Showing titles in Revolution & Founding

How should we remember George Washington's entanglement in slavery? Americans have argued over that question for nearly 250 years. More than any other Founding Father, Washington's ties to slavery have vexed us. He enslaved more people than any of his fellow founders, yet he was the only one of...

A revelatory account of how words and actions combined to destroy Britain's colonial rule and secure Washington's American victory The American Revolution was not only fought on bloody battlefields, it was waged with the ink of pen and print. George Goodwin shows how the leaders of the American...

"With impressive scholarly sleuthing and a storyteller's eloquence, Danielle Allen has written a landmark book about the people and the ideas that changed the world. By bringing the glamorous Duke of Richmond back to life, Allen paints a panoramic portrait of how principles of human equality and...

Detroit: Rise of the Motor City – From Frontier Fort to Industrial Giant The epic story of the American city that changed the world forever Before it became the Motor City… Before it became the Arsenal of Democracy… Before it put the world on wheels… Detroit was a dangerous frontier settlement built on hope, ambition, and risk. In this sweeping historical narrative, discover how a small outpost founded in 1701 grew into the industrial powerhouse that revolutionized manufacturing, created the modern middle class, and helped shape the 20th century. Detroit: Rise of the Motor City ...

In Cocked and Boozy—two of Benjamin Franklin’s two hundred terms for drunkenness—public historian Brooke Barbier examines the role that alcohol played in spurring, binding, and winning the American Revolution and how it shaped the nascent United States. Every chapter concludes with an eighteenth-century cocktail recipe made for modern tastes, so listeners can participate in their own historic tippling.

Like many historical events, the American Revolution is sometimes overlooked, ignored, or minimized by historians due to being shrouded in romantic myth and stubborn stereotypes. Here historian Phillip Thomas Tucker provides an in-depth look at the events of the Battle of Trenton, weeding out fiction and legend and presenting new insights and analysis.

Fifty-five men met in Philadelphia in 1787 to write a document that would create a country and change a world: the Constitution. Here is a remarkable rendering of that fateful time, told with humanity and humor. Decision in Philadelphia is the best popular history of the Constitutional Convention; in it, the life and times of 18th-century America not only come alive, but the very human qualities of the men who framed the document are brought provocatively into focus - casting many of the Founding Fathers in a new light.

The history of the Boston Tea Party is a hidden one. Why? Since it was a clandestine operation, all sorts of rumors and legends grew up around the event—many collected decades after the American Revolution had ended. At its core, however, the night of December 16, 1773, when colonials dumped tea from British ships into Boston Harbor, was more than a fight over tea and taxes. It was a struggle over the very nature of democracy and self-governance.

This compellingly written history presents a fresh, new view of the events that led from the first foreign salute to American nationhood in 1776 to the last campaign of the Revolution five years later. It paints a magnificent portrait of General George Washington and recounts in riveting detail the events responsible for the birth of our nation.

In volume six, Washington finally returns to Mt. Vernon for his long-awaited and well-deserved retirement from public service. But fate has other plans for him. As Washington concentrates on restoring the fortunes of his beloved Virginia estate, he keeps a nervous eye on the political developments unfolding in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, debt incurred by the Continental Congress during the war weighed heavily on the states. Convinced that the states must be bound together with a firm federal hand, Washington pushes for reform.

On 15 March 1781, the armies of Nathanael Greene and Lord Charles Cornwallis fought one of the bloodiest and most intense engagements of the American Revolution at the Guilford Courthouse in piedmont North Carolina. Although victorious, Cornwallis declared the conquest of the Carolinas impossible. He made the fateful decision to march into Virginia, eventually leading his army to the Yorktown surrender and clearing the way for American independence.

In 2000, The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson, captured the nation's attention with the highly dramatized story of an American patriot fighting the British in South Carolina during the American Revolution. As viewers learned that Gibson's character was loosely based on General Francis Marion, nicknamed the "Swamp Fox" by his enemies, people took a new interest in this often forgotten soldier.

Legend has it that as the American colonies hurtled toward independence, representatives of the Continental Congress, including George Washington, walked into Betsy Ross’s Philadelphia upholstery shop and commissioned the first flag of the Revolutionary nation. Although this story has long...

What if the secret to a happy, successful life has been hiding in plain sight — printed on the back of every single dollar bill? In The Great Seal: The Symbolic Guide for Happy and Successful Living, Darrell Fusaro reveals the forgotten wisdom embedded in America’s most powerful symbol — the Great Seal of the United States. Each icon — the soaring eagle, radiant stars, and unfinished pyramid — carries a timeless spiritual truth about confidence, purpose, imagination, faith, and divine support. These aren’t just historic symbols. They are living tools for personal transformation....

Henry Lee III - whose nickname, "Light-Horse," came from his legendary exploits with mounted troops and skill in the saddle - was a dashing cavalry commander and hero of America's War for Independence. By now most Americans have forgotten about Light-Horse Harry Lee, the father of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, but this new biography reveals he may be one of the most fascinating figures in our nation's history. A daring military commander, Lee was also an early American statesman whose passionate argument in favor of national unity helped ratify the Constitution.

From the New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello comes a groundbreaking collection of Thomas Jefferson’s writings on race.

Originally published anonymously, The Federalist Papers first appeared in 1787 as a series of letters to New York newspapers exhorting voters to ratify the proposed Constitution of the United States. Still hotly debated and open to often controversial interpretations, the arguments first presented here by three of America's greatest patriots and political theorists were created during a critical moment in our nation's history.

As Ben experimented, people peppered him with questions about electricity. Distracted, Ben was still holding the ends of two bare wires when the other ends touched the Leyden jars. A massive charge knocked him to the ground. When he clambered to his feet, he had to admit that his guests appeared to have enjoyed watching him get electrocuted. Benjamin Franklin's life never lacked excitement and intrigue. As a printer, writer, scientist, inventor, and American statesman, this spirited Philadelphia resident continually sought to improve himself and the world he lived in.

In Frontier Country, Patrick Spero addresses one of the most important and controversial subjects in American history: the frontier. Countering the modern conception of the American frontier as an area of expansion, Spero employs the eighteenth-century meaning of the term to show how colonists understood it as a vulnerable, militarized boundary. The Pennsylvania frontier, Spero argues, was constituted through conflicts not only between colonists and Native Americans but also among neighboring British colonies.

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.