Healey’s book is refreshing for its energetic writing, engaging wit and sound foundation in recent historical scholarship. It is light on analysis, but rich with anecdotes and explanations. Narrative sketches take precedence over probing of causes and consequences. Rather than advancing a new interpretation, Healey captures the vitality and turbulence of 17th-century England in an effective retelling, with many more players than the typical cast of kings and queens.

The point of Jonathan Healey’s new book...is to acknowledge all the complexities of the episode but still to see it as a real revolution of political thought—to recapture a lost moment when a radically democratic commonwealth seemed possible. Such an account, as Healey recognizes, confronts formidable difficulties.

Convincing.

In lucid, often mischievous prose, Healey outlines the ideas and events that sent the state into constitutional cartwheels after the death of Elizabeth I in 1603.

Finally, we now have a rich understanding of economic and social history, urbanization and urban culture, the growth of trade, the origins of empire and the history of gender.

Healey’s prose is precise but colloquial. He presents complex arguments, but delivers them in a laid back, often jocular manner. The style matches his inclusive choice of subject matter.

I found its historical context about events leading up to the conflict far more interesting than its chronicling of battles and military leaders.

Insightful.

Healey, a professor of social history at Oxford, offers an ambitious narrative stuffed with engaging detail about the social and political developments that led to the overthrow of the Stuart monarchy, restoration, and shift to a constitutional monarchy.

Healey’s elegant narrative provides a sure guide through the century’s labyrinthine political intrigues while analyzing deeper social dynamics that he crystallizes in dramatic scenes of hierarchies being suddenly upended.