I'm going to repost a brief summary of what I posted in the Friday topic because I'm still blown away by what I read. Isabel Kelly wrote a chapter in The Archaeology of West and Northwestern Mesoamerica (1985) in which she discusses some gold and silver objects recovered from Colima, Mexico. She discovered that an L-shape serpent ornament is possibly the fire serpent representation of the Old Fire God found elsewhere in Mesoamerica. It is rather rare that one can identify a West Mexican deity so this find is rather huge. I wonder, though, whether this ornament was made within Colima to reflect Colima's artistic style and belief or whether it was an item that was traded from elsewhere. The Met has two objects in their collection that look very similar to what Kelly reported, but are attributed to the Aztec or Toltec. Is this actually a Central Mexican design or have these two been mislabled and should be properly labled as Colima?

http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/310648

http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/313344

I recently re-read Pauline Maier's From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776. I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that Maier was one of the pre-eminent scholars and historians of the Revolutionary era.

In Resistance Maier sets out to detail the development in Whig thought from when it's justified to legally & morally resist a monarch and to trace the strains of that thought in America where that resistance turned into revolution.

The research is impeccable, but upon finishing it this second time (years after I'd read it the first time), I found myself somewhat disappointed in the concluding portions of the book, and there are a few criticisms I have overall.

So some quick points about the book (not a general purpose review):

• I felt the strongest portions of the book were the ones detailing early Whig thoughts towards the nature of resistance. When resistance is justified, under what circumstances, how that resistance to the monarch should be conducted, etc.

• I felt the absolute weakest part of it was the concluding chapters which focused on the time period from the early 1770s through to the beginning of the Revolution. That section felt very rushed to me, and takes up a relatively small part of the overall book. This is disappointing to me, because I'm particularly interested in seeing more indepth analysis of the political thoughts leading from the justified Whig resistance, to the final break justifying revolution. There's very little in the concluding chapters discussing the colonist reaction to the Port Closure Bill, the Massachusetts Government Act, the Quebec Act, and the other so-called "Intolerable Acts". To me it seems that the trend should have been reversed, since it was the passage of those Acts that moved the colonists from talking about eventual liberty in 10 or 15 years (at the start of the 1770s) to massive opposition and rebellion.

• I felt the organization of the book was scattered. I noticed this more with regards to the second half of the book which dealt with American resistance thought, rather than the first half which went over basic Whig thought, but it was there. Maier approached Resistance in a narrative fashion, going from the Stamp Act through to the start of the Revolution. The problem with this approach is that when she talked about the political philosophy behind a particular action (e.g. The Boston Tea Party) she would end up pulling quotes from earlier and much later. This felt disjointed to me. I think I would have preferred the organization to be done purely by subject, with maybe separate chapters for English Whig writers and another one for Colonial Whig thought.

• I felt that as we moved in time closer and closer to the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the sources she used to highlight political thought became narrower and narrower. A handful of papers, and an even smaller group of political writers. I suspect part of this might have been a problem with sources, as this was written before I was born, but even among the usual suspects in the Revolution she tended to rely on a few of them.

This isn't to say that the book shouldn't be in your library. If you've got any interest in the American Revolution you should own this. I only have such detailed critiques because I'm wordy and because I've been trying to figure out for awhile why the conclusion to the book felt so unsatisfying to me.

What she doe well

• Her discussion of the history of Whig thought was great. Loved that part and I picked up several new things.

• She did a fantastic job of tying in the American Revolution to the broader world, and especially to turmoil and unrest back in England. We often end up studying the American Revolution as it's own event, forgetting that the participants were keeping a close eye on world events and those events and people heavily influenced the actions that Americans took.

• Her footnotes are a joy.

• Her writing is never dull, and it comes across as effortless. She has a clear and concise style of writing that's very useful when it comes to this type of thing. OTOH, she doesn't ever come across as trying too hard to make it exciting.

Overall I'd say definitely pick this up. Final score is probably a 4/5. I'll end up using this more as a reference for early Whig political thought and the discussion of the broader resistance to the British crown than I will for the discussion of American political thought, but YMMV.

Any recommendations for books about the monopolies and tycoons of the early 1900s? Vanderbilt has caught my attention specifically. I've heard good reviews about The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles. Anybody read that book who has any input?