BUY Ebook · 296 pp. · ISBN 9780813945002 · $42.50 · Feb 2021
The America of the early republic was built on an experiment, a hopeful prophecy that would only be fulfilled if an enlightened people could find its way through its past and into a future. Americans recognized that its promises would only be fully redeemed at a future date. In
Revolutionary Prophecies, renowned historians Robert M. S. McDonald and Peter S. Onuf summon a diverse cast of characters from the founding generation all of whom, in different ways, reveal how their understanding of the past and present shaped hopes, ambitions, and anxieties for or about the future.
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Hopes, Fears, and Prophecies. An Essay for Inauguration Day by Historians Robert M. S. McDonald and Peter S. Onuf
We are pleased to offer this essay for Inauguration Day by Robert M. S. McDonald and Peter S. Onuf, editors of the new book
Hopes, Fears, and Prophecies
Do these seem like extraordinary, unprecedented times? Did the 2020 election and its seemingly endless aftermath expose and exacerbate deepening divisions among Americans that threaten our very existence as a people? Historians can’t answer these questions. They can only tell you that the future, like the past, is a “foreign country” and that we’ll get there somehow, despite ourselves. After all, we remind ourselves, history does not repeat itself: it is always extraordinary, always unprecedented. In dark moments we stumble forward, lost in a fog of complexity and contingency, gripped by fear and buoyed by hope. With the gift of hindsight, historians