April 7, 2000

2 Books From Harvard U. Press Focus on How Our National Identity Was Shaped; Columbia U. Graduate Student Fashions Dissertation Into Historical Thriller

By D.W. MILLER and JENNIFER K. RUARK

American Revolutionary War buffs know this month to be the 225th anniversary of the minutemen's "shot heard round the world." Although textbooks often mark the Battles of Lexington and Concord as early labor pains in the birth of a nation, two histories out this month from Harvard University Press argue that the gestation of a national identity actually spanned a century and a half.

"The complicated process of creating a distinctive, even 'modern' America,