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Thought Provoking 2010-07-26

Reviewer: Charles Graham

You need to invest time and attention into this probing book, which does not read like a breezy work of popular history, but the nearly county-by-county analysis of historical trends hits home.

was in gr8 condition...it was like i wnt 2 store n bought it :) 2010-05-11

Reviewer: Ericka Cash

was very happy wth the book...like i said in gr8 condition (brand new lookin....like it came right from a store :))

A fresh perspective 2009-01-03

Reviewer: Donald Hunt

Kevin Phillips argues that the English Civil War, the American Revolutionary War and the U.S. Civil War were all battles in the same civil war. Roundheads versus Cavaliers, merchants versus nobles, Yankees versus Virginians, Whigs versus Tories, North versus South, the names might change but the opponents were essentially the same. According to Phillips, the origins of the struggles lay in geographic, religious, and socio-economic divisions in England.

On the one side were East Anglian Puritans, low church protestant tradesmen and merchants, both those who stayed in England and those who emigrated to New England. On the other side were the bishops, high church Anglicans, aristocrats, and other loyalists, including lower-class footsoldiers from the northern border regions of England who migrated to the inland, mountainous regions of the South and mid-Atlantic North America, while their upper-class allies became the Virginian colonial elite.

The freshness of Phillips's thesis for an American audience comes from his attention to the English Civil War of the mid-seventeenth century. From that perspective, the main conflict of the Revolutionary War was not between Britain and the United States, but between old enemies that cut across national boundaries within the English-speaking world. Then, following that conflict through the U.S. Civil War give a fresh perspective on a war that is in need of one.

Phillips concludes that the outcome of the three struggles led to Anglo American world dominance. It is a sympathetic account, as Phillips clearly approves of Anglo dominance, but the book is worth reading even for those who don't.

The best book on American history i have ever read 2008-03-22

Reviewer: G. Budrikis

This is an amazing book, written, not by a formal scholar, but someone who made history himself, through his political activism for the Republican party in the late 60s. Kevin Phillips has clearly developed intellectually since then. Reading this book, and especially his subsequent "American Theocracy", makes me wonder whether he now understands the words of Ecclesiastes, "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity".

There is an absolute wealth of detail in this book, covering both Britain and America from 1640-1865, which demonstrates that the US History course I took in a New Jersey high school in 1972 was, in many ways, a litany of untruth. Specifically, in school I did not learn:
That, during the revolutionary war, Toryism was so strong in the mid Atlantic states (see pages 194-219),
That support in Britain for American independence was so high, or so important in securing victory for the patriots (pp 296-300),
Anything about a middle ground in the lead up to or during the Civil War, particularly the ambivalent attitudes of the northern Scotch-Irish and German and Irish immigrants to Negroes and slavery, let alone about anti-draft riots in New York City in July 1863 (pp 415-440),
That the German ancestry population of America was so huge or influential (see map on page 565),
That the Irish ancestry population was so widespread or so Protestant (map page 575),
That religion, especially the Second Great Awakening, was so important in generating the impulse to war.

After finishing the book, I found myself pondering a number of questions. Perhaps the most important are:
Are German-Americans still more cautious about war than Yankees? But, if so, why did Iowa vote for Bush in 2004, having voted for Gore in 2000?
If the "culture wars" between the "Greater South" and "Greater New England" persist, will there, some day, be a fourth cousins' war with actual shooting? Will the USA ever split up?
What effect will completely new people (Hispanics, Muslims, East Asians) in America have on the dynamic of the cousins' relationship?

Repetitive and long-winded, but useful 2007-11-08

Reviewer: Robert Fishman

Cousins' Wars looks at American History from an often-overlooked angle, which is as an extension of British civilization. From this point of departure, Kevin Phillips traces the migration of British political divisions across the Atlantic, and into the foundations of American history. His thesis, that the American Revolution and the U.S. Civil War were, in essence, later installments of the English Civil War, is both interesting and persuasive. I also liked his in-depth analysis of British public opinion toward the American Revolution and Civil War, and how it closely mirrored the alignments of the English Civil War. Finally, I think that Mr. Phillips goes to great lengths to show how seriously divided the United States was between gaining independence and the Civil War. This last fact has often been kicked to the side in favor of a simple North vs. South division that neglects many significant exceptions.

On a critical note, I think that Mr. Phillips often repeats the same themes and facts over and over, leading to some quick page-turning at certain points. Moreover, he takes on a lot of tangential subjects that he should include in a separate book. This book could have had fewer pages without giving up its quality.