Talk:The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789

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Cover caption[edit]

By labeling the cover as the "first edition cover" of the revised edition, I can see how slightly confusing that would be. However, it simply means the original hardcover edition that was initially published in 2005 for this second revised version of the book (I suppose the confusion would lie in the word "edition"; but "first edition" here means the initial publication of the book, which is in its expanded and revised "second edition"). We can certainly go find the true first edition cover of the original version of the book, too. But I feel like the expanded and updated second edition is preferable. Jmj713 (talk) 23:18, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I also prefer the cover of the revised and expanded edition, since for The Glorious Cause its revised edition has such significant coverage. What about a caption like "First issued cover of the revised edition"? On the other hand, is even that necessary? There is no other version of or cover for the revised edition as far as I'm aware. Is it the first version if there's no other? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:22, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The covers for subsequent editions, such as in paperback etc. usually change, so for book article infoboxes the first edition cover is normally desired. You've seen how the Empire of Liberty cover changed between the first edition and subsequent printings (I believe even in hardcover). Jmj713 (talk) 23:36, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Mm, hence I specified that the cover is for the revised edition rather than for the first edition. What I was wondering about is whether exists any different version of the revised. I hadn't realized the revised was also out in paperback. Could we then caption the image "Hardcover of the revised edition"? Or "First cover of the revised edition"? "First print of the revised edition"? Since, as you say, using the phrase "edition of the revised edition" is confusing, and I think that's somewhat confusing prints with editions. A single book can come out in different editions, and a single edition of said book can have different prints/print runs. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 01:30, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A "first edition" is specific to a book's first/initial appearance, which is what we're after in the infobox (since all subsequent editions/versions are derivatives of the original), and technically The Glorious Cause had two first editions: the initial 1982 hardcover, and the 2005 revised hardcover. Both original publications of these two would be the first edition. So I think "First edition cover of the revised version" perhaps would be best. Jmj713 (talk) 02:13, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If I understand right, you seem to be using "edition" in the book collector sense, where different print runs are different editions of an edition. From researching this article, I became more familiar with the bibliographic definition of edition (a book printed today, by the same publisher, and from the same type as when it was first published, is still the first edition of that book to a bibliographer) as that's the sense in which Dixler, Flatley, and Schwarz all use the term (i. e. they all call the 2005 release the "revised edition" while the 1982 release is the "first edition"). I'm rather cautious about using terminology that's markedly different from a source's already neutral terminology ("revised edition" doesn't seem like a partisan or POV turn of phrase) so I hesitate to make Wikipedia the first to call the 2005 release "the revised version" instead of calling it "the revised edition" as the reliable sources do. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 02:40, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm fine with keeping it as is, but yes, normally "first edition" would refer to a book's initial publication, and usually books only have one "edition" (meaning "version"). But subsequent printings, or versions, such as in paperback, audiobook, etc. would have a new cover. Here we have the first edition cover of the first (1982) edition of The Glorious Cause, and the cover used in this article is the first edition of the revised edition. It's two different meanings of the word "edition" here and it does unfortunately sound silly, but correct. Regardless, agree to keep things simple. Jmj713 (talk) 02:59, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review[edit]

Passed. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 19:50, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Hydrangeans (talk · contribs) 05:48, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer: Generalissima (talk · contribs) 16:34, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]


I'll take this up. Yell at me in a few days if I don't get started! also I got a couple niche US history GANs up right now so if you're looking for more reviews to do~ Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 16:34, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much! I'll let you know that I may be busy across this particular weekend, but I'll try to be as responsive as I can be. and hopefully return the favor too Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:05, 18 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Generalissima: Just reaching out since it's been a few days since you took this up. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:15, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yep! Planning on doing this today. Thank you for reaching out, and apologies for the delay; other article stuff dragged on more than I was expecting. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 18:21, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No worries! Things happen. Thanks for the responsiveness and again for the interest in this article. I'll keep an eye out. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:31, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Generalissima: Just wanted to let you know that I've integrated your feedback into the article and left explanations/asked a question at the couple of points where I didn't or wasn't able to. Sorry about it taking a couple days for me to sit down and get around to replying to your review, and thanks very much for the solid feedback. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:46, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies it took me so long to get back to this! Source review checks out, I don't see anything that needs immediate correction. Looks like we're good to go as far as the Good Article criteria is concerned! Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 19:49, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Criterion #1: Well-written[edit]

Lede[edit]

Lede seems pretty good.

  • "Loyalists, women, social history, American Indians, and Black people" One of these is not like the other. I would rephrase this to be something along the lines of "absence of social historical analysis, or coverage of (list of groups)"

Background[edit]

  • "During the twentieth century, Woodward grew concerned..." I imagine, considering he lived entirely within the twentieth century! I get what you're trying to say here though. Maybe rephrase to "Woodward grew concerned that twentieth-century historical scholarship..."
  • Otherwise, all's good! I love your emphasis on historiography here.

