“From one of America’s most astute scholars comes an extraordinarily rich study of the ideas that propelled the United States into existence, and to greatness. C. Bradley Thompson understands not just that ideas have consequences, but that, a quarter of a millennium later, the revolutionary mind retains its relevance.”

“Behind the American Constitution is the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s ‘apple of gold’ in a ‘picture of silver.’ Brad Thompson here explains the apple of gold, the American revolutionary mind, and how to recover its moral power as well as its principles from the studied denigration current today. With strong argument, broad evidence, and shining clarity, this is a book that will last.”

“America’s Revolutionary Mind is a tour de force that vastly expands our understanding of the ideas that launched the American Revolution. Thompson goes beyond the groundbreaking intellectual histories by Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood by explaining how Americans came to embrace Enlightenment ideas about human nature, reason, and moral principles in the years preceding 1776.”

“Since Bernard Bailyn’s and Gordon Wood’s work a half century ago, no study has appeared that takes us on so fruitful a voyage of rethinking, at a deep level, the moral, civic, and cultural causes and meaning of the Revolutionary era.”

“Thompson’s stunning new interpretation of the American Revolution restores the Declaration of Independence as the clearest window into Americans’ thoughts regarding their rightful relationship with Great Britain—as well as with each other. Cogent and compelling, his careful analysis of the ideas and events leading to independence amounts to the best intellectual history of the Revolution in years.”