Rating: 
Summary: A book tor British-Americans to reaffirm their roots
Review: This is a book that will appeal most strongly to Americans of British ancestry. Fischer writes at one point of of walking around the countryside in Oxfordshire and feeling that he was home. This is very personal history, both for Fischer and British-Americans. Who according to census returns, given by Fischer, are now an ethnic minority in the USA. Many of the reviewers speak of how it how it explained things to them of their own personal life. I read the book first 7 years ago. It reaffirmed my sense of kinship and affinity with the USA ( and might explain why I was awake at 2 in the morning, 9 pm in Washington, watching the Presidential election coverage on the BBC). It is scholarly and full of fascinating cultural details. It is illuminating on how British culture, institutions and folkways have shaped the USA as it is now. (It's sad that the Scotch-irish seem to have had more influence than the Quakers). This is a book for Anglo-americans to reafffirm their roots. It should also remind English readers how much we have in common and why. I was fascinated to learn how many Cheshire place-names are reproduced in Pennsylvannia including Prestbury where I was born. And would love confirmation that there are people in Pennsylvannia who use or know the meaning of dialect words like nesh, gormless, daddy-long-legs.
Rating:
Summary: the finest piece of scholarly history I have read
Review: I hate to use a superlative to describe any piece of scholarly work, because there are so many fine pieces of work out there that I read while working on my BA and MA in History, but I can't think of any single serious history book that has left me more impressed. It is scholarly -- and shows an astonishing command of a truly amazing collection of primary and secondary sources. At the same time, it is beautifully written -- one of the few serious scholarly history books that I can, in good conscience, recommend to any reasonably well-educated person -- and have confidence that they will find it interesting. Mot important of all, it is extraordinarily important, because it shows the still dominant role that America's four British folkways play in creating both the national and regional cultures that still dominate American society. I read this book while writing my book Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic: Dueling, Southern Violence, and Moral Reform (Praeger Press, 1999), and Albion's Seed made it possible for me to adequately determine the origins of the backcountry Southern culture of violence that created such havoc in the early Republic -- and created the structure of violence and weapons control laws that still dominate the current political debate. I can't adequately summarize this massive and wonderful book in the available space, but let me give you just a clue as to the power of it. It provides a persuasive explanation for regional variations in housing design, birth month distribution, naming conventions, cooking styles, and male/female power relationships -- and without ever seeming forced to me, the skeptic of "one theory does it all" approaches. I can't recommend a book more highly than this.
Rating:
Summary: Albion's Seed is Seminal in Understanding the USA!
Review: Freedom's liberty tree is planted in the fertile soil of the many cultural groups who have made our land a "melting pot." In
Fishcer's brilliant work he traces with fascinating detail the transposition from Britain to the American colonies the folkways that have made each region distinctive. The four folk cultures he delineates are:
1. New England-the Puritans came from the East Anglia region of
England. They were pious, hardworking and intoxicated with theology and ordedr.
2. The Middle Colonies-the Quaker influence is profound in this region of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. William Penn and the followers of the Quaker founder George Fox were the most liberal minded of the quartet of folk cultures chronicled by Fischer. The Quaker culture was influential in the southwest and midland counties of Britain. Their belief in religous toleration has added much to American democracy.
3. The tidewider and coastal south was settled by southern English natives who were Cavaliers supportive of the Stuart
dynasty. This society was hierarchial and based on honor and
fueled by chattel slavery.
4. the backcountry region was settled by Englishmen from the northern border region of England, Scotland and Ulster Scotch-Irish. Exemplified by such paragons of this violent and emotional culture were men like Andrew Jackson and James Knox Polk. Composed of Hoosiers and Rednecks, Crackers and doughty pioneers this society believed in individual freedom.
The almost 1000 page book is filled with illustrations, population data and election results of Presidential elections which reflect how political choices are reflected in the four major mass migrations made to America by Britishers.
While only about 20% of our nearly 300 million population has direct ties to British ancestry the British influence in America is profound-indeed formative in the formation of American society as it exists today with all its strengths and weaknesses.
