Showing titles in Revolution & Founding

In 1765, as the Stamp Act riled eastern seaports, frontiersmen clashed with the British Empire over another issue: Indian relations. When British officials launched a diplomatic expedition into the American interior to open trade with the Indian warrior Pontiac, the Black Boys formed to stop it and led an uprising that threatened the future of Britain's empire. Clashing with traders, diplomats, Native warriors, and imperious British officials, the Black Boys evolved into an organized political movement that resisted the Crown years before the Declaration of Independence.

Something is definitely wrong with Donald Trump’s presidency, but what exactly? The extraordinary negative reaction to Trump’s election - by conservative intellectuals, liberals, Democrats, and global leaders alike - goes beyond ordinary partisan and policy disagreements. It reflects genuine fear about the vitality of our constitutional system. The Founders, reaching back to classical precedents, feared that their experiment in mass self-government could produce a demagogue: a charismatic ruler who would gain and hold on to power by manipulating the public.

In 1775 the American colonies were a hotbed of political discord. Many of the British policies, specifically taxes, had caused American colonial leaders to consider the unthinkable: declaring independence from the British Empire and its King George. One such leader, Thomas Paine, wrote Common Sense: a pamphlet that explained the advantages of immediate and complete independence.

This addition to Oxford's Very Short Introductions series traces how Americans have addressed the issues and events of their time and place, whether it is the Civil War, the Great Depression, or the culture wars of today.

Tyson Reeder's book traces early America's rocky beginnings, when foreign interference and political conflict threatened to undermine its aspirations and ideals, even its very existence. Spanning the period from the Revolution to the War of 1812, and focusing on the presidency of James Madison, it reveals a nation adjusting to rancorous partisan politics, aggravated by the untested and imperfect new tools of governance and the growing power of media.

The best-selling Politically Incorrect Guide series provides an unvarnished, unapologetic overview of controversial topics every American should understand. The Politically Incorrect Guide to the American Revolution is a myth-busting review of America's violent struggle for independence.

World domination is a vision most kings, queens, and emperors can only dream of. The only one to ever come close to this impossible level of prestige is none other than the legendary British Empire. Today, the British Army is one of the most powerful fighting forces in the world. Naturally, the history and traditions behind this army are also impressive. Its soldiers once created and defended a global empire, and during the Second World War, it was one of the leading nations standing against the brutal Axis forces, leading the way in the greatest seaborne invasion in military history.

Forgotten Patriots is the first-ever account of what took place in these hellholes. The result is a unique perspective on the Revolutionary War as well as a sobering commentary on how Americans have remembered our struggle for independence---and how much we have forgotten.

In the bestselling tradition of Rinker Buck’s The Oregon Trail and Tony Horwitz’s Confederates in the Attic, The Road That Made America is a lively, epic account of one of the greatest untold stories in our nation’s history—the eight-hundred-mile long Great Wagon Road that 18th-century American settlers forged from Philadelphia to Georgia that expanded the country dramatically in the decades before we ventured west.

The Undiscovered Country strips away the layers of myth to reveal the true story of the American West. From the forests of Pennsylvania and Kentucky to the snow-crested California Sierras, and from the harsh deserts of the Southwest to the buffalo range of the Great Plains, Paul Andrew Hutton masterfully chronicles a story that defined America and its people. From Braddock’s 1755 defeat to the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, he unfolds a grand narrative steeped in romantic impulses and tragic consequences.

The Declaration of Independence is one of the most pivotal documents in Western history, along with the Magna Carta and Emancipation Proclamation. Almost 250 years after the founding fathers signed the Declaration and heralded the birth of the United States, the story of how America overthrew the British is as meaningful today as when the ink was still wet on the page. This audiobook explains the story of every major military action with comprehensive timelines for every stage of the Revolutionary War.

At the start of the Revolutionary War, there were more than thirteen British colonies in North America. Patriots were surrounded by Indigenous homelands and loyal provinces. Independence had its limits. In this book, historian Jeffers Lennox looks north, as so many Americans at that time did, and describes how Loyalists and Indigenous leaders frustrated Patriot ambitions, defended their territory, and acted as midwives to the birth of the United States while restricting and redirecting its continental aspirations.

The last 14 months of the American Revolution, the final phase after Yorktown, were crucial for the declared "united States" to achieve their collective and sovereign independence. This groundbreaking, updated history of The Revolutionary War is based on recently deciphered and transcribed, first-person correspondence from the American military, civilian, political, and diplomatic leaders who were running the war.

When the Continental Congress decided to declare independence from the British Empire in 1776, 10 percent of the population of their fledgling country were from Ireland. By 1790, close to 500,000 Irish citizens had immigrated to America. They were very active in the American Revolution, both on the battlefields and off, yet their stories are not well known. The important contributions of the Irish on military, political, and economic levels have been long overlooked and ignored by generations of historians.

Unlikely Allies is the story of three remarkable historical figures. Silas Deane was a Connecticut merchant and delegate to the Continental Congress as the American colonies struggled to break with England. Caron de Beaumarchais was a successful playwright who wrote The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro.

"Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation" presents a compilation of guidelines and principles on etiquette and manners that were handwritten by George Washington. This collection offers a fascinating insight into the social norms and expectations of the 18th century.

In Wicked Flesh, Jessica Marie Johnson explores the nature of complicated intimate and kinship ties and how they were used by Black women to construct freedom in the Atlantic world. Johnson draws on archival documents scattered in institutions across three continents, written in multiple languages and largely from the perspective of colonial officials and slave-owning men, to recreate Black women's experiences from coastal Senegal to French Saint-Domingue to Spanish Cuba to the swampy outposts of the Gulf Coast.

Seven Virginians, the culmination of a lifetime of erudition by one of America's leading historians, reveals the integral role played by seven major Virginians before, during, and after the American Revolution: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, George Mason, Patrick Henry, and John Marshall.

New York Times best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills, a two-time National Book Critics Circle Award winner, takes a bold and fresh look at Thomas Jefferson. Negro President reveals just how strong slave influence was on determining Jefferson’s policies. Through thorough research Wills shows precisely how this “slave power” helped shape the course of a fledgling nation.

Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin are known to all; men like Morgan, Greene, and Wayne are less familiar. Yet the dreams of the politicians and theorists became real only because fighting men were willing to take on the grim, risky, brutal work of war. The soldiers of the American Revolution were a diverse lot: merchants and mechanics, farmers and fishermen, paragons and drunkards. Most were ardent amateurs.