* Rather than simply celebrating the 'triumph of liberty', Jack Rakove's new history of the American Revolution will stress the ambiguous legacy of the revolution, a legacy that ranges from liberty and democracy to slavery.

* Rakove will explore the complex and contested genesis of the United States, showing how the evolution was by no means inevitable and grew out the actions and interactions of many individuals, both radical and conservative, republicans, moderates and those loyal to the crown. Throughout he will investigate the complex legacy of the Revolution for notions of American nationalism and identity, issues that are all too alive and relevant today.

* Ultimately, Rakove asks where these men came from: how do we explain the appearance, on this far shore of the Atlantic world, of the remarkable group of leaders who carried the American colonies from resistance to revolution, held their own against the premier imperial power of the day, and then, having secured military victory and political independence, capped their visionary experiment in nation-making with the adoption of a Constitution whose origins and interpretation still preoccupy us over two centuries later?