Showing titles in Revolution & Founding

Between 1500 and 1800, the North Sea region overtook the Mediterranean as the most dynamic part of the world. At its core, the Anglo-Dutch relationship intertwined close alliance and fierce antagonism to intense creative effect. But a precondition for the Industrial Revolution was also the establishment in British North America of a unique type of colony - for the settlement of people and culture, rather than the extraction of things.

From the author of the acclaimed history The Island at the Center of the World, an intimate new epic of the American Revolution that reinforces its meaning for today. With America's founding principles being debated today as never before, Russell Shorto looks back to the era in which those principles were forged. Drawing on new sources, he weaves the lives of six people into a seamless narrative that casts fresh light on the range of experience in colonial America on the cusp of revolution.

Bestselling author Steven Johnson recounts—in dazzling, multidisciplinary fashion—the story of the brilliant man who embodied the relationship between science, religion, and politics for America’s Founding Fathers. The Invention of Air is a book of world-changing ideas wrapped around a...

The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt.

From historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands comes an inspiring portrait of George Washington that examines his unrivaled leadership in the birth of America. “With this masterly volume, Brands has further solidified his standing as one of our nation’s greatest historians. American...

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 From the great historian of the American Revolution, New York Times-bestselling and Pulitzer-winning Gordon Wood, comes a majestic dual biography of two of America's most enduringly fascinating figures, whose partnership helped birth a nation...

In the vaunted annals of America’s founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary “city upon a hill” and the “cradle of liberty” for an independent United States. Wresting this iconic urban center from these misleading, tired clichés, The City-State of Boston highlights Boston’s overlooked past as an autonomous city-state, and in doing so, offers a path-breaking and brilliant new history of early America.  

FINDING OUR WORDS: Words That Made America is a collection of some of the most inspiring words spoken by American leaders since our founding. Every speech is launched with a prefacing essay by Tracy Lee Simmons, acclaimed journalist who has written widely for The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, and is the author of Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin. In the essays, Simmons shows how each speech fits into the broad mosaic of the American story.

John Adams told Thomas Jefferson that “history is to ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine.” Thomas Edison called him “the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible.” He was a founder of both the United States and the French Revolution. He invented the phrase, “The United States of America.” He rose from abject poverty in working-class England to the highest levels of the era’s intellectual elite. And yet, by the end of his life, Thomas Paine was almost universally reviled.

In John Adams: A Life, Ferling offers a compelling portrait of one of the giants of the Revolutionary era. Drawing on extensive research, Ferling depicts a reluctant revolutionary, a leader who was deeply troubled by the warfare that he helped to make, and a fiercely independent statesman. Bringing to life an exciting time, an age in which Adams played an important political and intellectual role. this book is a singular biography of the man who succeeded George Washington in the presidency and shepherded the fragile new nation through the most dangerous of times. 

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHY A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD IN BIOGRAPHY FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN BIOGRAPHY “Marvelous . . . An act not only of recovery, but of world building.” —The...

From the cohost of Fox & Friends, the true story of the anonymous spies who helped win the Revolutionary War Among the pantheon of heroes of the American Revolution, six names are missing. First and foremost, Robert Townsend, an unassuming and respected businessman from Long Island, who...

Marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, The Making & Breaking of the American Constitution reveals how this widening disconnect threatens the very existence of our democracy. It calls for a constitution that sustains the ideals developed over the past thousand years while meeting the challenges of the future.

An intimate account of the American Revolution as seen through the eyes of a Quaker pacifist couple living in Philadelphia. Spanning a half-century before, during, and after the war, this gripping narrative illuminates the Revolution’s darker side as patriots vilified, threatened, and in some cases killed pacifist Quakers as alleged enemies of the revolutionary cause. Amid chaos and danger, the Drinkers tried as best they could to keep their family and faith intact. A master storyteller takes his listeners on a moving journey they will never forget.

This groundbreaking audiobook 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.

Volume Four opens as the British abandoned Boston in March 1776. They moved their troops to Long Island and their fleet to New York Harbor. Washington, anticipating such a strategy, came out to face the Redcoats in Brooklyn, but was driven back to the city. More British troops arrived, forcing Washington to withdraw north. As the winter of 1777 approached with Redcoats occupying Philadelphia, Washington restricted the British army's supply line. But almost nobody believed the British could be defeated and few believed Washington's army could survive.

American Revolution for Dummies capitalizes on the recent resurgence of interest in the Revolutionary War period - one of the most important in the history of the United States. From the founding fathers to the Declaration of Independence, and everything that encapsulates this extraordinary period in American history, American Revolution for Dummies is your one-stop guide to the birth of the United States of America. Understanding the critical issues of this era is essential to the study of subsequent periods in American history.

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. George Washington – a figure synonymous with American history. His image is known worldwide, marked on American currency, postage stamps – even a state is named after him. George Washington in an Hour explores the man beneath the symbol...

The U.S. Constitution is among the oldest constitutions in the world but also one of the most difficult to amend. Jill Lepore, Harvard professor of history and law, explains why in We the People, the most original history of the Constitution in decades—and an essential companion to her landmark history of the United States, These Truths.

The definitive refutation of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, this volume includes original essays, lectures, and interviews with historians. Topics addressed include the complex development of slavery in the New World, the American Revolution, the sectional crisis over slavery and the Civil War, the struggle for social equality in the 20th century, and the class politics of racial identity in the present.