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A vivid, exciting account of the largest battle of the American Revolution. “In his shot-by-shot account of the largest and bloodiest battle of the American Revolution, Gallagher recreates the fierce encounter of 27 August 1776 in which twenty thousand British, Hessian and Loyalist troops defeated ten thousand patriot soldiers. . . . the book offers many perceptive observations and the author succinctly summarizes the lessons derived . . . this book is recommended reading for those who cherish the heritage of the gallant ‘rabble in arms’ that risked all for American independence.”
In August 1776, General George Washington’s young army faced off against over 20,000 British and Hessian soldiers at the Battle of Brooklyn. This was the largest battle of the Revolution, and for the Americans, outmanned and outmaneuvered, it was almost the end of the war, as well. Maryland only had one Continental Regiment. But it fielded the largest, best equipped, fully uniformed, and among the best to take the field. Each carried a fine flintlock musket with bayonet, a rarity among Washington’s army. And on one fateful day, August 27, 1776, six of the ten companies, four hundred boys, from among the finest families of Maryland, rose among the immortals and charged with bayonets, six times, outnumbered against the most professional army on earth. They did so to hold back the British and allow hundreds of their fellow soldiers escape. They did so with nearly 300 killed, and nearly all who survived, wounded and taken prisoner. A sacrifice forever engraved in our nation’s history.
Bunker Hill tells the story of the Boston battle that ignited the American Revolution. With passion and insight, Philbrick reconstructs the revolutionary landscape—geographic and ideological—in a mesmerizing narrative of the robust, messy, blisteringly real origins of America. It would be the bloodiest battle of the Revolution to come, and the point of no return for the rebellious colonists.
Bernard Bailyn’s masterpiece was awarded both the Pulitzer and the Bancroft prizes, has become a classic. Hailed at its first appearance five decades ago as “the most brilliant study of the meaning of the Revolution to appear in a generation.” Now, in a new preface, Bailyn reconsiders salient features of the book and isolates the Founders’ profound concern with power. In pamphlets, letters, newspapers, and sermons they returned to the problem of the uses and misuses of power—the great benefits of power when gained by popular consent and the political and social devastation when acquired by those who seize it by force or other means and, as so pertinent to the turmoil surrounding the present administration, use it for their personal benefit. This fiftieth anniversary edition will be welcomed by readers familiar with Bailyn’s book, and it will introduce a new generation to a work that remains required reading for anyone seeking to understand the nation’s historical roots.
A brilliant account of the proud and ferocious American fighters who stood up to the British forces in savage battles crucial in deciding both the fate of the Carolina colonies and the outcome of the war. A tense, exciting historical account of a little known chapter of the Revolution, displaying history writing at its best. His compelling narrative brings readers closer than ever before to the reality of Revolutionary warfare. Buchanan makes the subject come alive. He offers a lively, accurate account of a critical period in the War of Independence in the South.
Russell Shorto’s work has been praised as “first-rate intellectual history” (Wall Street Journal), “literary alchemy” (Chicago Tribune) and simply “astonishing” (New York Times). In his epic new book, Russell Shorto takes us back to the founding of the American nation, drawing on diaries, letters and autobiographies to flesh out six lives that cast the era in a fresh new light. They include an African man who escaped slavery and a rebellious young woman who abandoned her abusive husband. Revolution Song makes the compelling case that the American Revolution is still being fought today and that its ideals are worth defending.
In the summer of 1779, as the major fighting of the Revolutionary War moves to the South, a British force consisting of fewer than a thousand Scottish infantry sails to the fogbound coast of New England. Establishing a garrison and naval base at Penobscot Bay, the Scots harry rebel privateers. In response, the Americans send one thousand infantrymen to “captivate, kill, or destroy” the foreign invaders. This will have stunning repercussions for a Boston silversmith and patriot named Paul Revere, who will face court-martial for disobedience and cowardice.
The battle of Cowpens was a crucial turning point in the Rev. War in the South and stands as perhaps the finest American tactical demonstration of the entire war. On 17 Jan. 1781, Daniel Morgan’s force of Continental troops and militia routed British regulars and Loyalists under the command of Banastre Tarleton. The victory helped put the British army on the road to the Yorktown surrender and, ultimately, cleared the way for American independence.
The summer months of 1776 witnessed the most consequential events in the story of our country’s founding. While the thirteen colonies came together and agreed to secede from the British Empire, the British were dispatching the largest armada ever to cross the Atlantic to crush the rebellion in the cradle. The Continental Congress and the Continental Army were forced to make decisions on the run, improvising as history congealed around them. In a brilliant and seamless narrative, Ellis meticulously examines the most influential figures in this propitious moment, including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Britain’s Admiral Lord Richard and General William Howe. He weaves together the political and military experiences as two sides of a single story, and shows how events on one front influenced outcomes on the other.
Students and enthusiasts of American history are familiar with the Revolutionary War spies Nathan Hale and Benedict Arnold, but few studies have closely examined the wider intelligence efforts that enabled the colonies to gain their independence. Spies, Patriots, and Traitors provides readers with a fascinating, well-documented, and highly readable account of American intelligence activities during the era of the Revolutionary War, from 1765 to 1783.
In this gripping chronicle of America’s struggle for independence, historian John Ferling transports readers to the grim realities of that war, capturing an eight-year conflict filled with heroism, suffering, cowardice, betrayal, and fierce dedication. Ferling describes a war that America came much closer to losing than is now usually remembered. Washington put it best when he said that the American victory was “little short of a standing miracle.”
The American Revolution is often portrayed as an orderly, restrained rebellion, with brave patriots defending their noble ideals against an oppressive empire. It’s a stirring narrative, and one the founders did their best to encourage after the war. But as historian Holger Hoock shows in this deeply researched and elegantly written account of America’s founding, the Revolution was not only a high-minded battle over principles, but also a profoundly violent civil war-one that shaped the nation, and the British Empire, in ways we have only begun to understand.
