Excellent book on Levellers as a political organization, effectively exploiting printing in order to distribute their ideas and provide a perceptual venue for popular discontent. The author described the Levellers in process of gradual organization and self-differentiation from other political forces of the time as well as in their alliances with other groups. He points out that while their social radicalism ensured they will not have sufficient support within the social elites to win these to their ideas, and while after Cromwell's victory he managed to destroy them as an organization, still the revolution succeeded only due to initial alliance between the Levellers, with their popular supports and organizational savvy, and the Independents. Still, as in many other cases in history, the Levellers won in a very different revolution from the one they wished for.
While the story of creation, victory, and subsequent defeat of Levellers as a revolutionary organization is fascinating, the personal stories of the activists and their common struggles recreated the period for this reader admirably. I constantly found myself worried about writers and publishers Richard and Mary Overton, a parliamentarian Henry Marten, or an irrepressible printer William Larner, as I would worry about friends in danger. These and many other activists of the period come to life in this book and, while we never loose sight of the distance between their society and ours, do much to narrow that distance. In fact way too many of their political concerns are not obsolete yet.