A sophisticated analysis of sources that have long confused historians. Offering a thoughtful window onto the world of early American men, it demonstrates that sympathy and affection were important qualities for the founding fathers.
--John Gilbert McCurdy "New England Quarterly"
A welcome addition to the literature on the formation of the United States. Through rigorous research, creative use of sources, and deep engagement with the work of scholars before him, The Overflowing of Friendship is a thoughtful and new look at the relationships between men of a certain class, race, time, and place.
--David A. Reichard "H-Law, H-Net Reviews"
Godbeer compels readers to rethink early American gender roles and to look beyond the modern tendency to see sex in all verbal and physical expressions of love.
--Christine E. Sears "Eighteenth-Century Studies"
Godbeer follows his earlier studies of sexuality in early America with this impressively erudite study of male friendship, as expressed in letters, journals, and other literary forms, from the Puritan days to the early republic of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.
--George E. Haggerty "Register of the Kentucky Historical Society"
Godbeer stakes out a judiciously considered position at some length, emphasizing the very different ways early modern individuals understood sexuality and the possibilities of physical yet nonerotic love . . . An extremely readable work.
--Anne G. Myles "Common-Place"
Godbeer's evocative narrative format allows the reader to enter a lost world of sentiment and even physical affection between men. Godbeer complicates, as others have before him, the modern binaries of sexuality, but he also argues that male friendship provides a new way of seeing familiar faces and analyzing familiar events of colonial British North American history in the eighteenth century.
--Lisa Wilson "Journal of American History"
His beautifully crafted book breaks important new ground by connecting the ideal of sympathetic fraternal love to the reconceptualization of politics and political community in revolutionary America.
--Anne S. Lombard "American Historical Review"
I know of no other work that conveys so articulately and plangently the crucial role that male love played in the Revolutionary period.
--David Greven "College Literature"
Path-breaking . . . Godbeer has staked out bold ground with this book. Some early Americanists will surely scoff at the notion that sentimentality was relevant even in the macho arena of state formation, just as historians of sexuality will freeze at the inference that there is no sexual attraction or intimacy between these men. That one book could successfully intervene with both the oldest historiographical and the newest theoretical question is no small feat, but rather one for which Godbeer deserves the appreciation and admiration of his fellow historians.
-- "Journal of the Early Republic"
Richard Godbeer's groundbreaking book examines loving and sentimental friendships among men in the colonial and revolutionary periods. He argues that, in the aftermath of Independence, patriots drafted a central place for male friendship in their social and political blueprint for the new republic. American revolutionaries shifted attention away from patriarchal authority to a more egalitarian model of brotherly collaboration. In striving to explore the inner emotional lives of early Americans, Godbeer succeeds in presenting an entirely fresh perspective on the personal relationships and political structures of the period.
A sophisticated analysis of sources that have long confused historians. Offering a thoughtful window onto the world of early American men, it demonstrates that sympathy and affection were important qualities for the founding fathers.--New England Quarterly
Godbeer has staked out bold ground with this book. Some early Americanists will surely scoff at the notion that sentimentality was relevant even in the macho arena of state formation, just as historians of sexuality will freeze at the inference that there is no sexual attraction or intimacy between these men. That one book could successfully intervene with both the oldest historiographical and the newest theoretical question is no small feat, but rather one for which Godbeer deserves the appreciation and admiration of his fellow historians.--Journal of the Early Republic
His beautifully crafted book breaks important new ground by connecting the ideal of sympathetic fraternal love to the reconceptualization of politics and political community in revolutionary America.--American Historical Review
Godbeer's evocative narrative format allows the reader to enter a lost world of sentiment and even physical affection between men. Godbeer complicates, as others have before him, the modern binaries of sexuality, but he also argues that male friendship provides a new way of seeing familiar faces and analyzing familiar events of colonial British North American history in the eighteenth century.--Journal of American History
--E. Anthony Rotundo, author of American Manhood "Common-Place"
From the Back Cover
Richard Godbeer’s groundbreaking book examines loving and sentimental friendships among men in the colonial and revolutionary periods. He argues that, in the aftermath of Independence, patriots drafted a central place for male friendship in their social and political blueprint for the new republic. American revolutionaries shifted attention away from patriarchal authority to a more egalitarian model of brotherly collaboration. In striving to explore the inner emotional lives of early Americans, Godbeer succeeds in presenting an entirely fresh perspective on the personal relationships and political structures of the period.
"A sophisticated analysis of sources that have long confused historians. Offering a thoughtful window onto the world of early American men, it demonstrates that sympathy and affection were important qualities for the founding fathers."—New England Quarterly
"Godbeer has staked out bold ground with this book. Some early Americanists will surely scoff at the notion that sentimentality was relevant even in the macho arena of state formation, just as historians of sexuality will freeze at the inference that there is no sexual attraction or intimacy between these men. That one book could successfully intervene with both the oldest historiographical and the newest theoretical question is no small feat, but rather one for which Godbeer deserves the appreciation and admiration of his fellow historians."—Journal of the Early Republic
"His beautifully crafted book breaks important new ground by connecting the ideal of sympathetic fraternal love to the reconceptualization of politics and political community in revolutionary America."—American Historical Review
"Godbeer's evocative narrative format allows the reader to enter a lost world of sentiment and even physical affection between men. Godbeer complicates, as others have before him, the modern binaries of sexuality, but he also argues that male friendship provides a new way of seeing familiar faces and analyzing familiar events of colonial British North American history in the eighteenth century."—Journal of American History
About the Author
Richard Godbeer is a professor of history at the University of Miami. His books include Sexual Revolution in Early America, also published by Johns Hopkins, The Salem Witch Hunt: A Brief History with Documents, Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692, and The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England.
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