For the last couple of months as I re-read books I have on American colonial history I have been afraid to google Bernard Bailyn for fear he had died. Just now, as I was re-reading his The Barbarous Years I had to know. I was afraid I was going to see a "Died:---" underneath "Born: September 9, 1922" on his Wikipedia page. But...no "Died:".
Professor Bailyn, all of his academic life, has been the preeminent historian of the period and it is not even close. I have read two books by one of his most prominent students and I have learned from them. However, I have been more frequently aggravated by them. Every book that I have read by any other author has disappointed in comparison with The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution which I had the great good fortune to read as a young man in graduate school.
Frequently, I took Origins with me when I traveled or was working elsewhere. To my utter exasperation somewhere in the last few months I lost it. So typical of me. Too embarrassed to admit defeat I convinced myself that it would eventually turn up. It did not. So, a couple of weeks ago I waved the white flag and ordered a replacement from Barnes and Noble. It arrived in my mailbox last week. "How could it fit in my mailbox? I thought as I wedged it out. "It wasn't this thin." as I held it in my hands and took the elevator up to my unit. I tore the packaging open in the kitchen and,
A MACAT ANALYSIS
BERNARD BAILYN'S
THE IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
A Cliff Notes-like version. All of sixty-nine pages long.
It is still there on the kitchen counter. Some day, maybe today, I will order the real thing.
“If you are lucky enough to have read Bailyn as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, he stays with you, for Bailyn is a moveable feast.”
Professor Bailyn, all of his academic life, has been the preeminent historian of the period and it is not even close. I have read two books by one of his most prominent students and I have learned from them. However, I have been more frequently aggravated by them. Every book that I have read by any other author has disappointed in comparison with The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution which I had the great good fortune to read as a young man in graduate school.
Frequently, I took Origins with me when I traveled or was working elsewhere. To my utter exasperation somewhere in the last few months I lost it. So typical of me. Too embarrassed to admit defeat I convinced myself that it would eventually turn up. It did not. So, a couple of weeks ago I waved the white flag and ordered a replacement from Barnes and Noble. It arrived in my mailbox last week. "How could it fit in my mailbox? I thought as I wedged it out. "It wasn't this thin." as I held it in my hands and took the elevator up to my unit. I tore the packaging open in the kitchen and,
A MACAT ANALYSIS
BERNARD BAILYN'S
THE IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
A Cliff Notes-like version. All of sixty-nine pages long.
It is still there on the kitchen counter. Some day, maybe today, I will order the real thing.
“If you are lucky enough to have read Bailyn as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, he stays with you, for Bailyn is a moveable feast.”
