**A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICEA magisterial new work that rewrites the story of America's founding**The American Revolution is often portrayed as an orderly, restrained rebellion, with brave patriots defending their noble ideals against an oppressive empire. It’s a stirring narrative, and one the founders did their best to encourage after the war. But as historian Holger Hoock shows in this deeply researched and elegantly written account of America’...

Between the mid-18th and mid-19th centuries, Britain evolved from a substantial international power yet relative artistic backwater into a global superpower and a leading cultural force in Europe. In this original and wide-ranging book, Hoock illuminates the manifold ways in which the culture of power and the power of culture were interwoven in this period of dramatic change.Britons invested artistic and imaginative effort to come to terms with the loss of the American colonies; to...

**A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICEA magisterial new work that rewrites the story of America's founding**The American Revolution is often portrayed as an orderly, restrained rebellion, with brave patriots defending their noble ideals against an oppressive empire. It’s a stirring narrative, and one the founders did their best to encourage after the war. But as historian Holger Hoock shows in this deeply researched and elegantly written account of America’...