
American Revolutions
A Continental History, 1750-1804
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Narrated by:
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Mark Bramhall
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By:
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Alan Taylor
About this listen
From the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, a fresh, authoritative history that recasts our thinking about America’s founding period.
The American Revolution is often portrayed as a high-minded, orderly event whose capstone, the Constitution, provided the ideal framework for a democratic, prosperous nation. Alan Taylor, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, gives us a different creation story in this magisterial history of the nation's founding.
Rising out of the continental rivalries of European empires and their native allies, Taylor's Revolution builds like a ground fire overspreading Britain's mainland colonies, fueled by local conditions, destructive, hard to quell. Conflict ignited on the frontier, where settlers clamored to push west into Indian lands against British restrictions, and in the seaboard cities, where commercial elites mobilized riots and boycotts to resist British tax policies. When war erupted, patriot crowds harassed loyalists and nonpartisans into compliance with their cause. Brutal guerrilla violence flared all along the frontier, from New York to the Carolinas, fed by internal divisions as well as the clash with Britain. Taylor skillfully draws France, Spain, and native powers into a comprehensive narrative of the war that delivers the major battles, generals, and common soldiers with insight and power.
With discord smoldering in the fragile new nation through the 1780s, nationalist leaders such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton sought to restrain unruly state democracies and consolidate power in a federal Constitution. Assuming the mantle of "we the people", the advocates of national power ratified the new frame of government. But their opponents prevailed in the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, whose vision of a Western "empire of liberty" aligned with the long-standing, expansive ambitions of frontier settlers. White settlement and black slavery spread west, setting the stage for a civil war that nearly destroyed the union created by the founders.
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Critic reviews
"An epic, landmark history that places the American Revolution on a global stage while never losing sight of the struggles and sufferings of major and minor characters…. Taylor’s range is masterful. (Jill Lepore, author of Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin)
"American Revolutions is a game changer - a sprawling, ambitious history that forever alters our understanding of the Revolutionary War era." (Elizabeth Fenn, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People)
"As masterful as its author and as pluralist as its title, American Revolutions combines strong narrative drive with a kaleidoscopic array of settings and characters. In vivid prose animated by prodigious research, Taylor reveals the fight for the independence of the United States as a bloody civil war in which violence and division were the norms and clarity of purpose the exception. This is a sweeping synthesis for a new century." (Jane Kamensky, author of A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley)
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The Cause
- The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783
- By: Joseph J. Ellis
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 11 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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George Washington claimed that anyone who attempted to provide an accurate account of the war for independence would be accused of writing fiction. At the time, no one called it the “American Revolution”: Former colonists still regarded themselves as Virginians or Pennsylvanians, not Americans, while John Adams insisted that the British were the real revolutionaries, for attempting to impose radical change without their colonists’ consent. With The Cause, Ellis takes a fresh look at the events between 1773 and 1783.
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Modest history primer, wished for more substance
- By Buretto on 10-21-21
By: Joseph J. Ellis
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The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution and the Fate of the Empire
- The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History
- By: Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 21 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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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 audiobook makes a different argument. Weaving together the personal stories of ten prominent men historian Andrew O'Shaughnessy dispels the incompetence myth and uncovers the real reasons that rebellious colonials were able to achieve victory.
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It didn't lose me
- By Matt on 04-28-15
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The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789
- By: Robert Middlekauff
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 26 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Strong History Rich With Behind The Scenes Details
- By John on 10-06-11
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Whirlwind
- The American Revolution and the War That Won It
- By: John Ferling
- Narrated by: Bo Foxworth
- Length: 18 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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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. Books chronicling the Revolution have largely ranged from multivolume tomes that appeal to scholars and the most serious general listeners to microhistories that necessarily gloss over swaths of Independence-era history with only cursory treatment.
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Excellent One Volume History
- By Jeff G on 02-07-25
By: John Ferling
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A Leap in the Dark
- The Struggle to Create the American Republic
- By: John Ferling
- Narrated by: Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff
- Length: 23 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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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.
