winik succeeds in providing a comprehensive account of 13 years of social, political, and religious revolutions that would shape nearly two centuries of human history.
Author Notes
Jay Winik, one of the nation's leading historians, is renowned for his gifted and creative approaches to history. He is the author of The New York Times and #1 bestseller April 1865 (2001), which received wide international acclaim and became an award-wining documentary on the History Channel, watched by 50 million viewers. The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World 1788-1800 (HarperCollins, 2007), was a New York Times bestseller and a Best Book of the Year for both USA Today and the Christian Science Monitor, as well as a main selection of the Book of the Month club and the History Book club. In the UK it was also selected for the prestigious Financial Times list of best books of the year. Winik was in 2013 the Historical Advisor to the National Geographic Channels, and among a number of projects, worked on an epic six-part history of the 1980s with the renowned, award-winning Nutopia film company, which premiered to critical acclaim in over 100 countries. Frequently asked to write or speak about Presidential Leadership and Abraham Lincoln, Winik recorded a series of 14 lectures on the Civil War for the Barnes and Noble Great Lectures series, and he is one of the lead authors of Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst of the White House (Wall Street Journal Books, 2004); What Ifs? Of American History: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been (Putnam, 2003); BookNotes on American Character (PublicAffairs, 2004); I Wish I¿d Been There: Distinguished Historians Travel Back In Time, (Doubleday, 2006); and Abraham Lincoln: Great American Historians on our 16th president (Public Affairs/C-SPAN, 2008). Born in Connecticut, Winik is a graduate of Yale College, and holds an M.Sc. with distinction from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Yale University. Represented by Michael Carlisle in New York City, and the Washington Speakers Bureau, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is an elected Fellow of the Society of American Historians, and served or serves on the Governing Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a presidential appointment, as well as the boards for American Heritage magazine and the journal, World Affairs; he is also a trustee or advisory board member of a number of non-profit boards, including National History Day, the Civil War Preservation Trust; Ford¿s Theatre; The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission; The Lincoln Legacy Project, the Washington Tennis and Education Foundation; the Lincoln Forum; and earlier the Potomac School, and the Advisory Council of the James Madison Book Award. He is a nominator for the largest prize in the humanities, the $1.5 million John W Kluge award. He has also provided advice to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, and was a juror for the prestigious George Washington book prize in 2008, and a recommender for the Heinz awards. His latest book, 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History (Simon & Schuster 2015) made it to the NY Times Bestseller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The years 1788 to 1800 must be numbered among the most tumultuous in history, as bestselling author Winik (April 1865) magnificently demonstrates in this aptly titled book. The nascent United States, tormented by three rebellions of its own, tottered as France descended into bloody terror and imperial Russia fought the Ottomans. Republicanism, liberalism, democracy, nationalism, as well as authoritarianism: all these potent ideologies, whose effects remain with us, sprouted from this fertile soil. The emphasis on Russian and French affairs marks Winik as being in the forefront of a growing campaign to globalize America's national history: to view "the larger age" and frame the story as "one continuous, interlocking narrative" rather than to focus myopically on events in the United States. "The world then was far more interconnected than we realize," Winik writes. "[G]reat nations and leaders were acutely conscious of one another." In this version, Washington, Jefferson and Adams no longer receive exclusive star billing, but instead share the stage with such greats as the Empress Catherine, the doomed Louis XVI, Robespierre, Napoleon and Kosciuszko. If there is a criticism to be made of this approach, it is that Winik has greatly underplayed the importance of Britain in the struggle for global mastery and the quest for international order. Buttressed by impeccable research, vividly narrated and deftly organized, this is popular history of the highest order and is sure to create a stir in the fall market. 16 pages of b&w photos, 3 maps. (Sept. 11) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
The great strengths of Winik's massive examination of this tumultuous period is his demonstration of how events in the U.S. and Europe were part of a process of cross-fertilization. The title dates are not arbitrary. In 1788, the U.S. began its operation under a new constitution; in 1800, after years of partisan divisions and social conflict, the Americans peacefully accepted the transfer of power from the Federalists to Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans. Between those years, the U.S. and Europe experienced turmoil, revolution, and wars that shaped the world for the next two centuries. American commitment to republican ideals influenced French revolutionaries; they, under the threat of foreign intervention, instituted a repressive regime that would presage twentieth-century totalitarianism. In Russia, the enlightened Catherine the Great was shocked by the violence in France and turned from liberalization to a strengthened autocracy. Her desire for expansion led to the destruction of the Polish state and war with the Muslim Turks, both of which had immense consequences in the twentieth century. An outstandingly wide-ranging account of this vital era in world history.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2007 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