Publication[edit]

  • The initial sentence is really long and hard to follow.
  • Good point. I've split it into two sentences with some revision. How is it? 22:17, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
  • Since you already say Oxford History of the United States several times, I don't think you need to say its full title again in paragraph #3. Maybe just "It was the first volume of the series to be published."
  • I've made that change. For some reason it rings strangely to my ears, but if you think it's fine, I'll leave it that way. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:17, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Some of the penultimate paragraph seems to fall into content rather than publication. Also, from what I can tell, prices are generally not mentioned in articles like this unless exceptional in some way.
  • I guess I'd lumped all that as being part of the physical description of the book, but I can see how elements like the index and illustrations are more like content. I've moved those to the Content section. As for the price, I realize I neglected to include in the body text some information about how the pricing was part of the book's accessible design. There's now an Accessibility subsection and a sentence about affordability, and including this price information helps contextualize that. With that in mind, is it alright to leave the sentence in this section? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:17, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes! Putting into context makes it make its inclusion more interesting. I like that there's sourcing on that! -G

Reception[edit]

Ooh, expansive! It seems like you've been referencing Copyediting reception sections; however, the paragraphs under Coverage are very long, and I think it might be best to break them up a little. There's also potentially an over-reliance on quotes which could probably be paraphrased a bit more thoroughly.

  • Thanks for the idea to further break up the Coverage paragraphs; I've gone ahead and done that. Some sentences got moved around to better fit with one paragraph than another, and I also revised some long quotations to summarizations. How is it? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:18, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Revised edition[edit]

Good, solid prose here, though reference the price point from above.

  • Does the context about affordability make the inclusion of this price sentence reasonable as well? Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:19, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

General thoughts[edit]

There's nothing to dock you for here per se, but I feel several of the efns are unnecessary when the terms are already linked (mainly a, b, d, and e); readers would simply click on the link and read the lede of that article if they're unfamiliar with those terms.

  • I see what you mean. My reason for including these was that in a past GA review, a reviewer averred that contextual information should be included in the article. When I posited that a reader could find that info by clicking the wikilink, they said that I shouldn't count on other articles being stable, since their content is subject to change. It seems to be a matter of varied opinions. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:21, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yeah, fair enough. I have seen articles get criticized at FAC for this before, but either way its ultimately not an issue at a GA level.

Criterion #2: Verifiable[edit]

Will do source review tomorrow. I see no unsourced content and a very well formatted bibliography and citation section to start with though!

  • Oops, this was a little later than tomorrow. I'm going off the cites in this version. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 19:49, 30 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Van Heyningen:
    • 3a and b: Checks out.
    • 5: Checks out; I hope you don't mind that I wikilinked these.
    • 20: Checks out, but this seems like more cites than you need for this.
    • 37: Indeed.
  • Burnard:
    • 4: Checks out.
    • 7a and b: Checks out.
    • 23: Checks out.
    • 44: Checks out.
    • 66: Checks out.
    • 74: Checks out.
    • 77: Checks out.
  • Pilcher:
    • 18: Yep.
    • 41: Yep.
    • 71 a and b: Checks out on both counts.
  • Robinson:
    • 21: Checks out.
    • 33: Checks out.
    • 42: Checks out.
    • 47: Yep.
    • 53 a and b: On both counts, yep.
    • 69: Checks out.
    • 75; Checks out.
  • Bloch, 85 - This confused me at first, but I realized it's actually two citations in one. All's good here, it checks out the date of the book being a Pulitzer finalist.

Criterion #3: Breadth[edit]

Very solid throughout, though I think the revised edition ought to be expanded a little in what it changes (if that is possible from the sourcing). Might also want to put reception into a subsection, even if it would be a little small.

  • I've combed the available sources again, but the reviews don't flag much more about what is different in the revised edition beyond that there is more sociohistorical content about the groups that were underrepresented in the first edition. Schwarz does also say that Middlekauff frequently cites A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727–1785, but that seemed more like a way for Schwarz to recommend another book to his readers than a truly encyclopedic data point about The Glorious Cause. I did take up your suggestion to put the revised edition's reception in a subsection, and I added a sentence based on an article in The Island Packet. Even with this much, the revised edition of The Glorious Cause is probably the best-covered of all Oxford University Press republications/new editions, except maybe for The Illustrated Battle Cry of Freedom (I haven't been able to find a secondary source that will verify the two-volume paperbacks of Freedom from Fear exist even though they plainly do—but that's neither here nor there). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits)

Criterion #4: Neutral[edit]

This looks good, seems to incorporate a wide range of views on the book.

Criterion #5: Stable[edit]

Seems so!

Criterion #6: Illustrated[edit]

All licensed correctly, and great alt-text; though you're missing it on the Oxford University Press. I'd also put links into the captions if I'm interpreting WP:CAP correctly.

