Reviews for Autre temps, autres moeurs

The average rating for Autre temps, autres moeurs based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-11-24 00:00:00 Scotty Helmut One of the best books on American government I've ever read. This was not exactly a school book, but one of my teachers kept recommending it so frequently and so heartily that I had to give it a try, even if its not exactly in my field. He was right. It is just an amazing piece of work. It's an intellectual history of sorts, except there are practically no individual characters or thinkers. Most of the innumerable quotes come from a barely distinguished mass of newspapers and private correspondence. A typical paragraph may contain phrases from five papers, 2 diaries, and James Madison, all attributed only in the footnotes. But this is kind of the genius of the work. Wood tries to show how an entirely new way of political thought was created and spread in the ten turbulent years after independence, not just among a few thinkers, but among the whole American people. He begins by describing the old "civic republican" ideology that motivated the early revolutionaries (where government was composed of 3 distinct estates (not branches), focused almost entirely on the legislature, and run by disinterested public men of virtue), and then discusses the rise of a new, modern conception of politics (where separation of powers was paramount, and all sovereignty rested not in the "rulers" but in the people). These are all big ideas, but Wood shows how America in this decade was peculiarly placed to wrestle with them. He focuses on the hitherto neglected debates over state constitutions, which forced every American to think about what a bicameral legislature meant, where the appointive power should lie, and how much power judges should be given to interpret the law. In Woods' story it seems that the whole country for ten years was engaged in one massive, and shockingly intelligent, constitutional debate. But more than just a debate, Wood shows an how this intellectual discussion was rooted in real events. He shows how state legislatures rose and fell, and, most importantly, how people actually LEARNED from the mistakes of the past, and how new arguments based on these events (say, on the nature of the upper house or "Senate") took thinkers in directions they never would have expected. When the time finally came for a new, federal constitution in 1787, Americans had already formulated some of the most daring and original political thought on the planet, and they were ready to implement it. For me the book finally answered the question of how early America produced so many great political thinkers in what was then such a small, provincial backwater. The answer is that 10 years of highly refined discussion about the nature of colonial, state, and federal government made Americans perhaps the most experienced political thinkers to ever walk the earth. As Wood shows, they forged the world's first real constitution (he also shows how the very concept of a constitution was born and evolved), and created some of the most enduring thoughts about politics ever. The problem is that because this thought was scattered in countless pamphlets and papers, historians of political science haven't given these everyday Americans the credit they give to Locke or Montesquieu. Wood remedies the defect, and shows how Americans truly created something new under the sun, and how their seemingly abstract thoughts on things like national sovereignty and virtual representation had a real, and lasting, impact.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-03 00:00:00 Freddy Morell Update I now give this a 3 Still a good history of the political thought and ideas which led to the United States government of 1787. The idea is different enough to be interesting. The pace is solid with few digressions. The writing is readable for the most part although knowledge of certain concepts seems assumed. The viewpoint is detached as the sources and Framers and pundits of the times largely speak for themselves in nicely done paraphrase. The analysis seems well grounded, though it helps to know the sources where the material is drawn. This book did meet my expectations and I thoroughly enjoyed it. They don’t write sweeping balanced narrative history anymore… I give this one a 4. It’s interesting readable and I learned some new nuances of the political thought behind the founding of the American Republic.