How the modern world emerged in the late 18th century. BY JOSEPH ELLIS IN his previous and well-received book on the last month of the Civil War, "April 1865," Jay Winik demonstrated a flair for storytelling that suggested an almost cinematic, you-are-there immediacy. He also embraced the old-fashioned idea that prominent personalities, most dramatically Robert E. Lee, actually shaped the course of history, reinforcing Emerson's maxim that history is biography writ large. Both tendencies are on display in "The Great Upheaval," but here the canvas is much larger. The time is the last decade of the 18th century. The place, or rather places, are the United States, France and Russia. The cast of characters is a veritable gallery of greats: all the founding fathers, with George Washington as the foundingest father of them all; Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Robespierre and Napoleon; Catherine the Great, Prince Potemkin and Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Cecil B. De Mille could not have asked for more. There are two overlapping story lines at work here. The first might be called the big-bang theory of the modern political universe. Namely, in the late 18th century an enormous explosion of enlightened ideas about human equality, personal freedom and individual rights rocked the Western world, then radiated its energies out to undermine the hierarchical assumptions of the medieval order. This is hardly a novel argument; indeed it is a bedrock assumption of the liberal or Whig interpretation of the last two centuries of Western history. Winik's second story line, which advances a more unconventional claim, is that the revolutions in America and France, and the nonrevolution or reaction in Russia, were all of a piece, that they represented different enactments of the same overarching plot. It seems to me that Winik is on solid ground in the linkage between the American and French Revolutions. But the Russian connection seems somewhat strained. Catherine the Great's decision to take Russia in an autocratic direction, to reject the enlightened impulse, was rooted in a realistic assessment of the extremely bloody consequences of the French Revolution. She recognized that the comparatively calm consequences of the American Revolution did not translate into a European context. She was right about that, and thereby bought another century for the Russian monarchy, but also assured that when the revolutionary moment arrived, it would be more violent and, ultimately, uncontrollable. The logic of Winik's argument about the interconnected character of revolutionary events raises a host of tantalizing questions: How did Americans manage to control the revolutionary energies and create the world's first nation-size republic? Why did France implode in a spasm of gore and terror? How fateful was Russia's rejection of the liberal agenda? But Winik's deepest instinct is not to soar to panoramic altitudes but rather to dive into the details and recover a palpable sense of what it was like, for example, to watch Marie Antoinette go to the guillotine, or George Washington dominate a room by his silence. Winik frequently pauses in his narrative to provide lengthy background pictures of the star players. Here, for example, is a typical passage from his profile of Louis XVI: "His early childhood was nothing short of desolate. He was sickly, meek and pathologically shy. Ignored by his parents, who preferred his handsome older brother, and taunted by his own family as 'Louis the Fat,' he was orphaned at the age of 10 and was then haughtily ridiculed by his formidable grandfather. ... Physically, he walked with a waddle and was plump even as king, but he grew to be quite tall for his times - 5 feet 10; and he had soft blue eyes. ... His eyesight was bad, but his memory was superb. For that matter, so was his moral compass: modest and loyal, almost to a fault, he always esteemed the church, and, uncommon not just in a French king but in most kings, was ill at ease with his father's many infidelities." Winik is a master of the character study, and although his book is based almost entirely on secondary sources, he has an uncanny knack for synthesizing the work of others, then imposing his own distinctive mark. I spent five years reading all of Washington's papers, but could detect no gaffes or missteps in Winik's rendering of the man. But because personalities loom so large in his story, they sometimes seem to determine all the outcomes. Thus the American Revolution succeeded because of the preternatural wisdom of Washington. The French Revolution happened because of the chronic indecisiveness of Louis XVI. And Russia opted to oppose the liberal surge because of the enlightened realism of Catherine the Great. What is missing from this narrative is the impersonal dimension, the geographic, demographic, socioeconomic differences between France and Russia on the one hand, and the United States on the other. Leadership did make a difference in securing the revolution in America. But the Americans could afford to be more patient because they did not face pent-up hatred like that of the French peasantry and Parisian poor. America also enjoyed splendid isolation from the cauldron of European politics. If it had been located in the middle of Europe, it would almost surely have suffered the tragic fate of Poland, regardless of the impressive leadership skills of Washington and the founding fathers. Indeed, one of Washington's elemental insights was to recognize that history had dealt him cards that no European monarch could match. My sense is that Winik is not oblivious to these deep-rooted differences between the American and European contexts. But as a born storyteller, he privileges the personal. If you want a comparative analysis of the revolutionary movements in America and Europe, you should look elsewhere. If you want to understand, intellectually and emotionally, what it was like to experience this historic upheaval, this is the book for you. Joseph J. Ellis is the Ford Foundation professor at Mount Holyoke College and the author of the forthcoming "American Creation: Triumph and Tragedy at the American Founding."
