Showing titles in Revolution & Founding

The subject of a New York Times best-selling biography and a Pulitzer-Prize winning musical, interest in Alexander Hamilton is at an all-time high. This carefully curated collection of Hamilton's writings gives the reader an intimate glimpse into the mind of our most misunderstood founding...

Where did the ideas come from that became the cornerstone of American democracy? Not only the erudite Thomas Jefferson, the wily and elusive Ben Franklin, and the underappreciated Thomas Paine, but also Ethan Allen, the hero of the Green Mountain Boys, and Thomas Young, the forgotten Founder who kicked off the Boston Tea Party. These radicals who founded America set their sights on a revolution of the mind. Derided as "infidels" and "atheists" in their own time, they wanted to liberate us not just from one king but from the tyranny of supernatural religion.

From 1775 through 1777, George Washington and Benedict Arnold were America's two most celebrated warriors. Their earlier lives had surprisingly parallel paths. They were strong leaders in combat, they admired and respected each other, and they even shared common enemies. Yet one became our greatest hero and the other our most notorious traitor. Why? Author and military historian Dave Palmer reveals the answer: character.

It was an age of fascinating leaders and difficult choices, of grand ideas eloquently expressed and of epic conflicts bitterly fought. Now comes a brilliant portrait of the American Revolution, one that is compelling in its prose, fascinating in its details, and provocative in its fresh interpretations.

A distinguished professor debunks the assertion that America's Founders were deists who desired the strict separation of church and state and instead shows that their political ideas were profoundly influenced by their Christian convictions. In 2010, David Mark Hall gave a lecture at the...

A vivid account of leadership focusing on the first four Virginia presidents--George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe--from the bestselling historian and author of James Madison. From a small expanse of land on the North American continent came four of the nation's...

A young officer in the Continental Army from Connecticut, young Nathan Hale was asked by Washington to go behind British lines on Long Island and bring back information on what the British were up to there. Unfortunately, Hale was quickly identified by Loyalists, found with incriminating papers on his body, and executed. Nathan Hale and the Culper Ring: The History of the Continental Army’s Most Famous Spy and Spy Ring during the American Revolution profiles the life of the young spy and the spy ring Washington organized after his execution.

The book features a great collection of America’s founding fathers and mothers, whose contribution to the fight for independence, human rights, democracy, and proper governance will never be forgotten!

What makes a shooting a massacre? If a mob of hundreds is facing down eight soldiers, and five citizens are killed, is that the Boston Massacre or the Incident on King Street? As was the case with so many of the tumultuous events in America’s colonial history, the answer depended upon whether one regarded oneself as a British subject or a free American.

The proud Virginian entered the war in uncertain times, and there were understandable doubts about how well he could lead soldiers, but through a combination of skill and luck, he became one of his country’s earliest and foremost military heroes. After the war, he would go on to a distinguished political career, and he would find himself caught up in civil unrest toward the end of his life.

Before he defected to the British Army, Arnold’s contemporaries praised him for his heroism. What caused this man to turn on his peers and sully his name for all time? This fascinating look into Arnold’s life unravels the bias surrounding the man, shedding light on the intent behind his infamous act.

At the time of the Revolutionary War, nations such as France undoubtedly had an elevating effect on America’s capacity to make formal war, and Lafayette is the most famous foreigner to serve in the Continental Army, but some of the most important individuals who fought for the colonists came from Poland. One of the most important individuals who arrived at George Washington’s door was Polish aristocrat Kazimierz Michal Wladyslaw Wiktor Pulaski, known to future generations as the “Father of the American Cavalry”, while Tadeusz Kosciuszko perceived the American conflict as the test of a new universal paradigm.

General Benedict Arnold's failed attempt to betray the fortress of West Point to the British in 1780 stands as one of the most infamous episodes in American history. In the light of a shining record of bravery and unquestioned commitment to the Revolution, Arnold's defection came as an appalling shock. Contemporaries believed he had been corrupted by greed; historians have theorized that he had come to resent the lack of recognition for his merits and sacrifices. In this provocative book, Stephen Brumwell challenges such interpretations and draws on unexplored archives to reveal other crucial factors that illuminate Arnold's abandonment of the revolutionary cause he once championed. 

In the spring of 1789, within weeks of the establishment of the new federal government based on the US Constitution, the Senate and House of Representatives fell into dispute regarding how to address the president. Congress, the press, and individuals debated more than 30 titles, many of which had royal associations and some of which were clearly monarchical. For Fear of an Elective King is Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon's rich account of the title controversy and its meanings.

In 1607, three small ships - the Discovery, Godspeed, and Susan Constant - arrived on the shores of the eastern North American coast and established the first successful British settlement at Jamestown, Virginia. For two centuries, colonists faced the challenges of life in a new world - weather, Native Indian attacks, starvation, and disease - to establish the strongest economy in the American colonies.

April 19, 1775 was one of the most momentous days in American history. Over the course of nearly 18 hours, a morning that began with midnight riders spreading an alarm about a British raid headed for Concord would lead to the British column fleeing for their lives. By the time the sun went down, 10 years of strife between the 13 colonies and Great Britain finally boiled over into revolution.

During the first few months of the Revolutionary War, the British tried on several occasions to lift the siege of Boston with force, and the most memorable attempt was what became known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. On June 17, 1775, the British Navy fired on Charlestown from the Charles River and then landed an estimated 3,000 British regulars on the peninsula.

Brother Mackey sets out to dispel the notion that George Washington, the first president of the United States of America, was anything but a Freemason. He provides ample documentary evidence to support what now has become a common claim. But Mackey goes beyond simply showing us proof that Washington's masonic initiation took place; he shows us that George was a Mason in his heart.

In The Story of America, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore investigates American origin stories - from John Smith's account of the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to Barack Obama's 2009 inaugural address - to show how American democracy is bound up with the history of print. Over the centuries, Americans have read and written their way into a political culture of ink and type. Part civics primer, part cultural history, The Story of America excavates the origins of everything from the paper ballot and the Constitution to the I.O.U. and the dictionary.

Before the Revolutionary War, America was a nation divided by different faiths. But when the war for independence sparked in 1776, colonists united under the banner of religious freedom. Evangelical frontiersmen and Deist intellectuals set aside their differences to defend a belief they shared, the right to worship freely. Inspiring an unlikely but powerful alliance, it was the idea of religious liberty that brought the colonists together in the battle against British tyranny.