Thanks for that catch! I've added captions to all the images and alt text to the photograph of Oxford University Press' building. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:44, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Will do the source review tomorrow! I must rest. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 05:47, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Notes on a first read[edit]

Looks like the GA review was already taken up, but here are some notes I had prepared from a draft GA review I had started:

  • Info on assigning authorship within the series might fit better under Publication than Background, as it isn't prerequesite knowledge, more about the process of publication
  • After that introduction about narrative history, the Content section doesn't say much about the book's narrative
  • For a 700-page book, as a reader, I'm interested in more detail of what exactly it's covering in each of its sections, or at least what's covered in the reviews about it
  • Usually we don't include prices in articles unless they're particularly noteworthy
  • The release dates are not sourced within the article or infobox
  • I found the Reception hard to parse, partly from the "X said Y" construction, overquotation, and lack of summative sentences. I recommend Wikipedia:Copyediting reception sections for some alternatives. For example, if the first paragraph is about readability, an intro would be: "Multiple reviewers noted the book's accessibility.[1,2,3] X, Y found its prose easy to follow.[4,5] Reviewers emphasized the author's engaging style, such as example A, example B.[6,7] Reynolds countered that the book repeatedly did not introduce people and events, making the reader consult other texts.[8]" Etc. Since there is a theme to most paragraphs here and it's just hard to grok, I think this is just a slight reorganization issue.
  • The Reception section has a similar issue of introducing many historian names, expecting the reader to follow, when it would be easier to read some statements without naming names or publications (combining sentences can help with this)
  • Isn't the revised edition part of the Publication history, to be included there? Especially if reviews of the revised edition are part of the Reception, makes sense to cover the publication histories together too.
  • To keep the lede weighted properly, I recommend removing specific reviewer opinions from the lede, keeping to broad strokes
  • For readability, I also recommend introducing the book's contents in the first paragraph, as it's why the reader is reading, before introducing anything about how the book was published and how the series is edited, i.e., follow the flow of the article
  • Non-GA concern but the article can likely be moved to The Glorious Cause as the primary topic
  • The Oxford History of the United States is an exciting project—let me know if you want a hand sourcing the other articles

Happy editing, czar 11:32, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thanks for your comments! You made some very sound points that I've gone ahead and integrated into the article, like removing from the days/months of publication that can't be sourced to secondary publications, placing the author search with the Publication section, reviewing specific reviewer opinions from the lead, and mentioning the book's contents in the lead's first paragraph.
I'll go ahead and explain some of the changes I didn't make:
  • I've left the revised edition in a separate section where a lot of the changes made in the revised edition seem to be responses to the reception of the first edition. All the reception in that section—even from publications released later, like Kristofer Ray—is about the first edition. If the revised edition received more coverage, maybe it could've been a separate article, but I don't know if it quite reaches that threshold.
  • I read the essay you linked, but I struggle to see how that doesn't violate WP:SYNTH and WP:OR. There aren't sources that verify claims about multiple reviewers saying anything; instead there are multiple reviews that one can, at most, cite next to each other. And to say that Reynolds (or anyone else) "countered" certain reviewers' assessments is to place him in a historiographic conversation Reynolds didn't say he was participating in. The Wikipedia:Copyediting reception sections reads like decent advice for writing descriptive essays or historiographies, but Wikipedia's guidelines prohibit the creativity and original thought such integration and synthesis of material would require.
  • I hesitate to move the article to The Glorious Cause since that introduces ambiguity that can be avoided. In addition to being the title of another book, "The Glorious Cause" was also, as The Glorious Cause explains, a term used to describe the American Revolution itself.
Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:30, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
re: revised edition, sounds good but the review material currently in that separate section doesn't highlight any aspect of the revisions so it's indistinguishable from the general Reception. For comparison, other forms of media with updated editions usually cover the updates in existing sections unless there is enough material about the updates to warrant its own section, whereas this one is short. It would be a high bar to warrant splitting off a second article about the revised edition, e.g., see Talk:Mario Kart 8/Archive 1#Merge discussion.
re: the essay, "countered" would be at your discretion—I haven't read the source material and was spitballing. Yes, it would be citing similar claims next to each other without violating synthesis or original research guidelines, as the essay already mentions. For comparison, consider how the current lede says, "Reviewers mostly praised The Glorious Cause's style and readability"—that assumes what reviewers said as a whole and thus creates synth/OR issues whereas saying "Multiple reviewers praised..." does not. I've written multiple featured articles about books following that essay without issue, so I don't think your read of Wikipedia's guidelines is as prohibitive as you think.
re: title: the "primary topic" guideline I linked indicates that when a phrase has multiple meanings but one supersedes the other, Wikipedia sends the reader to the place of least astonishment (i.e., what they'd expect) with a hatnote to other uses. In searches, The Glorious Cause as a phrase refers most often to this history book than to the novel or as a prominent term for the American Revolution. That's why it redirects here: It's what a reader would reasonably expect to read when searching for the term. The guideline on subtitles also applies here. The title isn't a matter for GA but given the existing redirect and no strong reason to disambiguate, it's worth reconsideration.
czar 02:30, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for pointing out the WP:SYNTH sentence in the lead—good catch, that. And thanks for all the feedback and encouragement about contributing to articles about the Oxford History of the United States. In the back of my mind I have a hankering to see the (thus far published) series all blue—maybe even all green? We'll see. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:14, 25 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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