Kirkus Review
Wide-angle presentation of the philosophical, political and martial storms buffeting the infant American republic at the close of the 18th century. In the years following the Constitution's adoption, the United States weathered three domestic rebellions, a quasi-war with France and continued humiliations at the hands of Britain. It withstood the unexpected emergence of political parties and the most contentious election in its history (sharply chronicled in Edward J. Larson's A Magnificent Catastrophe, 2007). It managed an unprecedented, peaceful transfer of power between antagonists and witnessed the death of Washington, the figure most indispensable to the precarious American experiment. To explain fully the nature and extent of the young nation's peril and the reasons for its birth and unlikely survival, Winik (History and Public Policy/Univ. of Maryland; April 1865: The Month That Saved America, 2001, etc.) examines the international zeitgeist, especially forces at work in France and Russia. He explains the era's unusual fluidity, the surprising intertwining of people and events illustrated by spot-on portraits of the Enlightenment's greatest men and women, especially those--e.g., Franklin, Jefferson, Talleyrand, Lafayette, Gouverneur Morris, John Paul Jones, Citizen Genet, Thaddeus Kosciuszko--who played important roles on more than one continent. His painterly prose catches Napoleon, Potemkin and Russian General Suvorov at war and the likes of Mirabeau, Hamilton and Adams thinking their way into the next century. Marvelously varied scenes in this sweeping narrative range from Catherine the Great's tour of the Crimea to the backwoods Whiskey Rebellion, from the dinner table at Mt. Vernon to the Ottoman Sultan's seraglio, from the glittering court of Louis XVI to Marat's bathtub and Robespierre's appointment with the guillotine. Winik effortlessly condenses impossibly large events--particularly the French Revolution, whose lofty ideology and bloody effusions shaped so much--all in service of his grand thesis: that this crucial decade of despotism, rebellion, war and democracy accounts for the nation--indeed, the world--we've inherited. Thrilling in scope and elegant in style and argument--a certain bet to win numerous awards. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
In this popular history of America, France, and Russia during the last decade of the 18th century, Winik (senior scholar, Sch. of Public Policy, Univ. of Maryland, College Park; April 1865) truly brings the age alive. Each chapter addresses one of these countries (the Ottoman Empire also surely deserved its own chapters instead of containment within the Russian chapter) but always weaves in perspectives relating to the others. Throughout, Winik offers dramatic flair without sacrificing fact. Readers will quickly get absorbed in the drama of America's early republic, not simply in isolation but in relation to the horrible war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The darkest hours of the French Revolution are seen here in their effect upon Catherine the Great of Russia. Winik reminds us just how extraordinary it was that America's government changed peacefully: party politics (Republicans vs. Federalists) did not plunge the nation into a full-scale revolution with the kind of massacres that occurred in France. The author uses mainly secondary sources, so the book would not appeal to upper-level graduate students, but the bibliographic notes at the end will help readers learn more about each topic. Highly recommended for all public, high school, and undergraduate libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/07.]-Bryan Craig, MLS, Nellysford, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
The Great Upheaval Chapter One America Soldiers marched that day in Manhattan. For almost as long as anyone could remember, the sight of soldiers had invariably meant the same thing, whether they were French or Russian, Austrian or English, whether they belonged to kings or were battle-hardened mercenaries, whether they moved in great formations or galloped along on horseback. Too often their presence was ominous, signaling that the campaign was beginning and the war was deepening, that the dead would increase and the bloodshed would continue, and the suffering would go on. But today their footsteps were unique, booming out the rites of nationhood. They called out a celebration of victory and the raising of the flag--the American flag. It was November 25, 1783. Evacuation Day in New York City. As morning broke, the crowds converged and the collective pulse quickened, murmuring with exhilaration. A hundred years later, the city would still remember and celebrate this day. By Manhattan's shores, the last British troops, heads bowed, dour and defeated, were ferried out to transport ships waiting for them in the harbor, then, sails aloft, their gleaming masts disappearing into the distance. For the British there was indescribable sorrow at the loss of their "thirteen beautiful provinces." And there was then, as one man remembered, "a deep stillness." And then pandemonium. This final corner of occupied territory was now free. It was precisely one o'clock. The bells of New York, all but silent since the Stamp Act's repeal and languishing for years in storage, now rang, while at the southern tip of the island, the flag, torn down in September 1776, was soon hoisted anew to flutter in the wind. All across the city, young and