Amid a great collection of scholarship and narrative history on the Revolutionary War and the American struggle for independence, there is a gaping hole; one that John Ferling’s latest book, Whirlwind, will fill. Whirlwind is a fast-paced and scrupulously told one-volume history of this epochal time. Ferling has crafted the ideal book for armchair military history buffs, a book about the causes of the American Revolution, the war that won it, and the meaning of the Revolution overall. Whirlwind is a unique and compelling addition to any collection of books on the American Revolution.
Joseph Plumb Martin left his grandfather’s farm in Conn. in 1775 and spent much of the next eight years with the Continental Army, crisscrossing the mid-Atlantic states and returning north after the British surrender at Yorktown. His notes recount in grim detail his harrowing experiences during the conflict — the staggering losses in human life, the agony of long marches, constant gnawing hunger, bitter cold, and the fear of battle, as well as a warts-and-all view of military leaders. An invaluable memoir from an ordinary man in extraordinary times, the narrative is “one of the best firsthand accounts of war as seen by a private soldier.
In 1969, Kevin Phillips’ study, The Emerging Republican Majority, presciently predicted the dawn of a Republican era in presidential elections. Since then he has produced 14 more books that have oscillated between journalistic analyses of contemporary American politics and forays into American history. As he explains, he tends to move back to the past when disenchanted with the politics of the present. In 1775: A Good Year for Revolution, he argues that the determining events of the American Revolution occurred a year earlier than most people realize. In effect, the lightning struck several months before American independence was officially declared in July of 1776, which was really just a thunderous epilogue. Phillips deploys his formidable energies to elaborate the argument like a lawyer defending his client. This is a feisty, fearless, edgy book, blissfully bereft of academic jargon, propelled by the energy of an author with the bit in his teeth. Phillips’s major accomplishment is to recover that sense of excitement, confusion and improvisation as, almost providentially, the perfect storm formed.
A Must for any library on the The American Revolution. This complete overview of the war brings all the action to life, from the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party to the Declaration of Independence and the Treaty of Paris. The American Revolution presents illustrated accounts of every major military action and comprehensive timelines for every stage of the war. Reveals first-person accounts by soldiers and civilians. Gallery spreads feature collections of weapons and uniforms, and feature sections such as politics, prisoners, women, Native Americans, and African Americans. Created in association with the Smithsonian Institution.
Britain’s desperate battles to guard its most vaunted colonial possession are here told in tandem with London parlor-room intrigues, where Caroline bravely fought to protect the Howe reputation in a gossipy aristocratic milieu. A riveting narrative and long overdue reassessment of the entire family, The Howe Dynasty forces us to reimagine the Revolutionary War in ways that would have been previously inconceivable. 8-page color insert, black-and-white illustrations throughout.
Winning Independence is the dramatic story of how and why Great Britain-so close to regaining several southern colonies and rendering the postwar United States a fatally weak nation ultimately failed to win the war. The book explores the choices and decisions made by Clinton and Washington, and others, that ultimately led the French and American allies to clinch the pivotal victory at Yorktown that at long last secured American independence.
New York Times Bestseller. A bustling port city, Charleston, South Carolina, is the crossroads of the American Revolution where supplies and weapons for the rebel army must be unloaded and smuggled north. From the window of the dressmaker’s shop where she works, lovely Celia Garth, recently engaged to the heir to a magnificent plantation, watches all of this thrilling activity. When the unthinkable occurs and the British capture and occupy Charleston, bringing fiery retribution to the surrounding countryside, Celia sees her world destroyed. The rebel cause seems lost until the Swamp Fox, American General Francis Marion, takes the fight to the British — and one of his daring young soldiers recruits Celia to spy on the rebels’ behalf. From the ashes of Charleston and the Carolina countryside will rise a new nation—and a love that will change Celia Garth forever.
From the rocky slopes of Kings Mountain to the plains of Hannah’s Cowpens, the Carolina back-country hosted two of the Revolutionary War’s most critical battles. The Battle of Kings Mountain utilized guerrilla techniques―American Over Mountain Men wearing buckskin and hunting shirts and armed with hunting rifles attacked Loyalist troops from behind trees. The Battle of Cowpens saw a different strategy but a similar outcome: American victory. Using firsthand accounts and careful analysis of the best classic and modern scholarship on the subject, historian Robert Brown demonstrates how the combination of both battles facilitated the downfall of General Charles Cornwallis and led to the Patriot victory at Yorktown.
It is autumn 1777, and the cradle of liberty, Philadelphia, has fallen to the British. Yet the true battle has only just begun. On both sides, loyalties are tested and families torn asunder. The young Redcoat Sam Gilpin has seen his brother die. Now he must choose between duty to a distant king and the call of his own conscience. And for the men and women of the prosperous Becket family, the Revolution brings bitter conflict between those loyal to the crown and those with dreams of liberty. Soon, across the fields of ice and blood in a place called Valley Forge, history will be rewritten, changing the lives and fortunes of these men and women forever.
The #1 New York Times bestselling book for many weeks, Jack Levin presents a beautifully designed account of George Washington’s historic crossing of the Delaware River and the decisive Battle of Trenton. Jack E. Levin illuminates a profound turning point of the American Revolution: the decisive Battle of Trenton and its prelude—General George Washington leading his broken and ailing troops in a fleet of small wooden boats across the ice-encased Delaware River. Featuring Revolution-era artwork, portraiture, and maps.
Without the support of American women, victory in the Revolutionary War would not have been possible. They followed the Continental Army, handling a range of jobs that were usually performed by men. On the orders of General Washington, some were hired as nurses for $2 per month and one full ration per day–disease was rampant and nurse mortality was high. A few served with artillery units or masqueraded as men to fight in the ranks. The author focuses on the many key roles women filled in the struggle for independence, from farming to making saltpeter to spying.
Jeff Shaara, book 1 of 2 on the American Revolution, dazzled readers with his bestselling novels Godsand Generals,The Last Full Measure, and Gone for Soldiers. Now the acclaimed author who illuminated the Civil War and the Mexican-American War brilliantly brings to life the American Revolution, creating a superb saga of the men who helped to forge the destiny of a nation.
