Gentlemen Revolutionaries: Power and Justice in the New American Republic by Tom Cutterham, and: Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions by Caitlin Fitz, and: Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth by Holger Hoock, and: American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, 1783–1833 by Benjamin E. Park, and: American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804 by Alan Taylor (review)

Then of a sudden sacred Janus, in his two-headed shape,offered his double visage to my wondering eyes.A terror seized me, I felt my hair stiffen with fear, and with asudden chill my bosom froze.

—Ovid, The "Fasti"¹

We are at a threshold in explaining the founding of the United States. When coupled with other collections of essays, prominent conferences, and recent and forthcoming works, the five books under review here announce the unveiling of a new portrait of the American founding, and of the nationalism or American character it produced.² It is, I would argue, the fifth edition of the founding portrait—the American Revolution 5.0.

The revolutionaries themselves rendered the first one. It was a self-portrait of their actions while they were performing them. The revolution was, in their eyes, a masterpiece, a phenomenon in human history—a singular example of liberty, benevolence, opportunity, and, well, happiness for all the world to follow. Fifty years later, a new romantic portrait emerged. This one purposely erased its predecessor's universalism and instead celebrated the unique character of America's heroic founding and the justice this beneficent episode had spread across North America. The romantic portrait dazzled those who gazed on it for nearly a century, until early twentieth-century critics less impressed with what they thought the revolution not only permitted but arranged—industrialized capitalism, corrupt politics, and social inequality—crafted a replacement. For these new artists, the excesses and exploitations of the Gilded Age had gnarled roots that went back to the original sin of 1787. The Founders, they maintained, had sought only to feather their nests and those of their friends, and they created a republic that would do just that, real participatory democracy be damned. The Progressives' severe, chastising portrait—the American Revolution 3.0—hung alone in the galleries for a far shorter run than its predecessor, as a competitor was already under development within thirty years. This rival returned the revolutionaries' ideas to the forefront, arguing that the Founders had been motivated by concepts of liberty, consent, and representation that made the revolution different, better, and even more radical than revolutionary popular uprisings in Russia, France, or China. The third and fourth portraits hung next to one another for the last half of the twentieth century, as artists continued to add details and scenes to their preferred painting and sometimes threw paint onto the other as their disagreements grew increasingly bitter.³

Now, it seems safe to say another version has arrived. Our new revolutionary portrait has many facets that distinguish it from those that came before, although it is not wholly sui generis. First, it does not place the thirteen mainland American colonies at the center but rather features other places on the continent, the Atlantic Ocean, and even the hemisphere. More importantly, it is a chaotic canvas, one Jackson Pollock rather than John Trumbull would paint, featuring actors of...