old alike collected in anticipation, by the corner of Broad and Pearl streets, where a roar of applause would ebb and mount, and over to Bowling Green, where in 1776 the Declaration of Independence was read and patriots had toppled the king's equestrian statue and hacked the gilded crown off his head. Handkerchiefs flapped and gawkers hung out their windows, down past Trinity Church, where desperate Americans had once quietly prayed for deliverance. And now, before a thicket of patriots, scores of battle-tested American troops entered to reclaim the city. Led by General Henry Knox and flanked on one side by a hatless George Washington, mounted upon a brilliant white steed, and by Governor George Clinton on the other, here they came. These were the survivors of Bunker Hill, the heroes who crossed the Delaware, the men who had shivered at Valley Forge, and the victors at Yorktown. They were "ill-clad and weather-beaten," but the people loved them just the same. Marching southward in formation under a velvety sky, the triumphant procession wound past Blue Bells Tavern, where Washington reviewed the pageantry, past half-ruined mansions where errant British flags still flew, and past the moldering earthworks and trenches that dotted the roads, down to the island's edge and the streets to the Battery. Crowds gasped and erupted into shouts of "Hurrah." A thirteen-gun salute exploded into the air, while artists and scribblers converged, ready to record the event for posterity. At Fort Washington, the password of the day was "peace." The eight-year war was over. The dawn of a new era had begun. From a distance, one British officer marveled, "The Americans are a curious . . . people; they know how to govern themselves, but nobody else can govern them." Yet the Revolution had been hard on the country. At least 25,000 Americans had died in the conflict--a staggering one percent of the population, a number surpassed only by the ruthless carnage of the Civil War--indeed, one estimate held that as many as 70,000 had perished. And there were the memories. Legions of American soldiers had been held captive aboard British prison ships anchored in the East River, ships that were damp, cold, and reeking from inadequate sanitation. The filth and the lice, the disease and malnutrition, not to mention the gross mistreatment, had carried off an astounding eleven thousand continentals--nearly half of all the deaths in the war itself. And with grim regularity, the bleached skulls and skeletons of the dead would lap up on the shore, bearing silent witness to British atrocities. In New York, after seven years of British rule and martial law, the city was a shambles, a legacy of the transforming burdens of war. The day's delirium aside, as the sun rose that morning, the vistas were chilling. The city was a patchwork of shanty huts and brick skeletons, remnants of the devastating fire of 1776. The enormity of the reconstruction challenge was overwhelming: In every direction spread weed-choked ruins, rotted-out homes, and vacant lots; and everywhere stood the debris of war. The streets overflowed with trash, squalor, and excrement, and block upon block lay bare and decrepit; New York had even been stripped of its fences and trees--the British troops used them for firewood--while its wharves had been left to rot and sink into the river. No less than Trinity Church was reduced to a blackened hull. Bony cows and pigs scavenged freely, and the people themselves were crammed into a haphazard mass of pitched tents and cramped hovels. Pale-faced and unwashed--disease-ridden too--they existed, in the words of one visitor, "like herrings in a barrel." No wonder New York's future mayor, John Duane, ruefully noted that the city looked as if it "had been inhabited by savages or wild beasts." And what now? In these early days--or the final ones, it depended upon your perspective of the British crown--the signs were hardly encouraging. For the Tory supporters of the king, the hallowed era of British rule had come to an inglorious end: Powerful businessmen and overseas merchants were without homes; prosperous shipbuilders had been reduced to nothing short of beggars; great politicians appointed by the crown saw their houses rummaged through and their family dynasties abruptly undone. And hordes of English-American children were cast aside by the only world they had ever known. Already, some 60,000 to 80,000 Tories had fled to England or to the safer outposts of Bermuda, the West Indies, and Canada. They knew that for thousands of American "patriots," Tories were little more than hated traitors; they also knew that vengeance, greed, and jingoism made for a lethal cocktail. Sunk in grief, many thus became permanent refugees in foreign lands, clinging vainly to the faint dream of return. Tragically, when the exiles made their way to Britain, more often than not they were viewed as public burdens or social embarrassments, or, in the end, as simply mere bores. "We Americans," one loyalist said gloomily, "are plenty here, and cheap." For those who remained, the dreaded Armageddon had finally arrived. Gone were the customary sights that had for so long been an integral part of their British lives--the elegant redcoats with their scarlet uniforms and burnished arms who were their defenders, the glory of the king and the glamour of their empire, the clatter of official carriages and the pitched whistles of British naval vessels that were the great empire's protector, and, of