Fictionalized characters based on authentic participants in the American Revolution bring to life the founding fathers and the struggle of a new nation that forms its own identity. This book, preceded by it’s companion, Rise to Rebellion, is historical fiction at its best.
Drawing on extensive research, Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger have painted compelling portraits of George Washington’s secret six. When General George Washington beat a hasty retreat from New York City in August 1776, many thought the American Revolution might soon be over. Instead, Washington rallied—thanks in large part to a little-known, top-secret group called the Culper Spy Ring. Historians have discovered enough information about the ring’s activities to piece together evidence that these six individuals turned the tide of the war. This is their story.
This thoroughly researched and action-packed history will appeal to American and Canadian history buffs and military experts alike. In this dramatic retelling of one of history’s great “what-ifs,” Mark R. Anderson examines the American colonies’ campaign to bring Quebec into the Continental confederation and free the Canadians from British “tyranny.
The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically acclaimed volume–a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize–offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic. Beginning with the French and Indian War and continuing to the election of George Washington as first president, Robert Middlekauff offers a panoramic history of the conflict between England and America. The cause for which the colonists fought, liberty and independence, was glorious indeed. Here is an equally glorious narrative of an event that changed the world, capturing the profound and passionate struggle to found a free nation.
We commonly think of the American Revolution as simply the war for independence from British colonial rule. But, of course, that independence actually applied to only a portion of the American population—African Americans would still be bound in slavery for nearly another century. Alan Gilbert asks us to rethink what we know about the Revolutionary War. Gilbert presents persuasive evidence that slavery could have been abolished during the Revolution itself if either side had fully pursued the military advantage of freeing slaves and pressing them into combat. Extensive research also reveals that free blacks on both sides played a crucial and underappreciated role in the actual fighting.
Nine Rare and Fascinating First-Person Profiles of Soldiers Who Fought for the British Crown. Much has been written about the colonists who took up arms during the American Revolution and the army they created. Far less literature, however, has been devoted to their adversaries. The professional soldiers that composed the British army are seldom considered on a personal level, instead being either overlooked or inaccurately characterized as conscripts and criminals. Taken as a whole these true stories reveal much about the individuals who composed what was, at the time, the most formidable fighting force in the world.
In the summer of 1777 (twelve months after the Declaration of Independence) the British launched an invasion from Canada under General John Burgoyne. It was the campaign that was supposed to end the rebellion, but it resulted in a series of battles that changed America’s history and that of the world. Stirring narrative history, skillfully told through the perspective of those who fought in the campaign, Saratoga brings to life as never before the inspiring story of Americans who did their utmost in what seemed a lost cause, achieving what proved to be the crucial victory of the Revolution.
Valley Forge is the riveting true story of a nascent United States toppling an empire. Using new and rarely seen contemporaneous documents—and drawing on a cast of iconic characters and remarkable moments that capture the innovation and energy that led to the birth of our nation—Drury and Clavin provide the definitive account of this seminal and previously undervalued moment in the battle for American independence.
The true story of the Baron de Steuben and the making of the American Army, The Drillmaster of Valley Forge is the first biography in half a century of the immigrant Prussian soldier who molded George Washington’s ragged, demoralized troops into the fighting force that eventually triumphed in America’s War of Independence. Praised by renowned historian Thomas Fleming as “an important book for anyone interested in the American Revolution,” The Drillmaster of Valley Forge rights a historical wrong by finally giving a forgotten hero his well-deserved due.
Paul Revere’s midnight ride looms as an almost mythical event in American history–yet it has been largely ignored by scholars and left to patriotic writers and debunkers. Now one of the foremost American historians offers the first serious look at the events of the night of April 18, 1775–what led up to it, what really happened, and what followed–uncovering a truth far more remarkable than the myths of tradition.
Author Cokie Roberts presents the New York Times bestseller Founding Mothers, an intimate and illuminating look at the fervently patriotic and passionate women whose tireless pursuits on behalf of their families–and their country–proved just as crucial to the forging of a new nation as the rebellion that established it. Cokie Roberts brings us women who fought the Revolution as valiantly as the men, often defending their very doorsteps. Drawing upon personal correspondence, private journals, and even favored recipes, Roberts reveals the often surprising stories of these fascinating women, bringing to life the everyday trials and extraordinary triumphs of individuals like Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Deborah Read Franklin, Eliza Pinckney, Catherine Littlefield Green, Esther DeBerdt Reed and Martha Washington–proving that without our exemplary women, the new country might have never survived.
Combining compelling narrative and grand historical sweep, Forgotten Allies offers a vivid account of the Oneida Indians, forgotten heroes of the American Revolution who risked their homeland, their culture, and their lives to join in a war that gave birth to a new nation at the expense of their own.
The American Revolution brought scarcity, bloodshed, and danger into the life of every American. In this groundbreaking history, Carol Berkin shows us how women played a vital role throughout the conflict. The women were most active at home, organizing boycotts of British goods, raising funds for the fledgling nation, and managing the family business while struggling to maintain a modicum of normalcy as husbands, brothers and fathers died. Yet Berkin also reveals that it was not just the men who fought on the front lines. This incisive and comprehensive history illuminates a fascinating and unknown side of the struggle for American independence.
Gen. Washington’s Great Gamble is the story of the greatest naval engagement of the American Revolution. The Battle of the Capes would prove the only time the French ever fought the Royal Navy to a draw, and for the British army it was a catastrophe. Cornwallis confidently retreated to Yorktown, expecting to be evacuated by a British fleet that never arrived.
Before the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military became the most divisive issue facing the new government. The founders―particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adams―debated fiercely. Would a standing army be the thin end of dictatorship? Would a navy protect from pirates or drain the treasury and provoke hostility? Britain alone had hundreds of powerful warships.
Here, from some of America’s greatest historians – Richard Ketchum, David McCullough, and Thomas Fleming, among them – are the dramatic stories of men who made the American Revolution: from Samuel Adams to Thomas Paine, Henry Knox to Friedrich von Steuben, John Paul Jones to Benedict Arnold, Lord Cornwallis to Benjamin Franklin.
