About this title: The question at the heart of The Cousins Wars is this: How did Anglo-America evolve over a mere three hundred years from a small Tudor kingdom into a global community with such a hegemonic grip on the world today, while no other European power - Spain, France, Germany, or Russia - did? The answer to this, according to Phillips, lies in a close ...
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Description: Fine. Trade Paperback. Basic Books, 2000. Fine Book. Overall, a clean and tight, lightly read copy. Media mail packed in protective bubble lined shipping bags, Priority in a Flat Rate Envelope. Shipped quickly. Prompt response to questions. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Basic Books, New York
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780465013708ISBN:0465013708
Description: Not Issued jacket. 1999, 1st printing, Basic Books paperback in FINE condition; no dust jacket as issued. Very tight binding; square; no edge wear; no spine or hinge crease; clean, bright pages; no marks. 707 p. (2689) (scanned image is of actual book) read more
Description: Near Fine; Basic Books; 1999; Softcover. 0465013708. Illustrated with maps. An admirably feisty, take-no-prisoners book, in the spirit of Oliver Cromwell and William Tecumseh Sherman, of its leading characters, and one that serious students of English and American history ought not to miss.; 8vo 8"-9" tall; 707 pp. read more
Edition: Number Line 1098765432
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Basic Books
Date Published: 2000
ISBN-13:9780465013708ISBN:0465013708
Description: Near Very Good/Exception. No Jacket. 9 1/4 X 6 X 2. Pages are tight, bright & clean, slight fade. Binding firm and straight. Covers, spine, edges and corners good. No conspicuous wear, EXCEPTION: small faint edge stain. 707 pages, afterword, appendix, notes, bibliography & indexed. If needed for reference, research, analysis, dissertation or just enjoyment this is the one. Illustrated with maps & figures. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Basic Books
Date Published: 2000-01-06
ISBN-13:9780465013708ISBN:0465013708
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780465013708. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Date Published: 2000
ISBN-13:9780465013708ISBN:0465013708
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Description: Very Good. 0465013708 Religion, Politics & the Triumph of Anglo America "a brilliant examination of the political and religious underpinnings of Anglo-America. " Sean Wilentz, Professor of History, Princeton. read more
Description: Good. Only lightly used. Book has minimal wear to cover and binding. A few pages may have small creases and minimal underlining. Book selection as BIG as Texas. read more
Description: Good. Only lightly used. Book has minimal wear to cover and binding. A few pages may have small creases and minimal underlining. Book selection as BIG as Texas. read more
"I wanted to love this because I think it's a fascinating angle, but his style is SO disjointed. SO. I had to re-read whole paragraphs because of obtuse or bulky language, and when he did try to inject some personality, you just got the sense that he was a stuffy old man with no sense of humor. So, I'll continue to look for books on the subject, but I'll probably avoid books by Phillips."
"Some interesting points drawing English civil war, US revolution, and US civil war together along religious and social lines, but very tedious at points."
"Kevin Phillips takes a very broad view of English and American history, showing how they are intertwined on on the basis of language, religion and region. His premise is that the English Civil War, American Revolution and American Civil War were basically civil wars of the English-speaking peoples, pitting egalitarian low-church Protestantism (with its associate factors of capitalism and trade) against high-church elitism, often aligned with the Crown and aristocracy, hierarchical and privilege-based.
Rather than looking at these wars as isolated from one another and limited to one side of the ocean, Phillips sees a dynamic feedback loop between America and Britain, as political crisis in one will often affect the other. Religious dissenters colonize America and send their young men back to the mother country to fight the crown alongside dissenters in England. American rebellion finds a sympathetic ear in London, which sees a victory by the Crown a threat to their freedoms, too. The American civil war, pitting the egalitarian North against the aristocratic South, finds its echoes in working class Britain, also agitating for reform and enlargement of the franchise.
This active feedback loop between the peoples of the new country and old slowly but surely build up to an "Anglo-American Triumph," yielding democratic capitalism as the dominant political culture throughout the west and English as a world language.
As readers, we prefer our primary books to be focused on a particular period or event in history. Our first reads will be ECW, AWI or ACW. "Cousins' War" is a secondary book that is read for background and context. Phillips dares to swing for the fences, trying to write a very broad-brush overview of three centuries of politics turned violent and the changes that rippled from each massive self-inflicted blow.
This is the book you read after reading about the wars.
Phillips' writing style is a bit dry. The eloquent turn of phrase is rare. His analysis, sharpened by decades of drilling down into election returns, distills much from demography as it affects democracy. Who lives where and what church they go to will often affect what side they take when the shooting starts. It would have been all too easy to compile all this census data and explain it all in dry clinical terms. Such a read would have been less exciting than watching paint dry. Phillips breaths life into it, seeing factors that affect history to this day.
That "special relationship" between Roosevelt and Churchill grew from seeds planted at Edgehill and Naseby.
I'd give "Cousins War" a very solid three stars. Again, use this book as a "tie together" after doing your first readings on the wars themselves."
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