course, the long skyline adorned by the Union Jacks fluttering aloft; all had changed, absolutely and inexorably forever. At the moment of the British exodus, one anxious loyalist said tearfully, "The town now swarms with Americans." And the last loyalists themselves? The wreckage of their lives was soon to be revealed in vivid detail: homes seized and sold at auction; family furniture and precious heirlooms abandoned or outright ransacked; thieves callously picking over their personal effects; and shattered dishes littering the floors of once elegant abodes, everywhere the dishes. Most humiliating were the public notices, formally banning the exiles from ever returning to America--or the laws curtailing their civil and financial rights. And soon would come frightening incidents of revenge: One loyalist, seized by a mob in New London, was strung up by the neck aboard a dockside ship, whipped with a cat-o'-nine-tails, tarred and feathered, and thrown on a boat to New York. In South Carolina, another was hanged by embittered ex-neighbors. So on that morning the remaining loyalists numbly waited, listening to the haunting sound of American military men marching their way, the thud of enemy feet in the streets, the sharp commands ringing in the air--and the terrible echo of celebratory cannons off in the distance. One New Yorker even observed that the loyalists were now in "a perfect state of madness, drowning, shooting and hanging themselves." But euphoric Americans took little heed. As the loyalists escaped New York, packing the roads and crowding the wharves, a surge of new residents arrived, doubling the city's population in just two years and quickly turning this restless little seaport into the most vivacious and cosmopolitan society on America's shores. New Yorkers, indeed all Americans, were already looking ahead. Two days after Evacuation Day, George Washington, hugging his artillery commander, gave a tearful farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern. "With a heart full of love and gratitude," he told his officers, fighting back his emotions, "I now take leave of you." One of his men who witnessed the scene would recall that he had never seen such a moment "of sorrow and weeping." But more than that, they saw something else quite startling. Washington was sending out a powerful signal: To a man, they were all mere servants of the nation, even as he resisted calls to become a king. After crossing the Hudson, Washington then rode south through the gathering chill to Annapolis, Maryland, where the Congress was now meeting. Around noon on December 23, 1783, Washington was escorted into the State House, where he met the assembled delegates. He rose and bowed, and with a faint quiver in his hands, proceeded to read his carefully chosen words. "Having now finished the work assigned me . . ." His voice dwindled. He continued: ". . . I retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body . . . I here offer my commission and take my leave." Now his eyes filled. Neither the heartbreaking loss of New York, or the brazen victory at Trenton, nor the winter nightmares of Valley Forge and Morristown, or the decisive liberation at Yorktown, could have prepared him for this moment inside these hushed chambers. The spectators, fighting back their own tears, also grasped the importance of the day, itself replete with symbolism: For once more, Washington was relinquishing his military power, underscoring civilian control in the new republic. In London, King George III was soberly informed that Washington would resign and turn to private life. His reply is legendary. "If he does that, sir," the king exclaimed, no doubt with a slight tremble to his voice, "he will be the greatest man in the world." From a king who could barely hear the words "United States" uttered in his presence and who would turn his back on Thomas Jefferson, this was a subtle admission packed with historic meaning. American liberty was now not simply a rhetorical chant mouthed to stay the hands of a prevaricating despot or a corrupted parliament, but a reality. And this incipient revolution was, it seemed, not destined solely for Americans, but for peoples the world over, and, at long last, it was coming into full reveal. In the epicenter of Europe in 1783, France, now the globe's mightiest empire, felt it too. It was a paradox, to be sure. Even if France's support for the young rebels had far less to do with idealism than with a cynical settling of scores with England, and even if the young country to which the monarchy had helped give birth remained a footnote in its attentions, France's fashionable society felt quite differently. Heroic poems with thirteen stanzas became the rage. So were picnics on the thirteenth of the month, in which thirteen toasts to the Americans were drunk. And so were the hundreds of French nobles who had rushed abroad and risked death so that a young republic might live: the Marquis de Lafayette, who would achieve immortality as George Washington's protégé and nearly lose his life at the battle of Brandy-wine; Admiral d'Estaing, who would take Newport and almost die in the struggles to take Savannah; and Admiral Rochambeau, who would eschew the lavish comfort of the French court for one last glorious crusade to fight side by side with the Americans. The Great Upheaval . Copyright © by Jay Winik. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 by Jay Winik All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
