Jack P. Greene taught at Michigan State University, Western Reserve University, and the University of Michigan before he moved in 1966 to The Johns Hopkins University, where he was a member of the Department of History for thirty-nine years, except for two years spent at the University of California, Irvine in 1990–2. A specialist in the history of Colonial British and Revolutionary American history, he has published and edited many books, chapters in books, articles, and reviews. Perhaps his best-known works are The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689–1776 (1963), Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607–1789 (1986), Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of the Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (1988), and The Intellectual Construction of America: Exceptionalism and Identity from 1492 to 1800 (1993).

'Who better than Jack Greene to bring us back to the unfinished business of explaining how conflicting understandings of British law paved the path to revolution? The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution makes clear exactly how uncertainties about the authority of the Crown and Parliament pushed the colonists from conciliation to intransigence.' Joyce Appleby, University of California, Los Angeles

• Prologue: inheritance; 1. Empire negotiated, 1689–1763; 2. Empire confronted, 1764–6; 3. Empire reconsidered, 1767–73; 4. Empire shattered, 1774–6; Epilogue: legacy.

Jack P. Greene taught at Michigan State University, Western Reserve University, and the University of Michigan before he moved in 1966 to The Johns Hopkins University, where he was a member of the Department of History for thirty-nine years, except for two years spent at the University of California, Irvine in 1990–2. A specialist in the history of Colonial British and Revolutionary American history, he has published and edited many books, chapters in books, articles, and reviews. Perhaps his best-known works are The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689–1776 (1963), Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607–1789 (1986), Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of the Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (1988), and The Intellectual Construction of America: Exceptionalism and Identity from 1492 to 1800 (1993).

'Who better than Jack Greene to bring us back to the unfinished business of explaining how conflicting understandings of British law paved the path to revolution? The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution makes clear exactly how uncertainties about the authority of the Crown and Parliament pushed the colonists from conciliation to intransigence.' Joyce Appleby, University of California, Los Angeles

• Prologue: inheritance; 1. Empire negotiated, 1689–1763; 2. Empire confronted, 1764–6; 3. Empire reconsidered, 1767–73; 4. Empire shattered, 1774–6; Epilogue: legacy.