Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free
Written by John Ferling
Narrated by Robert Fass
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
Other books have been written about the Declaration of Independence, but no author has traced the political journey from protest to revolution with the narrative scope and flair of John Ferling. Independence takes listeners from the cobblestones of Philadelphia into the halls of Parliament, where many sympathized with the Americans and furious debate erupted over how to deal with the rebellion. Independence is not only the story of how freedom was won, but how an empire was lost.
At this remarkable moment in history, high-stakes politics was intertwined with a profound debate about democracy, governance, and justice. John Ferling, drawing on a lifetime of scholarship, brings this passionate struggle to life as no other historian could. Independence will be hailed as the finest work yet from the author Michael Beschloss calls "a national resource."
John Ferling
John Ferling is professor emeritus of history at the University of West Georgia. He is the author of many books on the American Revolution, including The Ascent of George Washington; Almost a Miracle; A Leap in the Dark; Whirlwind, a finalist for the 2015 Kirkus Book Prize; and, most recently, Apostles of Revolution: Jefferson, Paine, Monroe, and the Struggle Against the Old Order in America and Europe. He and his wife, Carol, live near Atlanta. JOHN FERLING, Professor of History at West Georgia College, is writing a biography of John Adams. He is the author of The Loyalist Mind (1977), A Wilderness of Miseries: War and Warriors in Early America (1981), and The First of Men: A Life of George Washington (1988).
More audiobooks from John Ferling
John Adams: A Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Independence
54 ratings14 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A truthful telling of the fight for Independence. Taken from the writings of those who were there.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It provided a great history and overview of that so special and important part of our national history. It also used much of the language which made it seem much more personal and relevant. I enjoyed every word.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tantor has turned another great read into a work of art! Excellent information and oratory.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent! "Independence" focuses on the 10 or so years prior and up to July 1776. It offers detailed information from all sides and very clearly shows how delegates and leaders from the American colonies went from being terrified to even say "independence" to declaring just that. It highlights George III, his ministry, and Parliament as they tried to dictate their will upon the colonies.With a clear style and tremendous detail, author John Ferling does a great job highlighting what caused the colonies to declare their independence.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finished Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free by John Ferling. A remarkable study on short period from 1763 to the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, which in 1773 was anything but inevitable. The book by discusses the events which antecedents the emotional and finally to a political break up separating the colonies from the mother country, parliament and King. The Antecedents were the attempt to tax and control the colonies, through a variety of direct and indirect taxes and acts, including the Stamp and Teas Acts. and leading to the Coercive Acts of 1774(Intolerable Acts), which included (1) the Boston Port Bill, which closed Boston Harbor; (2) the Massachusetts Government Act, which replaced the elective local government with an appointive one and increased the powers of the military governor; (3) the Administration of Justice Act, which allowed British officials charged with capital offenses to be tried in another colony or in England; and (4) the Quartering Act, which permitted the requisition of unoccupied buildings to house British troops.The players are well known but John Ferling dwells on the impacts both early and later of many familiar and less familiar individuals, including John and Samuel Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Hutchinson, Joseph Galloway, John Dickinson to name just a few. A well written book which should be read by all interested in to the political acts and decisions which led to the formal separation of the colonies from England.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free, by John Ferling, is another recent history that revisits and refocuses our attention on the seminal events of the founding of the Republic, this one centering upon the confluence of people and events that led to a tenuous union of American colonies declaring its independence from Britain. Ferling, a noted scholar of early American history who is the author of a long list of titles directed at academic as well as popular audiences, succeeds remarkably well here. While little new ground is covered, Ferling’s achievement is to assemble all of the various threads of the latest scholarship into an engaging narrative that manages to bring fresh nuance to various aspects of the ideological struggle for and against independence, both in the Americas and in the mother country, where George III, his ministers and Parliament manage to demonstrate that the colonies are theirs to lose by misstep – and then actually make all of those missteps and lose them! I knew a great deal of this story from Don Cook’s masterful The Long Fuse: How England Lost the American Colonies 1760-1785 and other sources, but again it is refreshing to observe Ferling speaking from the latest historiography which tends to view the conflict simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic, rather than the traditional approach which is all about the “Founders” and how they alone forged a divorce that was universally welcomed by all of the colonists and bitterly contested by all of the Brits, something that not only is an oversimplification but is also patently incorrect in many particulars. In Ferling’s coverage, there is the subtly unstated hint (that other authors emphasize more loudly) that