The untold story of the fight for the Hudson River Valley, control of which, both the Americans and the British firmly believed, would determine the outcome of the Revolutionary War. George C. Daughan―winner of the prestigious Samuel Eliot Morrison Award for Naval Literature―integrates the war’s naval elements with its political, military, economic, and social dimensions to create a major new study of the American Revolution. Revolution on the Hudson offers a much clearer understanding of our founding conflict, and how it transformed a rebellion that Britain should have crushed into a war they could never win.
Between 1775 and 1783, just over 6,800 Americans who fought the crown died in battle. About 25,000 became prisoners of war, most of them confined in New York City under conditions so atrocious that they perished by the thousands. Evidence suggests that at least 17,500 Americans may have died in these prisons—more than twice the number to die on the battlefield. Stuffed into a hastily assembled collection of public buildings, sugar houses, and prison ships, the prisoners were shockingly overcrowded and chronically underfed. Forgotten Patriots is the first-ever account of what took place in these hell-holes.
What sets “George Washington’s Sacred Fire” apart from all previous works on this man for the ages, is the exhaustive fifteen years of Dr. Peter Lillback’s research. George Washington set the cornerstone for what would become one of the most prosperous, free nations in the history of civilization. Through this book, Dr. Lillback, assisted by Jerry Newcombe, will reveal to the reader a newly inspirational image of General and President George Washington.
Drawing upon new research and scholarship, historian Paul Lockhart, author of the critically acclaimed Revolutionary War biography The Drillmaster of Valley Forge, offers a penetrating reassessment of the first major engagement of the American Revolution. In the tradition of David McCullough’s 1776,Lockhart illuminates the Battle of Bunker Hill as a crucial event in the creation of an American identity, dexterously interweaving the story of this pivotal pitched battle with two other momentous narratives: the creation of America’s first army, and the rise of the man who led it, George Washington.
In this landmark work of history, the National Book Award—winning author of American Sphinx explores how a group of greatly gifted but deeply flawed individuals–Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, and Madison–confronted the overwhelming challenges before them to set the course for our nation. Founding Brothers brings to life the vital issues and personalities from the most important decade in our nation’s history.
From the New York Times bestselling author comes a surprising account of the middle years of the American Revolution, and the tragic relationship between George Washington and Benedict Arnold. Valiant Ambition is a complex, controversial, and dramatic portrait of a people in crisis and the war that gave birth to a nation. The focus is on loyalty and personal integrity, evoking a Shakespearean tragedy that unfolds in the key relationship of Washington and Arnold. Washington’s unmatched ability to rise above the petty politics of his time enables him to win the war that really matters.
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, by Jon Meacham is a superb biography of Jefferson. As so succinctly stated by one of his many reviewers, Meacham has so many assets: it is relatively brief; it covers most of the important aspects of this complex man’s remarkable life, and it leaves us with undiluted admiration for an extraordinary man. Well researched and meticulously written, it is clearly one of the better biographies of a complex man who penned a document that would forever change the world.
Kenneth C. Davis, author of the phenomenal New York Times bestseller Don’t Know Much About History, presents a collection of extraordinary stories, each detailing an overlooked episode that shaped the nation’s destiny and character. Davis’s dramatic narratives set the record straight, busting myths and bringing to light little-known but fascinating facts from a time when the nation’s fate hung in the balance. Spanning a period from the Spanish arrival in America to George Washington’s inauguration in 1789, America’s Hidden History is an iconoclastic look at America’s past, connecting some of the dots between history and today’s headlines, and proving why Davis is truly America’s teacher.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize: In a grand and immensely readable synthesis of historical, political, cultural, and economic analysis, a prize-winning historian describes the events that made the American Revolution. Gordon S. Wood depicts a revolution that was about much more than a break from England, rather it transformed an almost feudal society into a democratic one, whose emerging realities sometimes baffled and disappointed its founding fathers.
In The First Salute, one of America’s consummate historians crafts a rigorously original view of the American Revolution. Barbara W. Tuchman places the Revolution in the context of the centuries-long conflicts between England and both France and Holland, demonstrating how the aid to the American colonies of both these nations made the triumph of independence possible. She sheds new light on the key role played by the contending navies, paints a magnificent portrait of George Washington, and recounts in riveting detail the decisive campaign of the war at Yorktown. By turns lyrical and gripping, The First Salute is an exhilarating account of the birth of a nation.
The last quarter of the eighteenth century remains the most politically creative era in American history, when a dedicated group of men undertook a bold experiment in political ideals. It was a time of both triumphs and tragedies—all of which contributed to the shaping of our burgeoning nation. Ellis casts an incisive eye on the gradual pace of the American Revolution and the contributions of such luminaries as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, and brilliantly analyzes the failures of the founders to adequately solve the problems of slavery and the treatment of Native Americans. With accessible prose and stunning eloquence, Ellis delineates in American Creation an era of flawed greatness, at a time when understanding our origins is more important than ever.
In The Long Fuse, Don Cook investigates the American Revolution from the British side, throwing new light on this colorful age and its players. He draws from a multitude of primary sources, including personal correspondence and political memoranda, to show how Britain, at the height of her power but suffering from internal political strife, made one mistake after another, culminating in the loss of her prized colonies.
When Sir William Howe, commander-in-chief of the British Army in America, and his brother, Admiral Richard Howe, cornered General George Washington’s army on Manhattan Island, they politely asked the Americans if they wanted to surrender. The British gave the Americans two weeks to think it over, time Washington used to strengthen his troops for another round of fighting. Here, in this short-form book by New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming, is the surprising story of how William and Richard Howe guaranteed British defeat and American independence by choosing peacemaking over bloodletting.
