Another look at history

Stanley Weintraub's new take on the American Revolution from a non-American perspective (imagine that!) gets part of a review in this week's NYT Book Review. Fav quote:

Observed from across the Atlantic, the story of the Revolution looks very different from the one every American child grows up with. To see that story through British eyes, as Stanley Weintraub's ''Iron Tears: America's Battle for Freedom, Britain's Quagmire: 1775-1783'' enables us to do, is to see an all-too-familiar tale reinvigorated. Weintraub reminds us that justice did not necessarily reside with the rebels, that the past can always be viewed from multiple perspectives. And he confronts us with the fact that an American triumph was anything but inevitable. History of course belongs to the victors. If Britain's generals had been more enterprising, if the French had failed to supply vital military and financial assistance, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and the rest would be known to us not as political and philosophical giants but as reckless (and hanged) losers, supporting players in a single act of Britain's imperial drama. We would all be Canadians now, with lower prescription drug costs and an inordinate fondness for winter sports.

But Weintraub's book does more than add a fresh dimension to a tired subject. By giving the war a genuinely international flavor, it points the way to a new understanding of American history. Instead of looking out at the rest of the world from an American perspective, it rises above national boundaries to place the past in a global context. This is a significant undertaking. At a time when the role of the United States in the world has never been more dominant, or more vulnerable, it is crucially important for us to see how the United States fits into the jigsaw of international relations. Weintraub indicates how American history may come to be written in the future.