the British Parliament’s intransigence in its refusal to show weakness in the face of resistance is often echoed by contemporary American foreign policy, with similar disastrous results. As in the latter, the eighteenth century MP’s seemed dully aware that every step they took carried them closer to a doomed outcome, yet they proceeded in step, not unlike a carefully formed regiment marching in cadence towards an entrenched machine gun nest. In Independence, Ferling resurrects a story that I think most Americans are largely unaware of. While most of the material on the colonial side is more familiar, I did run across some new bits that piqued my curiosity. Ferling, a biographer of John Adams, details how a canny Sam Adams maneuvers and manipulates his more conventional cousin to eventually take the leading role in the Continental Congress that champions and finally wins independence. (In return, John teaches the urban squire Sam how to ride a horse!) I knew little about Sam Adams, a kind of squirrelly historical figure, and his relationship with his more notable relative, and Ferling succeeds in outlining how the two Adams’ played off each other’s strengths and weaknesses to achieve their common purpose – separation for the colonies. Ferling also spends more time here on other leading characters from the drama -- such as Richard Henry Lee and Joseph Galloway -- that many other treatments tend to minimize or entirely overlook. Another arena Ferling treats is the complicated results of the near cataclysm in Benedict Arnold’s failed invasion of Canada. It turns out that this disaster, counter-intuitively to my mind, encouraged rather than discouraged the more radical bloc in Congress in their vociferous efforts to defeat the more moderate “reconciliationists,” led by John Dickenson, largely because this calamitous rout underscored to both sides the need to aggressively seek foreign assistance in order to stay in the game on the military side. Of course, the eventual success that brought the war to a close many years hence at Yorktown could not have been achieved without French intervention.I was also struck by the debate over calling for the ban of the African slave trade. Jefferson, ever ambivalent about the peculiar institution, does write a passage in the Declaration – excised from the draft by other more circumspect legislators – that vehemently condemns George III for profiting on the evils of the slave trade. But while Jefferson may have been genuinely offended by the practice, other less moralistic Virginia planters called for the abolition of the slave trade primarily because they had a surplus of slave property they hoped to retail at higher prices to the lower South, where the market showed by a scarcity and a growing demand.I have read Ferling before and while I have enjoyed his material, in general I tend to find his writing less compelling than a David McCullough or a Joseph Ellis. While that still may be true to some degree, Ferling’s style has improved over time and in Independence his narrative is much less stilted and far more engaging than in previous works. I would urge those who are interested in a single volume that explores the forces that led to the Declaration of Independence to read Ferling’s finely crafted book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5John Ferling is extremely knowledgeable concerning the American War of Independence and has written several good books about it. This is another in that line. Here he covers the period between the Boston Tea Party and the Declaration of Independence describing for the reader the events on both sides of the Atlantic that eventually leads to July 2, 1776. Ferling provides an interesting and readable account of a period that is often glossed over in accounts of the Revolution.I received this book as a part of the LT Early Reader program.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One would think that there's little new to be written about the American Revolution, and in some sense that's true. But the complexity of the events, personal relationships, and political machinations that led up to the Declaration of Independence continue to--and perhaps always will--provide fertile ground for historical analysis and re-examination.And it's always profitable to study history in this way--both to understand the events themselves and to see what light they throw on our own times.Ferling has taken as his task to provide the story of the 40+ months of colonial/revolutionary history that leads up to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, with a particular focus on all of the "turning points" where things which now, in the hindsight sharpened by more than 200 years of historiography (and mythologizing), seem inevitable.In the course of this narrative, we come to understand that the Revolution itself, and nearly every turning point in the process that led up to independence itself was a near-run thing, and that it was often a confluence of events--and some singularly bad decision-making in England--that pushed the American states toward independence, even though for a good part of the time, not that many of the colonists wanted to break with the mother country.I'd recommend this book for anyone interested in American history--and really anyone at all.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I received this book in hardcover from LT Early Reviewers.As an amateur photographer, one of the most challenging things to do is take an interesting photograph of a famous place. When something has been photographed thousands of times over, it becomes incredibly difficult to produce something novel.Ferling's book faced the same challenge. A market of revolutionary-era history and biography from Isaacson, McCullough, Ellis, and so many dozens of others has flooded the market in the last ten years.In a genre swamped with narrative histories and biographies, Ferling's route to originality was to turn an idea into a character.Through a progressive series of short biographical discussions of the main players in the process of independence from its first whisperings to its final passage by the Continental Congress, Ferling does not attempt complete biographies or to provide the exhaustive story of the revolution.Keeping the subject narrow and focused produced a work that was truly a joy to read. It provided specific insights into many major and ancillary players from the revolutionary period, as well as into the military and political history of the period, but only and always in a fascinating and engaging exploration of the way an idea grows and develops.This reminded me of McCullough's "1776" not in its style or content, but in its specific and direct scope.Very nicely rendered.