An ambitious historical analysis of the American Revolution, which re-interprets the gains and losses experienced by ordinary people and challenges the easy narrative that subsumes the growth of 'freedom' into the story of the American nation. Esteemed historian Barbara Clark Smith proposes that many ordinary Americans were in fact more free on the eve of the revolution than they were two decades later. Barbara Clark Smith is the curator of social history at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.