Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson

Rating:
Summary: Good theme, too many facts
Review: I was assigned this book for AP U.S. History class and was excited to read a book that focused on the point of view of a loyalist during the pre-revolutionary era instead of the typical rebel point of view that we've studied in the past. I reccommend this book to anyone who likes alternative points of view on possibly controversial subjects. The only drawback, the reason I did not give it four or five stars, is that it gives a lot of facts from the era like specific act names. I don't deem these things important when trying to understand where a loyalist in this area is coming from.

Rating:
Summary: Good theme, too many facts
Review: I was assigned this book for AP U.S. History class and was excited to read a book that focused on the point of view of a loyalist during the pre-revolutionary era instead of the typical rebel point of view that we've studied in the past. I reccommend this book to anyone who likes alternative points of view on possibly controversial subjects. The only drawback, the reason I did not give it four or five stars, is that it gives a lot of facts from the era like specific act names. I don't deem these things important when trying to understand where a loyalist in this area is coming from.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent contribution to Revolutionary history
Review: I'll cheerfully agree with the reviewer below who claims that Bailyn's biography of Thomas Hutchinson, who was a fixture in Massachusetts politics for the last two decades of the colonial period and who was the loyalist governor of the province at the time of the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party, presupposes a general knowledge of American Revolutionary History and the acts of Parliament which figured so prominently in it. In fact, I'll go a step further and say that one's enjoyment of this book would be greatly enhanced by reading two of Bailyn's other works which provide the scholarly framework for Bailyn's argument in this book: THE IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION and THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN POLITICS. Bailyn's central argument in this book is that Hutchinson, the prototypical Loyalist, failed because he could never conceptually understand the ideological underpinnings of his opponents' thought. He was convinced that a small group of demogogues motivated by base self-interest had managed to convince the populace at large that the British government was plotting against them and their God-given rights when it was clear to Hutchinson that all notions of a perfidious British plot were absolutely ridiculous. Unfortunately, Hutchinson's analysis of the situation was severely flawed, and Hutchinson's failure to understand his opponents made him incapable of convincing them that they were in error.

Bailyn is the foremost living historian of the American Revolution, and this book is what one would expect from someone of Bailyn's stature. It's wonderfully researched and wonderfully written, and it truly is a joy to read. It's not the first book that one should read about the American Revolution, but it's certainly on the list.