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Loved every minute!
- By Richard on 03-03-15
By: John Ferling
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The First Frontier
- The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America
- By: Scott Weidensaul
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 16 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Frontier: the word carries the inevitable scent of the West. But before Custer or Lewis and Clark, before the first Conestoga wagons rumbled across the Plains, it was the East that marked the frontier - the boundary between complex Native cultures and the first colonizing Europeans.Here is the older, wilder, darker history of a time when the land between the Atlantic and the Appalachians was contested ground - when radically different societies adopted and adapted the ways of the other, while struggling for control of what all considered to be their land.
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Too PC
- By Eric on 07-24-13
By: Scott Weidensaul
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The Summer of 1787
- By: David O Stewart
- Narrated by: George Wilson
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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David O. Stewart presents this well-researched account of the U.S. Constitution's creation not as a dry analysis of events, but as a high-powered narrative filled with dramatic intensity and larger-than-life historical figures.
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Very well done!
- By Alan on 04-20-17
By: David O Stewart
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Patriotic Fire
- Andrew Jackson and Jean Laffite at the Battle of New Orleans
- By: Winston Groom
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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This audio program has all the ingredients of a high-flying adventure story. Unbeknownst to the combatants, the War of 1812 has ended. But Andrew Jackson, a brave, charismatic American general, sick with dysentery and commanding a beleaguered garrison, leads a desperate struggle to hold on to New Orleans and to thwart the army that defeated Napoleon.
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A Great Book About A Fascinating Battle
- By David I. Williams on 05-12-13
By: Winston Groom
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Lexington and Concord
- The Battle Heard Round the World
- By: George C. Daughan
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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George C. Daughan's magnificently detailed account of the battle of Lexington and Concord will challenge the prevailing narrative of the American War of Independence. It was, Daughan argues, based as much on economics as on politics.
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The long lead-up to the American Revolution
- By Matthew on 12-19-18
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The War of 1812
- A Forgotten Conflict, Bicentennial Edition
- By: Donald R Hickey
- Narrated by: Douglas R. Pratt
- Length: 14 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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This comprehensive and authoritative history of the War of 1812, thoroughly revised for the 200th anniversary of the historic conflict, is a myth-shattering study that will inform and entertain students, historians, and general listeners alike. Donald R. Hickey explores the military, diplomatic, and domestic history of our second war with Great Britain, bringing the study up to date with recent scholarship on all aspects of the war, from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.
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The War of 1812 fascinating listening
- By Ira S. Saposnik on 05-28-17
By: Donald R Hickey
Provocative
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Awesome
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Great all around history from all aspects of the revolution
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Narrator tone a bit off
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absolutely fascinating! Masterful storytelling
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What made the experience of listening to American Revolutions the most enjoyable?
It was thought-provoking to find out that Indian tribes fought for the British as they felt it was a better choice of two bad ones and also intriguing to find out that George Washington, this "holy" person in school books, hunted down and killed Indians in a Custer way. He had probably no choice at that time but it makes one wonder. The superpower of its time, Great Britain mobilized additional groups to fight for them, like freed slaves but also locals and often often it came down to pure civil war as loyalist fought against Patriots.This book is full of fact like these, many of which I had no clue of. I guess lots of things Europeans like me no nothing of, Americans learn in school, either way this book is full of history put forward in very nice way.
What other book might you compare American Revolutions to and why?
To Try Men's Souls: A Novel of George Washington and the Fight for American Freedom is the first book in Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen trilogy about some of the same era, mostly around the declaration of independence. There is history brought to live by looking at the persons and giving them voice - based on facts or active history I believe the authors call it. American Revolutions by Alan Taylor takes on much longer period and it is full of detailed narrative, full of facts and interesting things, maybe a bit to much at times. Both these books are nevertheless great in my opinion whereas one is pure history lesson and the other is a history lesson wrapped in fact based drama.Very detailed and informative
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Packed with historical insight
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Brilliantly synthesis
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Clearly described
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Good book
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