To read this book you need to be fully awake and have full concentration. This is not the type of book to bring to the beach. Though Richard Hofstadter makes a convincing case of what colonial times were like and he obviously was a scholar, he writes very monotonously. if not thouroughly interested in american history at 1750 i would not recommend this book. otherwise, if you are a history-fanatic, this book gives a wide range of perspectives and fully covers the history of the time.

Unless you are under obligation to read this for some sort of class, I would not recomend wasting yout time trying to wade through the quagmire of redundantly long, boring text. If I could pay attention to it for more than two sentences at a time, most likely I would find it to have a wealth of information; but it's dry, overly-intellecual style makes it impossible to stay interested. If you're looking for a challenge to read, you face two; deciphering the nealry 300 pages of rediculously long sentences, and staying awake. I even go so far as to say reading it is a complete waste of time, because the energy you must invest to understand this work' coupled witht the frustration of an endlessly boring stlye does not even compared to the information you will actually get out of it.

This is a magnificent work of historical imagination. Hofstadter's last book, it was what was to begin a much larger, possibly three volume epic on the social conditions of America at distinctive periods in our history. And while this book is missing the fuller vision of a more articulated society, the chapters that are present are truly alive with insight and understanding of the way things probably were. Here we see the slave trade not just from a one-sided arcadia, but from every side, from the profiteers and the oppressed, from the African kings selling their nation to the early-day abolitionists mildly arguing their case. We see the white slaves too, the pains and humiliations of indentured servitude to the hearts and minds of men believing themselves at the very least a step up from inhumanity.

Then there is the middle class of the pre-revolutionary colonies, filled with religious fanatics and patriotic zealots, all of them looking to make a buck. We see that this class formed the basic foundations of the nation to come and how the politicians of the day catered mostly to this hardly regal, far-reaching group of normal, everyday folks. This chapter, perhaps, gives the fullest picture of the society that was that went on to create the society we are today.

And then there is a long discussion of the church and the 'Great Awakening' that plundered through the minds of so many post-witch hunting citizens. These chapters explain the foundations that led not just to a seperation of church and state, but to the required need for religious diversity and how this principle, above all else, came to found our subsequent ideas on American freedom.

A glorious, neccessary book, it makes one mourn for this already celebrated historian and wonder what might have been (and regardless of that annoying cliche, one can't help but think in such basic praise dialect when finishing).