A shift in British strategy southward after the Battle of Monmouth in 1778 triggered numerous military engagements in 1779 and 1780 in Georgia and the Carolinas. Surprisingly, Virginia, the largest of the original thirteen colonies, saw relatively little fighting for the first six years of the Revolutionary War. This changed in 1781 when British and American forces converged on Virginia. Benedict Arnold’s sudden appearance in Virginia in early 1781 with 1,600 seasoned British troops demonstrated Virginia’s vulnerability to attack and the possibility that the colonies could be divided and subdued piecemeal. General Charles Cornwallis concluded that defeating the Patriots in Virginia was the key to ending the war. As a result, Cornwallis marched his army north in May 1781 to assume command of what was now a very powerful British force of over 7,000 troops.
American colonists had volunteered for a mission to paddle and march nearly 200 miles through some of the wildest country in the colonies and seize the fortress city of Quebec and British stronghold in Canada. The march, under the command of Colonel Benedict Arnold, proved to be a tragic journey. Before they reached the outskirts of Quebec, hundreds died from hypothermia, drowning, small pox, lightning strikes, exposure, and starvation. The survivors ate dogs, shoes, clothing, leather, cartridge boxes, shaving soap, and lip salve. Their trek toward Quebec was nearly twice the length shown on their maps. Finally, in the midst of a raging blizzard, those remaining attacked Quebec. A great military history about the early days of the American Revolution, Through a Howling Wilderness is also a timeless adventure narrative that tells of heroic acts, men pitted against nature’s fury.
Stewart Jameson, a Scottish portrait painter fleeing his debtors in Edinburgh, has washed up on the British Empire’s far shores — in the city of Boston, lately seized with the spirit of liberty. Eager to begin anew, he advertises for an apprentice, but the lad who comes knocking is no lad at all. Fanny Easton is a fallen woman from Boston’s most prominent family who has disguised herself as a boy to become Jameson’s defiant and seductive apprentice. Written with wit and exuberance by accomplished historians Jane Kamensky & Jill Lapore, Blindspotis an affectionate send-up of the best of eighteenth-century fiction. It celebrates the art of the Enlightenment and the passion of the American Revolution by telling stories of ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary time.
Setting the World Ablaze is the story of the American Revolution and of the three Founders who played crucial roles in winning the War of Independence and creating a new nation: George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Braiding three strands into one rich narrative, John Ferling brings these American icons down from their pedestals to show them as men of flesh and blood, and in doing so gives us a new understanding of the passion and uncertainty of the struggle to form a new nation.
The preeminent historian of the Founding Era reflects on the birth of American nationhood and explains why the American Revolution remains so essential. For Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon S. Wood, the American Revolution is the most important event in our history, bar none. Since American identity is so fluid, we have had to continually return to our nation’s founding to understand who we are. In a series of illuminating essays, he explores the ideological origins of the Revolution—from Ancient Rome to the European Enlightenment—and the founders’ attempts to forge a democracy.
The astonishing, hitherto unknown truths about a disease that transformed the United States at its birth. A horrifying epidemic of smallpox was sweeping across the Americas when the American Revolution began, and yet we know almost nothing about it. Elizabeth A. Fenn is the first historian to reveal how deeply variola affected the outcome of the war in every colony and the lives of everyone in North America. By 1776, when military action and political ferment increased, the epidemic worsened. Fenn’s remarkable research shows us how smallpox devastated the American troops. Soon the disease affected the war in Virginia, where it ravaged slaves who had escaped to join the British forces. During the terrible winter at Valley Forge, General Washington had to decide if and when to attempt the risky inoculation of his troops. The destructive, desolating power of smallpox made for a cascade of public-health crises and heartbreaking human drama. Fenn’s innovative work shows how this mega-tragedy was met and what its consequences were for America.
The Marketplace of Revolution offers a boldly innovative interpretation of the mobilization of ordinary Americans on the eve of independence. Breen explores how colonists who came from very different ethnic and religious backgrounds managed to overcome difference and create a common cause capable of galvanizing resistance. In a richly interdisciplinary narrative that weaves insights into a changing material culture with analysis of popular political protests, Breen shows how virtual strangers managed to communicate a sense of trust that effectively united men and women long before they had established a nation of their own.
The Treaty of Paris in 1783 formally ended the American Revolutionary War, but it was the pivotal campaigns and battles of 1781 that decided the final outcome. 1781 was one of those rare years in American history when the future of the nation hung by a thread, and only the fortitude, determination, and sacrifice of its leaders and citizenry ensured its survival.
Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly “American Scripture,” and Maier tells us how it came to be, from the Declaration’s birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, in the 19th century, the document itself became sanctified.
“An elegant synthesis done by the leading scholar in the field, which nicely integrates the work on the American Revolution over the last three decades but never loses contact with the older, classic questions that we have been arguing about for over two hundred years.”—Joseph J. Ellis, author of Founding Brothers.
The loss of America was a stunning and unexpected defeat for the powerful British Empire. Common wisdom has held that incompetent military commanders and political leaders in Britain must have been to blame, but were they? This intriguing book makes a different argument. Weaving together the personal stories of ten prominent men who directed the British dimension of the war, historian Andrew O’Shaughnessy dispels the incompetence myth and uncovers the real reasons that rebellious colonials were able to achieve their surprising victory. roiling political complexities at home, combined with the fervency of the fighting Americans, proved fatal to the British war effort.
One of the half dozen most important books ever written about the American Revolution.–New York Times Book Review .Gordon Wood charts a transformation in American politics between the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the writing of the American Constitution in 1787 based on social conflict. The political landscape started from that of “classical” republicanism” that reflected the immutable ordering of society, moved to a radical Whig reaction towards direct democracy that took place in the 1770s and early 1780s in the form of state constitution-building, and finally resulted in a more conservative Federalist reaction that emphasized government-building based on functionality.
No event in American history was more pivotal-or more furiously contested-than Congress’s decision to declare independence in July 1776. Other books have been written about the Declaration, but no author has traced the political journey from protest to Revolution with the narrative scope and flair of John Ferling. Independence takes readers from the cobblestones of Philadelphia into the halls of Parliament, where many sympathized with the Americans and furious debate erupted over how to deal with the rebellion. Independence is not only the story of how freedom was won, but how an empire was lost.
