American Insurgents, American Patriots by
Before there could be a revolution, there was a rebellion; before patriots, there were insurgents. Challenging and displacing decades of received wisdom, T. H. Breen's strikingly original book explains how ordinary Americans--most of them members of farm families living in small communities--were drawn into a successful insurgency against imperial authority. This is the compelling story of our national political origins that most Americans do not know. It is a story of rumor, charity, vengeance, and restraint. American Insurgents, American Patriots reminds us that revolutions are violent events. They provoke passion and rage, a willingness to use violence to achieve political ends, a deep sense of betrayal, and a strong religious conviction that God expects an oppressed people to defend their rights. The American Revolution was no exception.
A few celebrated figures in the Continental Congress do not make for a revolution. It requires tens of thousands of ordinary men and women willing to sacrifice, kill, and be killed. Breen not only gives the history of these ordinary Americans but, drawing upon a wealth of rarely seen documents, restores their primacy to American independence. Mobilizing two years before the Declaration of Independence, American insurgents in all thirteen colonies concluded that resistance to British oppression required organized violence against the state. They channeled popular rage through elected committees of safety and observation, which before 1776 were the heart of American resistance. American Insurgents, American Patriots is the stunning account of their insurgency, without which there would have been no independent republic as we know it.
The American Revolution by
The American Revolution, Updated Edition provides hundreds of firsthand accounts of the period that illustrate how historical events appeared to those who lived through them. Eyewitness testimonies include George Washington, John Dickinson, John Adams, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, as well as junior officers, soldiers, and noncombatants. In addition, each chapter contains a narrative section and a chronology of events. In this updated edition, author David F. Burg has also added details about the important role of American Indians, African Americans, Jews, and women during the American Revolution. Other features include appendixes that provide concise biographies of 101 influential individuals such as Abigail Adams, Nathan Hale, and George Washington, among others; primary documents—either full text or excerpts—among them the Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, and the Declaration of Independence; maps of important battles of the American Revolution; 103 black-and-white photographs; notes; a thorough bibliography; and an index.
The British Are Coming by
Rick Atkinson, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn and two other masterly books about World War II, has long been admired for his unparalleled ability to write deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative history. Now he turns his attention to a new war, and in the initial volume of the Revolution Trilogy he tells the story of the first twenty months of the bloody struggle to shake free of King George's shackles. From the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777, the ragtag Continental Army takes on the world's most formidable fighting force and gradually finds the will and the way to win. It is a riveting saga populated by singular characters: Henry Knox, the former bookseller with an uncanny understanding of how best to deploy artillery; Nathaniel Greene, the blue-eyed bumpkin who becomes one of America's greatest battle captains; Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man who proves himself the nation's greatest diplomat; George Washington, the commander-in-chief who learns the difficult art of leadership amid the fire and smoke of the battlefield. And the British are here, too: we see the war through their eyes and their gunsights, and as a consequence the mortal conflict between the redcoats and the rebels is all the more compelling. Full of fresh details and untold stories, The British Are Coming gives stirring new life to the first act of our country's creation drama. It is a tale of heroes and knaves, of sacrifice and blunder, of redemption and profound suffering. But once begun, the war for independence can have only one of two outcomes: death or victory."
An Empire on the Edge by
A British-perspective chronicle of the Boston Tea Party and other events that led up to the American Revolution traces three years of volatile politics, personalities and economics on both sides of the conflict. Drawing on careful study of primary sources from Britain and the United States, this new account of the Boston Tea Party and the origins of the American Revolution shows how a lethal blend of politics, personalities, and economics led to a war that few welcomed but nobody could prevent. British author Nick Bunker tells the story of the last three years of mutual embitterment that preceded the outbreak of America's war for independence, also shedding new light on the roles of such familiar characters as Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, and Thomas Hutchinson. It was a tragedy of errors, in which both sides shared responsibility: the British and the colonists failed to see how swiftly they were drifting toward violence until the process had gone beyond the point of no return. By the early 1770s, Great Britain had become addicted to financial speculation, led by a political elite increasingly baffled by a changing world. When the East India Company came close to collapse, it patched together a rescue plan whose disastrous side effect was the destruction of some tea. With lawyers in London calling the Tea Party treason, the British opted for punitive reprisals without foreseeing the resistance they would arouse, while Americans underestimated Britain's determination not to give way. By the summer of 1774, the descent into war had become irreversible.
Encyclopedia of Revolutionary America by
The American Revolution is one of the most studied time periods in U.S. history and a substantial part of the history curriculum in schools. The three-volume Encyclopedia of Revolutionary America is the definitive reference to everything students need to know about this pivotal moment in American history. Written by a preeminent scholar in the field, with a foreword by the esteemed Gary B. Nash, this comprehensive A-to-Z encyclopedia not only includes discussion of the continental U.S., but contains coverage of the Atlantic world and the North American continent as well. Black-and-white illustrations, an index, and appendixes round out the insightful resource.
Seeds of Discontent by
A narrative history of the largely unexplored events--starting almost a century before--that inspired the colonists to launch the American Revolution.
The causes of the American Revolution are most often defined as the Stamp Act and other repressive actions by the Crown against its colonies in the years following the French and Indian War. While these are the direct causes, J. Revell Carr takes a longer view, and in Seeds of Discontent , he locates the roots of the Revolution a century earlier, and argues that "the cumulative effect of more than one hundred years of British disrespect, mismanagement, and exploitation prepared the minds of the colonists for revolution."
In the latter half of the seventeenth century, tensions between colonists and the Crown were strikingly similar to those of 1775: representative legislatures had been suspended, the charters of colonies had been revoked, free trade was being impeded by Navigation Acts favoring the Crown, and heavy taxes were being levied unilaterally. The colonists' frustration erupted in April 1689, when the king's representative, who governed the region from Maine to Pennsylvania, was overthrown and seized in Boston. The rebellion spread down the coast, and for the first time colonists risked their lives against English firepower. Unprepared to break with England, the colonists submitted to new governance, but had demonstrated they could rebel.
Through subsequent decades, numerous instances of British abuse fostered resentment and friction built, reaching a peak after the 1745 conquest of Louisbourg, the seemingly impregnable French fortress in Nova Scotia. Won on England's behalf at great cost to the largely American-born strike force, the British summarily returned it to France four years later--an act that outraged politicians, citizens, and soldiers alike.
Bringing to life the two generations that inspired our founding fathers, Revell Carr illuminates the eventful half-century that inspired a revolution.