Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

BOOK REVIEWS - András Tarnóc: Charles Sellers, Neill McMillen and Henry May: Az Egyesült Államok története. Budapest: Maecenas Kiadó, 1995. 434 pp

itself to such interpretation. While the United States is readily identified with such cliches as a "protean nation," or a "country of continuous change," its history displays distinct developmental trends. The beginning colonial status was followed by independence, the achievement of nationhood, the entrance into the ranks of colonial powers, and the elevation to superpower level. While retracing these steps Sellers, McMillen, and May's work searches for the roots of change. Despite the authors' warning against the trap of periodization and their emphasis on the continuity of the historical process the different stages of American history offer an explanation for the above changes. The authors assert that America's break from colonial status was facilitated by the beneficial effects of the Navigation Acts, the whiggism-driven political regeneration of the colonies, the British practice of "salutary neglect," and the notion of British constitutionalism. Furthermore, a budding national identity, and traces of common thinking, thereby national self-identification existed in the prerevolutionary period (52). While the American nation was forged in two wars of independence: the American Revolution and War of Independence (1775—1783) and the War of 1812 (1812—1814), the authors underestimate the role of the Constitutional Convention. The American Industrial Revolution, and political and economic unity achieved through the Civil War and the Reconstruction paved the way toward the American Empire culminating in the achievement of superpower status after 1945. The book also highlights the changes of the American character, searching for the answer to Creveceour's question, "What then is the American, this new man?" The colonized American is personified by the French traveller's "American Farmer" as a product of the melting pot, "a new race of men," whose ethnicity-driven cultural and political preferences give way to economic and cultural independence buttressed by an optimistic interpretation of the ideas of the Enlightenment. Benjamin Franklin, the wizened statesman preferring "mobility over nobility" embodies the American as a political actor in 202