Description

AN ECONOMIST AND NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A fresh exciting readable and informative history The New York Times of seventeenthcentury England a time of revolution when society was on fire and simultaneously forging the modern world Recaptures a lost moment when a radically democratic commonwealth seemed possibleAdam 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 farreaching 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 timefor the only time in historyEngland was a republic There were bitter struggles over faith and Parliament asserted itself like never before There were no boundaries to politicsIn fiery plagueridden London in coffee shops and alehouses new ideas were forged that were angry populist and almost impossible for monarchs to control

But the story of this century is less well known than it should be Myths have grown around key figures People may know about the Gunpowder Plot and the Great Fire of London but the Civil War is a halfremembered mystery to many And yet the seventeenth century has never seemed more relevant The British constitution is once again being bent and contorted and there is a clash of ideologies reminiscent of when Roundhead fought Cavalier

The Blazing World is the story of this strange twisting fascinating century It shows a society in sparkling detail It was a new world of wealth creativity and daring curiosity but also of greed pugnacious arrogance and colonial violence