“A superb retelling of the story of Valley Forge and its aftermath, demonstrating that reality is far more compelling than myth.” – Gordon S. Wood. The defining moments of the American Revolution did not occur on the battlefield or at the diplomatic table, writes New York Times bestselling author Thomas Fleming, but at Valley Forge. Though his army stands on the edge of collapse, George Washington must wage a secondary war, this one against the slander of his reputation as a general and patriot.
John Ferling offers a magisterial new history that surges from the first rumblings of colonial protest to the volcanic election of 1800. Ferling’s swift-moving narrative teems with fascinating details. We see Benjamin Franklin trying to decide if his loyalty was to Great Britain or to America, and we meet George Washington when he was a shrewd planter-businessman who discovered personal economic advantages to American independence. We encounter those who supported the war against Great Britain in 1776, but opposed independence because it was a “leap in the dark.” John Ferling has shown himself to be an insightful historian of our Revolution, and an unusually skillful writer.
In an oft-told but still inspiring saga, the author opens his popular history in 1754, as a young Washington was becoming seasoned in battles against French troops seeking to encroach on British territory. After that introduction, Kelly moves the action to 1774, as Washington commands a bunch of ragtag soon-to-be Americans against the British monarchy. Kelly is fascinated by the details of specific battles, but he is well-aware that without finely wrought character sketches of those carrying out the fighting, military history can fall flat on the page. As a result, the author has carefully chosen his heroes and villains, using both primary and secondary sources to explain their paths to battle. — Kirkus Review.
“Outstanding….Hibbert has an eye for character and a gift for bringing to life the impact of small-minded incompetents on the wide sweep of history.”— Associated Press. The story of this war has usually been told in terms of a conflict between blundering British generals and their rigidly disciplined red-coated troops on the one side and heroic American patriots in their homespun shirts and coonskin caps on the other. In this fresh, compelling narrative, Christopher Hibbert portrays the realities of a war that raged the length of an entire continent—a war that thousands of George Washington’s fellow countrymen condemned and that he came close to losing.
On October 19, 1781, Great Britain’s best army surrendered to General George Washington at Yorktown. But the future of the 13 former colonies was far from clear. A nearly 30,000 man British army was scattered from Canada to Savannah, Georgia. Congress had declined to a mere 24 members and the national treasury was empty. The American army had not been paid for years and was on the brink of mutiny. A stubborn George III dismissed Yorktown as a minor defeat and refused to yield an acre of “my dominions” in America. In his riveting new book, Thomas Fleming moves elegantly between the key players in this drama and shows that the outcome we take for granted was far from certain.
Winner of the Bancroft Prize. Robert A. Gross offers a closer look at the American Revolution by examining the lives of the people that lived in Concord, Massachusetts. By researching and interpreting diaries, court records, colony records, genealogies, and private papers, Gross describes a society before, during, and after the American Revolution. He succeeds in creating a well-written historical text that is easy to read, interpret, and enjoy. Gross accomplishes this by giving the reader a better sense of the life of a person during the American Revolution.
This study presents the first broad coverage of Indian experiences in the American Revolution rather than Indian participation as allies or enemies of contending parties. Colin Calloway focuses on eight Indian communities as he explores how the Revolution often translated into war among Indians and their own struggles for independence. Drawing on British, American, Canadian and Spanish records, Calloway shows how Native Americans pursued different strategies, endured a variety of experiences, but were bequeathed a common legacy as a result of the Revolution. As Calloway explains, “whether they sided with rebels, redcoats, neither, or both” Indians were not much different from the colonists, “fighting for their freedom.”
Military historian Hallahan argues that the Battle of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775, wasn’t merely the mythic event that has become part of our American heritage; it was a politically important occurrence, a catalyst for radicalizing the colonies behind the emerging idea of national independence. Before the battle, he contends, most Americans were unhappy with British rule, but they shared little consensus about how to react. The shocking news of battle, however, emboldened radical elements in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Williamsburg, effectively undermining advocates of a negotiated political settlement with Britain.
Americans know about the Boston Tea Party and “the shot heard ’round the world,” but sixteen months divided these two iconic events, a period that has nearly been lost to history. The Spirit of ’74 fills in this gap in our nation’s founding narrative, showing how in these mislaid months, step by step, real people made a revolution.
From one of the South′s foremost historians, this is the dramatic story of the conflict in South Carolina that was one of the most pivotal contributions to the American Revolution. In 1779, Britain planned a strategy to finally subdue the rebellious American colonies with a minimum of additional time, effort, and blood. Setting sail from New York harbor with 8,500 ground troops, a powerful British fleet swung south towards South Carolina. Charleston fell and King George′s forces pushed inland and upward. It appeared the six-year-old colonial rebellion was doomed to defeat. In a stunning work, acclaimed historian Walter Edgar re-create the pivotal months in a nation′s savage struggle for freedom.
‘Impressive! . . . The authors have given us a searching account of the crisis and provided some memorable portraits of officials in America impaled on the dilemma of having to enforce a measure which they themselves opposed.’–New York Times ‘A brilliant contribution to the colonial field. Combining great industry, astute scholarship, and a vivid style, the authors have sought ‘to recreate two years of American history.’ They have succeeded admirably.’–William and Mary Quarterly .
Angel in the Whirlwind is the epic tale of the American Revolution, from its roots among tax-weary colonists to the triumphant Declaration of Independence and eventual victory and liberty, recounted by Benson Bobrick, lauded by The New York Times as “perhaps the most interesting historian writing in America today.”
Spanning the years 1773 – 1775, Igniting the American Revolution sweeps readers to the passionate debates within the halls of Parliament and onwards to that fateful Expedition to Concord and the shot heard round the world. With exquisite detail and keen insight, Beck brings revolutionary America to life in all its enthusiastic and fiery patriotic fervor, painting a nuanced portrait of the war’s perspectives, ambitions, people, and events.
