'Aurora' May Cause Furor
by Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 4/14/1997
George Washington was an incompetent general held in contempt by his officers. John Adams thought that democracy was against human nature and maneuvered to be made king.Heresy or history? It's both, according to St. Martin's senior editor Bob Weil; these and other claims are documented in Richard Rosenfeld's American Aurora: A Democratic-Republican Returns (SMP, May), a four-year study by an independent scholar of the American Revolutionary War that Weil acquired from agent Jonathan Matson after 10 publishers turned it down. A maverick historian, Rosenfeld was formerly the CEO of a large travel firm.
Weil believes the book will take the scholarly world by storm. "Traditional historians will hate it," he said. But he noted that distinguished colonial historian Edmund S. Morgan wrote the foreword.
Indeed, scholars can't fault Rosenfeld's research. Using accounts from an 18th-century newspaper, The Philadelphia Aurora, and from its federalist political adversaries, as well as correspondence of the Founding Fathers, Rosenfeld has compiled an unusual and lively reassessment of the American Revolution that he hopes will deepen our understanding of 20th-century American democracy. And, most importantly, Rosenfeld documents how the Aurora, published by Ben Franklin's grandson B.F. Bache (who was arrested under the notorious Sedition Acts and died awaiting trial), successfully challenged Adams's allegedly despotic ambitions and may very well have saved American democracy.
But can St. Martin's sell even a modest printing (8500 copies) of a 900-page book written in graceful -- but ornate -- 18th-century prose? "Yes, because the issues are pertinent today," said Weil. "Conservatives will love its attack on big government and liberals love the freedom-of-the-press angle." The ACLU plans to mail copies to members of Congress and others.
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