Joyce Appleby.
Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000 (paperback edition 2001).
Book information:
publisher,
Amazon.com.
This book is
not the kind of descriptive social history that one finds in Jack Larkin's
The Reshaping of Everyday Life, 1790 - 1840. The author based her work upon the autobiographies of individuals born during the period 1776 - 1800. However, as reviewers at
Amazon.com have noted, the author indulges in vast generalizations on the basis of this sampling of anecdotal autobiographical materials. She makes claims for significant changes in social behavior which she presents as characteristic of this period; many of these changes seem more like the usual inter-generational conflicts that have occurred throughout history, that are repeated with each generation, and are not necessarially particular to the United States. The author sees the United States in the early Nineteenth Century through the prisms of simple dichotomies: male
vs. female, young
vs. old, black
vs. white, property (land and/or capital)
vs. labor, free
vs. slave, patriarchy
vs. feminism, North
vs. South. The author seems to deliberately underappreciate/avoid/ignore the large sub-structure of existing society that underlie the light froth of innovation that occurred during the period she considers. I keep refering to
the author because I find that the book is more about the author's interpretations rather than a description of early Nineteenth Century American society. Of course the book is well written and informative, with abundant references to primary and secondary sources. However, I think one should look elsewhere for a history of American society during the early Nineteenth Century.