| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

John Ferling. A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. New York: Oxford University Press. 2003. Pp. xv, 558. $30.00.
The public demand for retellings of the American Revolution saga remains insatiable, and the market continues to oblige. John Ferling's contribution to the genre is lively and engaging, with a writing style that is marred only by some ham-fisted references to revolutions of the sun and seasons ("twilight turned to sooty darkness" [p. 128]; "the mild days of spring nudged aside winter" [p. 226]). What is most remarkable about this book is something most consumers will not even notice: ninety-five percent of it could have been written half a century ago.	1
By the time of the bicentennial in 1976, historians of the American Revolution, launching a revolution of their own, had begun to show how the imperial conflict affected Indians, slaves, and women of all ranks—and how they in turn influenced the struggle between colonies and crown. Very little of that scholarship shows up here. Topics that have become standard in American History textbooks—women's participation in boycotts of British merchandise, Indians' and slaves' alliances with the British army—are slighted or ignored altogether. Even some of the women and people of color who appeared in older accounts—for example, the Indians Pontiac, Cornplanter, Blue Jacket, and Joseph Brant, the African Americans Phillis Wheatley and Benjamin Banneker, and the "mulatto" Crispus Attucks—failed to find a place in Ferling's 488 pages. He names only one African American (President George Washington's cook) and no Indians. The few women Ferling mentions are mostly the wives and mistresses of Founding Fathers, such as Abigail Adams (whose famous injunction to "Remember the Ladies" is omitted) and Maria Cosway (but not Sally Hemings).	. . .

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