This book is essential reading if one wants to understand many aspects of American history and life.
Hackett-Fisher is an esteemed historian and with this work is legacy is assured in American histography for generations to come.
Excellent!
Rating:
Summary: More than history -- valuable for understanding the present
Review: Albion's Seed details the "folkways" of four groups of people that moved from distinct regions of England to the US. The premise is that ther culture of each of the groups persisted and that these cultures provide the basis for the modern United States. The folkways are the cultural beliefs in religion, magic, child raising, family, age,food and other interesting things. Since reading the book I have been asking everyone I spend any time with about their background and quizzing them about beliefs. The book has opened up a whole new world to me about the types of things Fischer discusses in his book. Traces of the cultures he describes are still very much with us and I am finding it remarkable the degree that you can predict the overall pattern of a person's beliefs based on their background. Another aspect of the book is that though it is 900 pages of text, it never got boring to me. By talking about people and how they lived it brings them to life as well as any novel.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful Work
Review: Fischer uses the sociological concept of "Folkways" to organize his exploration of the cultures which created the United States. Folkways are the "ways of life" that combine to create a distinct cultures. In turn, those distinct cultures combine to create our society. Fischer identifies four relevant folkways: the Puritans of New England, the Cavaliers of Virginia, the Quakers of the Delaware Valley and the Borderers (or Scotch Irish) of the back country. The most extraordinary part of this long, long book was the manner in which Fischer was able to unpack the regional cultures of the British Isles. As Fischer himself remarks, British historians and social scientists have devoted negligible time and attention to regional culture (as supposed to strictly "local" culture, which is often covered in Britain). Once Fischer links up the regions in England with their counter parts in America, the once obscure has become obvious. This, I believe, is one of the hallmarks of excellent scholarship. It's almost impossible to critize anything about this book until the last hundred pages, when Fischer blithely asserts that all events for the past three hundred years are eminently explainable in terms of the four folkways of this book. I was suprised to see him reach so far, especially since this is "volume 1" of a "proposed five volume set". Since this book was published fifteen years ago, I guess we'll have to be patient while we wait for, "The Ebony Tree: African Folkways in America"
, volume two of the set. Still, this book was near revelatory in both method and analysis.
Rating:
Summary: A Most Excellent Book
Review: For those who want to know more about the how the United States developed its cultural, social, and political identity this is the book for you. This in turn leads me focus my recommendation to the two types of readers who will find this book most helpful/useful. The two types of readers who will benefit/enjoy this book most are those who have a strong interest in the American Social Systems (Sociology/History Majors), followed by those interested how the those early societial values continue to influence American Politics/Values to this day (Politial Science/Religious Studies/Antropology Majors). The information within this book is so important and yet alas not seen as important by the multitude as other simplistic books such as Laura Ingrams "shut up and sing" or Michael Moore's epic doorstop "dude where's my country"
Rating:
Summary: Albion's Seed is Seminal in Understanding the USA!
Review: Freedom's liberty tree is planted in the fertile soil of the many cultural groups who have made our land a "melting pot." In
Fishcer's brilliant work he traces with fascinating detail the transposition from Britain to the American colonies the folkways that have made each region distinctive. The four folk cultures he delineates are:
1. New England-the Puritans came from the East Anglia region of
England. They were pious, hardworking and intoxicated with theology and ordedr.
2. The Middle Colonies-the Quaker influence is profound in this region of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. William Penn and the followers of the Quaker founder George Fox were the most liberal minded of the quartet of folk cultures chronicled by Fischer. The Quaker culture was influential in the southwest and midland counties of Britain. Their belief in religous toleration has added much to American democracy.
3. The tidewider and coastal south was settled by southern English natives who were Cavaliers supportive of the Stuart
dynasty. This society was hierarchial and based on honor and
fueled by chattel slavery.
