| David Hackett Fischer (b. December 2, 1935) is University Professor and Earl Warren Professor of History at Brandeis University. His major works have tackled everything from large macroeconomic and cultural trends (Albion's Seed, The Great Wave) to narrative histories of significant events (Paul Revere's Ride, Washington's Crossing) to explorations of historiography (Historians' Fallacies).
He is best known for his major study Albion's Seed, which argued that core aspects of American culture stem from several different British folkways and regional cultures, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington's Crossing, a narrative of George Washington's leadership of the Continental Army during the winter of 1776-1777 during the American Revolutionary War.
He is currently at work on a biography of Samuel de Champlain, a French explorer and founder of Quebec City.
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Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America
From Library Journal
This cultural history explains the
European settlement of the United States as voluntary migrations from
four English cultural centers. Families of zealous, literate Puritan
yeomen and artisans from urbanized East Anglia established a religious
community in Massachusetts (1629-40); royalist cavaliers headed by Sir
William Berkeley and young, male indentured servants from the south and
west of England built a highly stratified agrarian way of life in
Virginia (1640-70); egalitarian Quakers of modest social standing from
the North Midlands resettled in the Delaware Valley and promoted a
social pluralism (1675-1715); and, in by far the largest migration
(1717-75), poor borderland families of English, Scots, and Irish fled a
violent environment to seek a better life in a similarly uncertain
American backcountry. These four cultures, reflected in regional
patterns of language, architecture, literacy, dress, sport, social
structure, religious beliefs, and familial ways, persisted in the
American settlements. The final chapter shows the significance of these
regional cultures for American history up to the present. Insightful,
fresh, interesting, and well-written, this synthesis of traditional and
more current historical scholarship provides a model for
interpretations of the American character. Subsequent volumes of this
promised multivolume work will be eagerly awaited. Highly recommended
for the general reader and the scholar.
- David Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Washington's Crossing
From Publishers Weekly
At the core of an impeccably
researched, brilliantly executed military history is an analysis of
George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River in December 1776 and
the resulting destruction of the Hessian garrison of Trenton and defeat
of a British brigade at Princeton. Fischer's perceptive discussion of
the strategic, operational and tactical factors involved is by itself
worth the book's purchase. He demonstrates Washington's insight into
the revolution's desperate political circumstances, shows how that
influenced the idea of a riposte against an enemy grown overconfident
with success and presents Washington's skillful use of what his army
could do well. Even more useful is Fischer's analysis of the internal
dynamics of the combatants. He demonstrates mastery of the character of
the American, British and Hessian armies, highlighting that British
troops, too, fought for ideals, sacred to them, of loyalty and service.
Above all, Brandeis historian Fischer (Albion's Seed) uses the Trenton
campaign to reveal the existence, even in the revolution's early stage,
of a distinctively American way of war, much of it based on a single
fact: civil and military leaders were accountable to a citizenry
through their representatives. From Washington down, Fischer shows,
military leaders acknowledged civil supremacy and worked with civil
officials. Washington used firepower and intelligence as force
multipliers to speed the war for a practical people who wanted to win
quickly in order to return to their ordinary lives. Tempo, initiative
and speed marked the Trenton campaign from first to last. And
Washington fought humanely, extending quarter in battle and insisting
on decent treatment of prisoners. The crossing of the Delaware, Fischer
teaches, should be seen as emblematic of more than a turning of the
war's tide. 91 halftone, 15 maps. 3-city author tour.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Paul Revere's Ride
From Library Journal
It is rare when a scholarly history
will appeal to a general readership, but such is the case with this
book. Part biography of Revere and part history of the battles of
Lexington and Concord, it places the "midnight ride" in the broad
context of American resistance to Great Britain as just one of many
similar actions taken by Revere and others. Particularly good is
Fischer's (history, Brandeis Univ.) description of the civilian
reaction to the British march to Concord and his exploration of the
"spontaneous" rising of the New England militia to fight the British.
Fischer's ulterior motive is to return contingency to its central
importance in the historical process--to restore the "causal power of
particular actions and contingent events." In the process he has
written a meticulously researched and wonderfully evocative narrative
that will be enjoyed by history lovers and scholars alike.
- David B. Mattern, Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas
From Publishers Weekly
English-speaking people have distinct
words for the concepts of freedom and liberty. But that doesn't mean
everyone agrees on what they mean, as Fischer (author of the
bestselling Washington's Crossing)
reveals in this exhaustive study of how the two have been defined in
words and images from colonial times to the present. Short chapters
supply the backstories of familiar symbols like the Liberty Bell, the
Statue of Liberty and Uncle Sam, and also reintroduce forgotten figures
like Brother Jonathan, an early 19th-century representation of America
as a country bumpkin that was popular in Europe. In a precursor to
today's "salad bowl" image of cultural diversity, artists of the
Revolutionary era portrayed America as "a flight of birds, a flock of
sheep, even a kettle of fish." As the modern age approaches,
photography becomes increasingly important, as seen in a triptych of
riveting images from the Civil Rights movement. But the record also
becomes somewhat muddled, Fischer finds, with Janis Joplin and Jimi
Hendrix appearing as images on nearly equal footing with Rosa Parks and
Martin Luther King. In the end, the oversize, beautifully illustrated
book shifts subtly from a rich graphic survey, incorporating painting,
flags and sculpture, to a broader chronicle of the many ways Americans
have articulated their most cherished ideals. Over 400 illus., 250 in
color.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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