“Insightful…Entertaining… A reminder of how much we owe our forefathers.”—Richard Beeman, author of Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution.Inventing America: Conversations with the Founders takes you behind the scenes of the creation of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. See how these are not just dusty old parchments stored away in a museum but how they define us as Americans and serve—through good times and bad—as a beacon of freedom to the world.
Historian Thomas Fleming explains in his latest book, The Strategy of Victory, how Washington won the War of Independence against Great Britain, preserved the fledgling republic, and forged the United States Army. Had Washington not brilliantly adjusted his tactics and strategy to the war’s peculiar circumstances it is likely that the new nation would have been short-lived. Fleming approaches strategy not from the abstract, theoretical perspective of some international relations scholars, but instead from the perspective of an historian analyzing facts and circumstances at specific times in specific places.
Filled with vivid, precisely observed scenes, this book is a sweeping narrative of clashing armies–of spies, intrigue, desperate moments, and harrowing battles. Kranish captures the tumultuous outbreak of war, the local politics behind Jefferson’s actions in the Continental Congress (and his famous Declaration), and his rise to the governorship of Virginia.
The most horrific struggle of the American Revolution occurred just 100 yards off New York, where more men died aboard a rotting prison ship than were lost to combat during the entirety of the war. Moored off the coast of Brooklyn until the end of the war, the derelict ship, the HMS Jersey, was a living hell for thousands of Americans either captured by the British or accused of disloyalty. Crammed below deck–a shocking one thousand at a time–without light or fresh air, the prisoners were scarcely fed. Disease ran rampant and human waste fouled the air as prisoners suffered at the hands of brutal British and Hessian guards
In 1775 Gen. Washington secretly armed a handful of small ships and sent them to sea against the world’s mightiest navy. Here is the story of how America’s first commander-in-chief–whose previous military experience had been entirely on land–nursed the fledgling American Revolution through a season of stalemate by sending troops to sea. Mining previously overlooked sources, James L. Nelson’s swiftly moving narrative shows that George Washington deliberately withheld knowledge of his tiny navy from the Continental Congress for more than two critical months, and that he did so precisely because he knew Congress would not approve.
Perhaps politically incorrect from an American’s viewpoint, Journalist and former Minister of Parliament, Robert Harvey projects a British bias, but strives for balance while arguing that the Revolutionary War was more complicated than is typically understood. Specifically, Harvey aims to dispel what he terms myths, both large and small, that have persisted about the Revolution, from the idea that the war was motivated mainly by America’s “love of liberty” [and more by the “love of money”] to the notion that Washington’s crossing of the Delaware had military significance. Harvey proposes that the Americans were more concerned about the British blocking their westward expansion than about taxation without representation. His thoughtful arguments explore the complexities of both American and British points of view, and offer American readers a new perspective on the crucial conflict.
Rapport, professor of history at the University of Glasgow, examines the political geography of dissent and revolution in three key Western cities, Paris, London, and New York, in the years 1763–1795. In Rapport’s choice of New York, he shares insight on the nature of the popular uprising against the 1765 Stamp Act, a revolt against both the British and the city’s elites. The author has combined academic scholarship with a well-paced, engaging writing style to produce an exceptional work of comparative late-18th-century political and urban history.
“I never indeed thought him an honest, frank-dealing man, but considered him as a crooked gun, or other perverted machine, whose aim or stroke you could never be sure of.”―Thomas Jefferson on Aaron Burr. “Always an honest Man, often a wise one, but sometimes, and in some things, absolutely out of his senses.”― Benjamin Franklin on John Adams. “I do now know [Jefferson] to be one of the most artful, intriguing, industrious and double-faced politicians in all America.”― John Nicholas to George Washington. Beginning with an introductory essay that provides an overview of the relationships between the founders, the book then presents each individual, providing a biographical sketch and a chronologically arranged series of quotations, clarifying not only each person’s place within the independence movement but the contours of their character.
Despite his less-than-promising beginnings as the only key Founding Father not born and raised on American soil, Hamilton was one of the best and brightest of his generation. His notoriety has rested almost entirely on his role as Secretary of the Treasury in Washington’s administration, yet few realize that Washington and Hamilton’s bond was forged during the Revolutionary War.
The American Revolution from a unique perspective–as seen through the eyes of a redcoat regiment. From Lexington Green in 1775 to Yorktown in 1781, one British regiment marched thousands of miles and fought a dozen battles to uphold British rule in America: the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Their story, and that of all the soldiers England sent across the Atlantic, is one of the few untold sagas of the American Revolution, one that sheds light on the war itself and offers surprising, at times unsettling, insights into the way the war was conducted on both sides.
Kathleen DuVal offers a significant new global perspective on the Revolutionary War with the story of the conflict as seen through the eyes of the outsiders of colonial society. DuVal recounts an untold story as rich and significant as that of the Founding Fathers: the history of the Revolutionary Era as experienced by slaves, American Indians, women, and British loyalists living on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
In this vivid and compelling narrative, the Seven Years’ War–long seen as a mere backdrop to the American Revolution–takes on a whole new significance. Relating the history of the war as it developed, Anderson shows how the complex array of forces brought into conflict helped both to create Britain’s empire and to sow the seeds of its eventual dissolution.
Ten Tea Parties is the first book to chronicle these uniquely American protests.
National book critics circle award winner. This groundbreaking book offers the first global history of the loyalist exodus to Canada, the Caribbean, Sierra Leone, India, and beyond. At the end of the American Revolution, sixty thousand Americans loyal to the British cause fled the United States and became refugees throughout the British Empire. Liberty’s Exiles tells their story.
Matthew H. Spring reveals how British infantry in the American Revolutionary War really fought. This groundbreaking book offers a new analysis of the British Army during the “American rebellion” at both operational and tactical levels. Presenting fresh insights into the speed of British tactical movements, Spring discloses how the system for training the army prior to 1775 was overhauled and adapted to the peculiar conditions confronting it in North America.
In The Quartet, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Joseph Ellis tells the unexpected story of America’s second great founding and of the men most responsible—Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John Jay, and James Madison: why the thirteen colonies, having just fought off the imposition of a distant centralized governing power, would decide to subordinate themselves anew.
Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s mega-bestselling Killing series transports readers to the most important era in our nation’s history, the Revolutionary War. Told through the eyes of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Great Britain’s King George III, Killing England chronicles the path to independence in gripping detail, taking the reader from the battlefields of America to the royal courts of Europe.
Based on remarkable new research, acclaimed historian Alexander Rose brings to life the true story of the spy ring that helped America win the Revolutionary War. For the first time, Rose takes us beyond the battlefront and deep into the shadowy underworld of double agents and triple crosses, covert operations and code breaking, and unmasks the courageous, flawed men who inhabited this wilderness of mirrors including the spymaster at the heart of it all.
After the Americans abandoned New York City to the British, Washington had some men remain active in the city: the now famous Culper Ring, one of the Revolution’s first major intelligence efforts. The ring consisted mostly of a group of civilians in and around New York City who spied on the British forces and Loyalist Americans and reported what they saw and overheard ultimately to Washington, who took a personal, hands-on approach to their management. Without question, the relatively little-known clandestine actions of these patriotic men and women contributed to the eventual victory of the long struggle for American independence.
In this sweeping new biography, Colin Calloway uses the prism of George Washington’s life to bring focus to the great Native leaders of his time–Shingas, Tanaghrisson, Bloody Fellow, Joseph Brant, Red Jacket, Little Turtle–and the tribes they represented: the Iroquois Confederacy, Lenape, Miami, Creek, Delaware; in the process, he returns them to their rightful place in the story of America’s founding.
A People’s History of the American Revolution draws upon diaries, personal letters, and other Revolutionary-era treasures, weaving a thrilling, “you are there” narrative—“a tapestry that uses individual experiences to illustrate the larger stories” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). In the trademark style of Howard Zinn, Raphael shifts the focus away from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to the slaves they owned, the Indians they displaced, and the men and boys who did the fighting.
This is the astonishing true story of how a rough-cut frontiersman – born in Virginia in 1755 and with little formal education – invented himself as one of the nation’s preeminent lawyers and politicians who then reinvented the Constitution to forge a stronger nation. Without Precedent is the engrossing account of the life and times of this exceptional man, who with cunning, imagination, and grace shaped America’s future as he held together the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the country itself.
Alexander Hamilton is biographical account of the life of American Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow. Not only does Chernow provide an account of Hamilton’s life, but he provides analysis for the reader along the way. This acclaimed biography, which inspired the award-winning hip-hop musical, salvages the reputation of a Founding Father. A mammoth work of research, Alexander Hamilton charted the course of Hamilton’s dazzling career and the dark controversies that accompanied it.
New York Times bestselling historian Thomas Fleming creates a dramatic, moving depiction of the Siege of Yorktown – the days in October 1781 that ended the American Revolution and changed the world. Along with French General Jean-Baptiste Rochambeau, George Washington made an astonishing march through New Jersey and trapped British General Charles Cornwallis and his forces in Yorktown, Virginia, where they unleashed a tremendous artillery assault, with the support of the French navy. But victory was never certain, and both sides made a series of bold attacks and counterattacks, with Washington the unlikely winner.
Patriot Pirates highlights the obscure but pivotal role played by colonial privateers in defeating Britain in the American Revolution. American privateering-essentially legalized piracy-began with a ragtag squadron of New England schooners in 1775. It quickly erupted into a massive seaborne insurgency involving thousands of money-mad patriots plundering Britain’s maritime trade throughout Atlantic. Patton’s extensive research brings to life the extraordinary adventures of privateers as they hammered the British economy, infuriated the Royal Navy, and humiliated the crown.
n this lively account, Robert Allison provides a cohesive synthesis of the military, diplomatic, political, social, and intellectual aspects of the Revolution, paying special attention to the Revolution’s causes and consequences. Sharply written and highly readable, The American Revolution offers the perfect introduction to this seminal event in American history.
A rich tapestry of history was woven behind New York, this one-of-a-kind city. Colonial New York City tells the story of invigorating hope, new discoveries, and broadening horizons, shaped by power wrangles and blood-shedding – all for the sake of conquest. The editors chronicle the history of the city during its time in British hands. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about New York City as a British possession like never before, in no time at all.
Small armies of men waged a ferocious series of battles in the southern theater, changing the outcome of the Revolutionary War. When the British effort to subdue the Colonies moved to the southern provinces, the men of Appalachia sought to protect their homes and families. In the winter of 1780-81, the turning point of the southern war occurred in the Carolina back country. A trio of battles occurred at Kings Mountain, Cowpens, and Guilford Court House. These clashes proved pivotal to American independence, destroying British army capability in the south and facilitating the American victory at Yorktown.
This is Edward J. Lowell’s classic text on the German mercenaries in the Revolutionary War. From the princes that ruled them to the troops themselves, Lowell gives a complete overview of these men that traveled to another country to fight for a cause that was not their own. These professional soldiers were involved from the beginning of the war, and it was only on 25th November 1783, two years after the fall of Yorktown, that the last Hessians sailed down the Bay of New York back towards Germany.
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of William Cooper’s Town comes a dramatic and illuminating portrait of white and Native American relations in the aftermath of the American Revolution. The Divided Ground tells the story of two friends, a Mohawk Indian and the son of a colonial clergyman, whose relationship helped redefine North America. As one served American expansion by promoting Indian dispossession and religious conversion, and the other struggled to defend and strengthen Indian territories, the two friends became bitter enemies.
rom historian Thomas B. Allen, author of Remember Pearl Harbor and George Washington, Spy Master comes a sweeping, dramatic history of the Americans who fought alongside the British on the losing side of the American Revolution. Allen’s compelling account comprises an epic story with a personal core, an American narrative certain to spellbind readers of Tom Fleming, David McCullough, and Joseph Ellis. The first book in over thirty years on this topic in Revolution War history, Tories incorporates new research and previously unavailable material drawn from foreign archives, telling the riveting story of bitter internecine conflict during the tumultuous birth of a nation.