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was a very enjoyable book. I appreciated that this book offered the often overlooked English perspective. This is one of the few books that i have read which seamlessly intertwines both perspectives. In addition, Ferling does a great job of balancing profiles with events. Oftentimes authors will become bogged down with too much information while introducing an historical character, thus losing the flow of events. Not Ferling.I would recommend this book to both readers without a great background knowledge of the subject as well as those more versed in the revolutionary period.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5John Ferling has already provided readers with excellent writing on the American Revolution and this book on the events leading up to the Declaration of Independence is another achievement. Through the simplistic, backward-looking lens of history, the independence of the Colonies seems like a fait accompli. However, Ferling illuminates the individuals and the personalities that shaped the dramatic series of events and also describes how these events, in turn, shaped those personalities. Readers will see that Independence was not a foregone conclusion and several opportunities existed for both Americans and (more importantly) British leaders to act differently and thus cause a different outcome.Ferling’s writing moves the story along. He expertly weaves in background material on important figures as they come into the story. In these passages, Ferling and his editor(s) manage to provide a “just right” level of detail: Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to keep it interesting. While including these pages, the story remains one about the dynamic interplay between the individual leaders, their ideas, and the people, not focusing on any one to the exclusion of the other.Overall, an excellent addition to the works on the American Revolution, accessible to the casual reader of history, with enough insights for those well-read on the subject.Disclosure: I received a copy of this book via the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free is a highly readable, excellently written examination of America's struggle for independence. I strongly recommend those interested in the War for Independence begin with John Ferling's book as a comprehensive introduction to the drive for American independence and the beginning of the loss of an empire. Independence builds a solid foundation for other political and military histories and provides clear context for understanding.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ferling focuses on the 42 months between the time Lord North summoned his cabinet to decide how to deal with the colonists who perpetrated the Boston Tea Party to July 4, 1776, when the U.S. Declaration of Independence was finalized and approved. He tells it as a story, narrating events with long asides to review precursor events and, more often, to summarize the biographies of the important characters in the story. The book is unusual, at least in my library, in that it treats events and people in London with equal care as it treats things on my side (that is, the U.S. side) of the Atlantic and so provides a richer story than the one-sided one we usually hear.Ferling starts out by making the point that American independence was not at all inevitable at the time of the Tea Party, and probably wasn't even desired by the majority of colonists, and characterized his narrative as a chronicle of events that could have gone differently, an approach I found very refreshing. However, his account loses some points with me by failing, except for two (as I remember) brief mentions, to describe the radicalization of the American populace and how the leaders who people the story had sometime to scramble in order to keep up with their followers. So, he tells another Great Men version of the story, when what happened was much more complex than a handful of smart men politicking, and the "common" people much more important than he describes.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Having my master's degree in history, I have studied the struggle for independence fairly extensively and John Ferling has always stood out as an excellent historian, and writer, of this time period. I was excited to read this book by him and I wasn't disappointed. In John Ferlling's own words, "This is a book about the evolution of the idea of American Independence and about the events and decisions that ultimately led Congress, with the backing of most colonists, to set America free of the British Empire" (pg. ix). Ferling held true to this even down to his chapter structure. Each chapter is broken down by a major player (both American and British) in the revolution. Some people may not like this style as it does jump around a bit, but I believe it allows the reader a better view into the decisions and the evolution of the movement. John Ferling focuses specifically on the time period between the Boston Tea Party and Congress' vote for independence.This book is steeped in research and therefore this read can get somewhat long at times. Even if it can get a little slow sometimes, it is worth the time to get through as the reader comes away with a much better understanding of the path to the declaration of independence. Ferling provides an appendix for the reader with the text of the declaration of indepdendence by Congress. Ferling also provides a select bibliography as well as a notes section and index for quick reference.I would recommend this book for readers who are already quite familiar with this topic and would like a new perspective. I think it would be confusing for first time readers of the topic or people who are not truly interested in this time period. It's definitely a book I am glad I own and it is a great addition to any historian's library.