Alan Taylor on the American Revolution as civil war and class war

Amid all the bicentennial publications a few years ago, I thought Alan Taylor's The Civil War of 1812 was the book that really needed to be read.

This year, it seems Taylor is giving readers something like the civil war of 1776 in his new book American Revolutions.  This is the NYT review (print on the weekend), but Slate has a pretty good take on the book's import.

Yet even as these new leaders wrap themselves in the banner of patriotism, authentic defenders of liberty and equality, they hide the way their own interests are served by stoking the populist flames.