Our First Revolution

March 26, 2007
Political journalist and historian Barone (Hard America, Soft America
) elucidates the template for America's independence movement in this well-written history of its forerunner: England's Glorious Revolution of 1688. The author describes the origins of the revolution, a mostly bloodless change of government, as a mixture of religious, political and diplomatic factors. King James II's Roman Catholicism, hostility to Parliament, and French sympathies alienated an increasing number of his powerful subjects including John Churchill, later Duke of Marlborough, who invited Dutch Stadtholder William of Orange and his wife, Mary, James's sister, to intervene. Among the revolution's consequences was a Bill of Rights that limited the monarch's powers and strengthened representative government. A Toleration Act encouraged variant forms of Protestant worship. The creation of a funded national debt and the foundation of the Bank of England laid the groundwork for financial development. Involvement in the long series of wars with France moved England from a country standing apart from Europe to one that took responsibility for maintaining a continental balance of power. It was a Glorious Revolution indeed that laid the political groundwork for the world in which we now live, and Barone's lucid work honors its heritage.

March 15, 2007
Many Protestants in England were concerned when Charles II, a ruler with Catholic sympathies, was returned to the throne in 1660 after the Cromwell Protectorate ended. After his death, when the openly Catholic James II came to power, they petitioned the Dutch Prince William of Orange to invade and rule in James's place. Barone (senior editor, U.S. News & World Report; Hard America, Soft America ) describes how the so-called Glorious or Bloodless Revolution of 1688 helped transform Britain from an absolutist regime to a constitutional one in which the power of the king was substantially reduced. This revolution reorganized England into a country ruled by law rather than the monarch's whim and one in which religion was a matter of choice rather than of political or military conflict. Barone concludes that America's Founding Fathers saw that the rights gained by Englishmen in that revolution were not being granted to them. A skillful account of liberties on both sides of the Atlantic; recommended for public libraries and large British history collections.Robert Harbison, Western Kentucky Univ. Lib., Bowling Green

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2007
Barone, the high-profile sage on American elections (The Almanac of American Politics, 2006), here turns to Englands Glorious Revolution of 168889. To this well-studied topicthe author draws extensively on biographers of its leading figuresBarone productively contributes his scholarly trademark: analysis of elections. Several parliamentary canvasses were conducted during the Stuart Restoration, whose elements of procedure, franchise, and electoral arithmetic Barone breaks down over the major issue in play, which was rife with the possibilities of civil war: the rights to be accorded to Catholics and, specifically, converted Catholic James II. Barone proves a dramatic narrator of this questions volatile course in the 1680s, from Parliaments attempt to exclude James from the succession to Charles II, to the Duke of Monmouths rebellion of 1685, to the settlement of the crisis in the invasion by William of Orange and Parliaments elevation of him to the throne. Applying a readable historical contingency to these complex events and their ramifications for America, Barones account will be welcomed by avid history readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)