The Blazing World: A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689

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AN ECONOMIST AND NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A fresh, exciting, "readable and informative" history (The New York Times) of seventeenth-century England, a time of revolution when society was on fire and simultaneously forging the modern world. • "Recapture[s] a lost moment when a radically democratic commonwealth seemed possible."-Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker "[Healy] makes a convincing argument that the turbulent era qualifies as truly 'revolutionary,' not simply because of its cascading political upheavals, but in terms of far-reaching changes within society.... Wryly humorous and occasionally bawdy"- The Wall Street Journal The seventeenth century was a revolutionary age for the English. It started as they suddenly found themselves ruled by a Scotsman, and it ended in the shadow of an invasion by the Dutch. Under James I, England suffered terrorism and witch panics. Under his son Charles, state and society collapsed into civil war, to be followed by an army coup and regicide. For a short time-for ...