The Rise of American Civilization

by Charles A. Beard, Mary Ritter Beard, Wilfred Jones (Decorations)

Originally published in two volumes (The Agricultural Era in 1927 & The Industrial Era in 1930); this one volume edition, with its new introduction, was published in 1930.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

1670 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

American historian and educator Charles Austin Beard explored the aspects in works, such as An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution in 1913; self-interests of formulators based the document in his view, which profoundly affected the study.

Mary Ritter Beard shared economic view of history of Charles Austin Beard, her husband, and they collaborated on first volume in 1927 of The Rise of American Civilization , which characterized northern capitalists, who perpetrated the Civil War as the "second American Revolution" over southern plantation owners for gain.

shared her husband Charles's economic view of history and collaborated with him on The Rise of American Civilization (first volume 1927), in which they characterized the Civil War as the "second American Revolution," perpetrated by Northern capitalists over Southern plantation owners for economic gain


Charles Austin Beard with Frederick Jackson Turner most influenced of the first half of the 20th century. He published hundreds of monographs and textbooks in political science. He included a radical re-evaluation and thought of more than philosophical principles that motivated the Founding Fathers of the United States. Charles Austin Beard with Mary Ritter Beard, his wife, wrote the wide-ranging and bestselling The Rise of American Civilization , most influential major book, in 1927.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...

Reviews

[Lora Shouse]

Pretty good for a history book. Their organizing view of history is that it is a sort of conflict (sometimes pretty mild, other times downright vicious) between people who get their living in two different types of ways. There are a number of different sub-groups, and the alignment of the sub-groups (and what the groups are) changes over time and based on other circumstances. It isn't just rich vs. poor or capitalists vs. labor, although those are some of the groups. Much of American history up to the point where the book ends was dominated by conflict between planters and farmers on the one hand and manufacturers and merchants (later industrialists) on the other. It was interesting to see the interests of western farmers diverging from those of southern planters shortly before the Civil Was (which they call the second American Revolution). Doubtless they were somewhat influenced in their views by the rise of Communism and the popularity of Socialism shortly before the book was written.

Also interesting is their reporting on the events and state of affairs in the country in the early twentieth century (the book was published around 1930) when the Depression had just barely begun and World War II was no closer than summer thunder. The last political event they record was the election of Franklin Roosevelt. All of the changes that have happened since then they don't know about. But it does allow them a chance to cover a little more thoroughly some of the earlier events and people that a more recent chronicle of American History would have to skip or only mention in passing in order to get to some of the later history.

[Clarice Respecter]

fucking LONG goddamn

Has the virtue of actually talking about the economic friction between north and south. I kind of get why LMM wrote Hamilton now.