Category Archives: Revolutions

NEW! Rick Reiman Narrates Chapter 6, “The New Nation,” from “The American Yawp,” a Free OER American History Textbook

American HIstory, Politics, Revolutions, U.S. Constitution, United States history

In many ways, I regard this as my best recording of a chapter from “The American Yawp” yet.  I have deleted nothing from the text edited by its editors, Joseph Locke and Ben Wright.  I have added passages of my own where I think additions were needed to clarify what the original authors were trying to say. I have also added passages that connect the era of “The New Nation” with the trials and tensions America is experiencing today.  For example I connect the majesty of America’s example in displaying the peaceful transition of power in the “revolution of 1800” which saw the Democratic-Republican Party receive power in 1800 from the Federalist Party without violence, and the more than 200 years of like examples to follow, with the disgrace of January 6, 2021, when President Donald Trump despoiled this legacy and broke that legacy so important not only to the United States but the whole world.  These allusions between past and present are mine, and they are also true.

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One of the Great Essays in American History: Crevecoeur’s “What, Then, is this New Man, the American?

American HIstory, Audio narration, Revolutions

Hector St. John de Crevecouer, a French immigrant to American wrote this classic essay, “What, Then, is this New Man, the American?” in 1782, as American Independence from Britain loomed.  Was he correct in his descriptions of Americans then?  Do his descriptions accurately describe Americans today?  How was he wrong then, if he was, and how do his descriptions fail to characterize Americans today, if indeed they do?

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Unit 2, Episode 2: Comparing the American Revolution and the French Revolution

Revolutions, Unit 2, Western Civ
Why did the American Revolution stop being a revolution and, in the words of historian Eugen Weber, the French Revolution by contrast became an avalanche of social change? Why was it that the American Revolution escaped the fate of all other revolutions, and did not become, like the French Revolution, a prelude to a violent overturning of the social order? Listen (or read) here for my answer.

Click here for a Transcript of this Episode

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Unit 2 Overview: The Age of Revolutions and Romanticism, 1776-1848

Revolutions, Unit 2, Western Civ

 

n this brief overview, we preview the other podcasts in this episode, which define the ideas of liberalism, nationalism and romanticism, and we preview their role as triggers of two very different kinds of revolution in the nineteenth century to come.

n this brief overview, we preview the other podcasts in this episode, which define the ideas of liberalism, nationalism and romanticism, and we preview their role as triggers of two very different kinds of revolution in the nineteenth century to come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Podcast: Embed