Why read American Honor?

Book cover of American Honor: The Creation of the Nation's Ideals during the Revolutionary Era

Book description

The American Revolution was not only a revolution for liberty and freedom, it was also a revolution of ethics, reshaping what colonial Americans understood as "honor" and "virtue." As Craig Bruce Smith demonstrates, these concepts were crucial aspects of Revolutionary Americans' ideological break from Europe and shared by all ranks…

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American history

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Why read it?

1 author picked American Honor as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

David Head

Author

Mention “honor” in an 18th-century context, and most people think of dueling. Honor was about dueling, but it was also about much more. As Smith shows, a sense of honored suffused the 18th-century world. Different understandings of what honor meant helped propel the separation between Britain and its colonies. Smith takes the Founders' ideals seriously. Though they often fell short, knowing what they aimed for provides key insight into the mental universe they inhabited—and the legacy the left the new nation.

From David's list on The best books to understand what made American Revolution soldiers tick.