4. the backcountry region was settled by Englishmen from the northern border region of England, Scotland and Ulster Scotch-Irish. Exemplified by such paragons of this violent and emotional culture were men like Andrew Jackson and James Knox Polk. Composed of Hoosiers and Rednecks, Crackers and doughty pioneers this society believed in individual freedom.
The almost 1000 page book is filled with illustrations, population data and election results of Presidential elections which reflect how political choices are reflected in the four major mass migrations made to America by Britishers.
While only about 20% of our nearly 300 million population has direct ties to British ancestry the British influence in America is profound-indeed formative in the formation of American society as it exists today with all its strengths and weaknesses.
This book is essential reading if one wants to understand many aspects of American history and life.
Hackett-Fisher is an esteemed historian and with this work is legacy is assured in American histography for generations to come.
Excellent!
Rating:
Summary: Deconstructing Wasphood
Review: If you stand too close to anything, it disappears. This may or may not be good physics, but it is great social theory. Case in point: the WASP, the white Anglo-Saxon protest so famed in song and story. It is David Hackett Fischer's peculiar virtue to point out that there never was such a thing. Or more strictly - that the early settlers who came from the British Isles fall into not one, but at least four disparate categories. New England Puritans were not Pennsylvania Quakers who were not Midatlantic Catholics (sic). Take them all together and they were none of them the least way like the Scotch-Irish who came later and swept back into the hills, whence they spilled forth over half a Century or more to dominate our political life.. You can see it on the map, of which Fischer offers several. They came from different places. They brought different alliances and their own particular betrayals, and a range of subliminal traditions that distinguish them one from another. One good example is relations between the sexes. The Puritans were a "patriarchic" people by 20th Century standards, but they believed that God spoke to men and women alike - so at least you had to listen to what you say. The Scotch Irish, far more close to nomadic in their way, would have none of it. Fischer shows how a Scotch-Irish wedding, however merry an occasion for all concerned, is stylistically a ritualized rape. Fischer has hundreds of pages of this stuff, but it is perhaps the politics that is the most interesting. It wasn't the descendants of John Adams who dominated our public life (his great-grandchild, Henry Adams, wrote the great American parable of the superfluous man). It was the likes of Andrew Jackson, John Calhoun, James Polk - strapping and lean, with sunken cheekbones, often violent. It is a tragic irony that the violence they inflicted on the slaves and the Indians virtually mirrors the violence they suffered from the landlords over generations before they came. Fischer is a master at destroying a generalization: he does a bravura job of turning one statistic into four. But there is no reason for the process to stop there. The "first wave" of Puritans necessarily came first, with all that the term entails. The latecomers had to go a little further, settle for less attractive land, occupy more humble positions in the social structure. Categories within categories: follow this logic to its conclusion and you face the depressing prospect of knowing nothing at all. But there may be no other way. Hegel said God had to live through the world; otherwise he would have remained mere abstract possibility. So follow the logic and you get to see, not nothing, but everything there is to see.
Rating:
Summary: As good as it gets
Review: It's not every day you read a book that's as profound as it is accessible, but this is it; my understanding of American culture- particularly Southern culture- is far more complete having read it. You do not have to be a history fan to enjoy it, but it certainly helps. As revealing and comprehensive as Jones' History of the Vikings-
Rating:
Summary: Don't be put off by the size - this tome is worth the read!!
Review: I picked up this book in hopes to gain a better insight into a part of American History that I didn't focus on in College (European History major) or when I have taught US Hist 101-103. Why? Well, I was working on a genealogical research project associated with my wife's family who were part of the 1620 immigration and the 1630-1649 immigration to the USA. This book was awesome!! It gave history, linguistics, politics, religion, sex as seen through the four distinct English cultural settlements prior to the American Revolution. ANY GENEALOGIST WORKING ON PRE AMERICAN REVOLUTION FAMILY LINES NEEDS TO READ THIS BOOK. Without a doubt it will be a book I will turn to for many things beyond just the original intent I had when I bought it. The maps are also a great addition to the book. So, get a copy spend the time with it and I swear you won't be disappointed.
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