Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America

by Edmund S. Morgan

Overview

"The best explanation that I have seen for our distinctive combination of faith, hope and naiveté concerning the governmental process." —Michael Kamman, Washington Post

This book makes the provocative case here that America has remained politically stable because the Founding Fathers invented the idea of the American people and used it to impose a government on the new nation. His landmark analysis shows how the notion of popular sovereignty—the unexpected offspring of an older, equally fictional notion, the "divine right of kings"—has worked in our history and remains a political force today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393347494
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/08/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Lexile:	1570L (what's this?)
File size:	662 KB

About the Author

Edmund S. Morgan (1916–2013) was the Sterling Professor Emeritus at Yale University and the recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the Pulitzer Prize, and the American Academy’s Gold Medal. He was the author of The Genuine Article; American Slavery, American Freedom; Benjamin Franklin; and American Heroes, among many other books.

Editorial Reviews

[A] provocative new study. . . . In a series of brilliant chapters, [Morgan] probes the myths that sustained eighteenth-century American notions of liberty.— Keith Thomas

Edmund S. Morgan . . . [is] a man with a rare gift for telling the story of the past simply and elegantly without sacrificing its abundant complexity. . . . The story he tells is of enormous interest and importance.— Pauline Meier

From the Publisher