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Bernard Bailyn

Bernard Bailyn is Adams University Professor Emeritus at ­Harvard. His most recent books are The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America—The Conflict of Civilizations, 1600­–1675 and Sometimes an Art: Nine Essays on History. 
(August 2015)

IN THE REVIEW

Hot Dreams of Liberty

Thomas Paine advertising his services ‘to any nation or people under heaven who are Desirous of Liberty & Equality’; cartoon by Isaac Cruikshank, 1792

Revolutions Without Borders: The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World

by Janet Polasky
That subject—the common, comparative, and interactive aspects of the lives of the people in the four continents that surround the Atlantic basin, which lies at the heart of Polasky’s book—has had a remarkable recent history. Based on the concept that the Atlantic region can be viewed as a whole, as …

How England Became Modern: A Revolutionary View

William III and Mary II, from the Guild Book of Barber Surgeons of York. The portrait may have celebrated their coronation in 1689 after England’s Glorious Revolution.

1688: The First Modern Revolution

by Steve Pincus
Some years ago two gifted young historians of Britain made a deal. Both were working on major studies of the English Revolution of 1688, commonly if inconsistently known as the Glorious Revolution. Both believed that what happened in 1688–1689 was a radical, major, transformative event too often written off as …

An American Tragedy

The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities

by Colin G. Calloway
The American Revolution in Indian Country is an important and frustrating book, at once original and derivative, scholarly and polemical, subtle and obvious. It is a searing account of the impact of the Revolution on Indian life. The prologue, conclusion, and epilogue are highly readable, broadly interpretative, and moving; as …