A magisterial new work that rewrites the story of America's
founding
Holger Hoock was educated at Freiburg and Cambridge and received his doctorate from Oxford. He currently serves as the J. Carroll Amundson Professor of British History and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. His previous books include Empires of the Imagination and The King's Artists. An elected fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Hoock has recently been a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress; visiting scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford; and senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, University of Konstanz.
"Drawing upon impressive research, [Hoock] makes a fluent, original
and thought-provoking contribution to American Revolutionary
scholarship.… Hoock compellingly argues that the era was
characterized by far more pervasive brutality—both physical and
psychological—than prevailing perceptions of a high-minded fight
for liberty might suggest…. Well-crafted vignettes reveal how the
violence unleashed by the Revolution spread far and wide, leaving
few communities immune from its effects."
—The Wall Street Journal
“Unsparing... a fine new book.”
—The Economist
"[R]evelatory... Scars of Independence [forces] readers to confront
the visceral realities of a conflict too often bathed in warm,
nostalgic light.... [Hoock] marshals a good deal of startling new
evidence, the fruits of prodigious research in British archives too
rarely used by historians of colonial America.... The myth of an
America conceived in love and sprung fully formed from the thigh of
George Washington misshapes our present as much as it distorts our
past. Hoock’s research casts a startling light on that primal
scene. We must not turn away."
—Jane Kamensky, The New York Times Book Review
"[A] sobering corrective to the sanitized version of the American
Revolution passed down through generations.... [and] a fascinating
case study in the power of myth-making.... Scars of Independence
eschews comforting good/bad dichotomies in favor of assessing the
past in all its complexity and ambiguity.... [A] balanced,
unvarnished portrait."
—The Boston Globe
"Certainly, no reader will ever be able to imagine the Revolution
again as the pop-gun pageantry ... instilled in us [as] kids....
Hoock makes the wise point that, given what wars of national
liberation are actually like, Americans should perhaps be disabused
of our enthusiasm for nation-building and democracy exportation....
The Revolution, he shows, was far more brutal than our usual memory
of it allows."
—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
"[O]utstanding and long-overdue... [Scars of Independence] dares to
look beyond the principles and perceptions of righteousness that
pervade much of the popular literature on the subject, illustrating
that the operational aspects of the war were fraught with
atrocities and injustices... that were committed by all sides."
—Journal of the American Revolution
"A fresh approach to a well-trod subject... Deeply researched and
buttressed by extensive useful endnotes, this is history that will
appeal to both scholars and general readers. The author presents
his grim narrative in language that is vivid without becoming
lurid... An accomplished, powerful presentation of the American
Revolution as it was, rather than as we might wish to remember
it.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“Hoock has written a history of violence in the Revolutionary War
that is as fascinating as it is enlightening.”
—Library Journal (starred)
“In this bracing and convincing book, Holger Hoock gives
us an original and thought-provoking account of the violent nature
of the founding of our country. We cannot understand our past or
our present without grappling with the profound issues
that Hoock raises here.”
—Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American
Lion and Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
“This timely, powerful book reveals a side of America's founding
too often forgotten: the American Revolution was our first civil
war, and the United States that emerged long bore its scars. I have
read no account of the conflict that so impressively shows how the
violence of this war touched all Americans: patriot and loyalist,
enslaved and free, indigenous and
colonial. Hoock's careful research and vivid writing
bring to life a history at once gripping, challenging, and
essential.”
—Maya Jasanoff, Harvard University, and author
of Liberty’s Exiles
“As Americans we’d prefer to believe our revolution was inherently
different from everybody else’s—that it was more about eloquent
speeches in the halls of the Continental Congress than violence and
bloodshed. But as Holger Hoock reveals, it took a brutal,
soul-damaging war to bring our country into being. Scars of
Independence is a revelatory examination of the long and bloody
conflict that came to define in so many deeply troubling ways what
America would become.”
—Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Valiant
Ambition
"Hoock strikes an effective balance between description and broader
historical analysis, crafting a gripping narrative that holds
appeal for general audiences and historians alike."
—Publishers Weekly
“This striking history exposes the grim realities behind America’s
origin myth. But it is not an exercise in disillusionment or
cynicism. By describing the Revolutionary War as it really
happened, Hoock adds vividness and realism to implausible
legends of heroes and saints. He sheds light on divisions that
shape the world today, and most important, he reminds us how far
we’ve come.”
—Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard
University, and author of The Better Angels of Our
Nature
“In this deeply researched and indeed harrowing book,
Holger Hoock strips away the easy language of patriotic
memory and explains just how cruel a war the American Revolution
often proved, with quarter denied to prisoners, women and girls
exposed to the horror of rape, and communities often degenerating
into civil war. No historian before Hoock has made the
experience of violence so central a theme of the
Revolution.”
—Jack Rakove, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Original
Meanings and Revolutionaries
“From the scalding tar poured on merchants and customs officials to
the public stripping of women suspected of loyalist sympathies,
Holger Hoock’s deep research and gripping prose expose
the frightening violence of the American Revolution and overturn
the sentimental myth of our nation’s bloodless
birth.”
—Kathleen DuVal, University of North Carolina, and author
of Independence Lost
“Engrossing… This is difficult but necessary reading, a book that
reminds us that victory in our ‘Glorious Cause’ came at a terrible
cost.”
—Booklist
“It is difficult to extricate the Revolutionary War from the
romance of national mythology, but Holger Hoock offers an
important correction in Scars of Independence, the first book
to examine the tragic and shocking role of violence in the
conflict.”
—Andrew O’Shaughnessy, University of Virginia, and author
of The Men Who Lost America
“Scars of Independence is a brilliant comprehensive history of
the Revolutionary War that accents how this bloody and destructive
conflict touched the lives of ordinary men and women.
Holger Hoock’s account goes beyond well-known Founding
Fathers at war to show the violence and terror that befell soldiers
and civilians on both sides. This is an important book that should
be read by all who seek a better understanding of the true nature
of America’s War of Independence.”
—John Ferling, author of Whirlwind: The American
Revolution and the War That Won It
“War by definition is about violence, but
Holger Hoock’s brilliantly written book is perhaps the
first to use violence as its main focus for understanding the War
of American Independence. He highlights some truly shocking
instances of violence—on both sides—in a gripping (if at times
stomach-churning) account. All students of the American Revolution
and its war should read this book.”
—Stephen Conway, University College London, and author of The
British Isles and the War of American Independence
"The America of Scars of Independence is both a philosophy and a
country in the process of being invented, one that looks a lot more
like the one we live in today than any version we’ve seen
before."
—Under the Radar
"In this American Revolution, neighbors killed neighbors. Patriots
slaughtered American Indians, and vice versa. British soldiers
committed mass atrocities on the battlefield. Loyalists were
tarred, feathered and worse by Patriot mobs. Hoock plays no
favorites as he makes clear through copious research that there was
nothing clean about the Revolution. It was messy, complicated
business, drenched in blood. It was, after all, war."
—Dallas Morning News
"[Hoock] vividly presents a grittier, unvarnished narrative of
'America’s first civil war'.... After this, readers will see
America’s war for independence in an altogether new light."
—Fort Worth Star Telegram
“While the many romantic and sanitized versions of the American
Revolution present it as a just and idealistic war... Hoock
presents a much more complex and nuanced story of
American-on-American violence.... [An] important and corrective
account.”
—MHQ Magazine
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