Showing titles in Revolution & Founding

Students and enthusiasts of American history are familiar with the Revolutionary War spies Nathan Hale and Benedict Arnold, but few studies have closely examined the wider intelligence efforts that enabled the colonies to gain their independence. Spies, Patriots, and Traitors provides readers with a fascinating, well-documented, and highly readable account of American intelligence activities during the era of the Revolutionary War, from 1765 to 1783.

Few Americans know that the Revolutionary War did not begin with the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, but over a year earlier, in April 1775. Now historian Derek Beck draws on previously unpublished documents to tell the full story of the war before American independence - from both sides. Spanning the years 1773 to 1776, this audiobook sweeps listeners from the Boston Tea Party to the halls of Parliament - where Ben Franklin was almost run out of England for pleading on behalf of the colonies.

In August 1776, a little over a month after the Continental Congress had formally declared independence from Britain, the revolution was on the verge of a sudden and disastrous end. General George Washington found his troops outmanned and outmaneuvered at the Battle of Brooklyn, and it looked like there was no escape. But thanks to a series of desperate rear-guard attacks by a single heroic regiment, famously known as the Immortal 400, Washington was able to evacuate his men, and the nascent Continental Army lived to fight another day.

If you were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War, whom would you want to win? In response to a declaration by the last governor of Virginia that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served the King would be emancpated, tens of thousands of blacks voted with feet, escaping to fight beside the British. Originally designed to break the plantations of the American South, this military strategy instead unleashed one of the great exoduses in American history.

In this major new history of the Continental Army's Grand Forage of 1778, award-winning military historian Ricardo A. Herrera uncovers what daily life was like for soldiers during the darkest days of the American Revolution: the Valley Forge winter. Here, the army launched its largest and riskiest operation—not a bloody battle against British forces but a campaign to feed itself and prevent starvation or dispersal during the long encampment. Herrera brings to light the army's herculean efforts to feed itself, support local and Continental governments, and challenge the British Army.

Douglas Brinkley takes us on the incredible journey of the United States - a nation formed from a vast countryside on whose fringes 13 small British colonies fought for their freedom, then established a democratic nation that spanned the continent and went on to become a world power. This book will be treasured by anyone interested in the story of America.

Born in London to an American father and a British mother on the eve of the Revolutionary War, Louisa Catherine Johnson was raised in circumstances very different from the New England upbringing of future president John Quincy Adams, whose life had been dedicated to public service from the earliest age. And yet John Quincy fell in love with her almost despite himself. Their often tempestuous but deeply close marriage lasted half a century.

When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation's capital. In setting up his household, he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary, and eight slaves, including Ona Judge, about which little has been written. As he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn't get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Washington decided to circumvent the law.

In the first and most reliable biography of Daniel Boone in more than 50 years, award-winning historian Faragher brilliantly portrays America's famous frontier hero while illuminating the American hero-making process itself. Drawing from popular narrative, the public record, scraps of documentation from Boone's own hand, and a treasure trove of reminiscences gathered by nineteenth-century antiquarians, Faragher uses the methods of new social history to create a portrait of the man and the times he helped shape.

On the eve of the American Revolution, the British army considered the case of a chaplain, Robert Newburgh, who had been accused of having sex with a man. Newburgh's enemies cited his flamboyant appearance, defiance of military authority, and seduction of soldiers as proof of his low character. His opponents claimed that these supposed crimes against nature translated to crimes against the king. In Vicious and Immoral, historian John McCurdy tells this compelling story of male intimacy and provides an unparalleled glimpse inside eighteenth-century perceptions of queerness.

A sweeping narrative of the wartime experience, A People's History of the American Revolution is the first book to view the Revolution through the eyes of common folk. Their stories have long been overlooked in the mythic telling of America's founding but are crucial to a comprehensive understanding of the fight for independence. Now, the experience of farmers, laborers, rank-and-file soldiers, women, Native Americans, and African Americans - found in diaries, letters, memoirs, and other revelatory primary sources - create a gritty account of rebellion....

As editor of the award-winning Library of America collection of George Washington's writings and a curator of the great man's original papers, John Rhodehamel has established himself as an authority of our nation's preeminent founding father. Rhodehamel examines George Washington as a public figure, arguing that the man - who first achieved fame in his early twenties - is inextricably bound to his mythic status.

The American Revolution was not simply a battle between independence-minded colonists and the oppressive British. As Thomas B. Allen reminds us, it was also a savage and often deeply personal civil war, in which conflicting visions of America pitted neighbor against neighbor and Patriot against Tory on the battlefield, the village green, and even in church.

Drawing on the diaries of one woman in 18th-century Maine, this intimate history illuminates the medical practices, household economies, religious rivalries, and sexual mores of the New England frontier. Between 1785 and 1812, a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in 27 years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine.

An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic - John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.

In this gripping chronicle of America's struggle for independence, award-winning historian John Ferling transports listeners to the grim realities of that war, capturing an eight-year conflict filled with heroism, suffering, cowardice, betrayal, and fierce dedication. As Ferling demonstrates, it was a war that America came much closer to losing than is now usually remembered. General George Washington put it best when he said that the American victory was "little short of a standing miracle."

The complete texts of the documents that tell the story of the clashes and compromises that gave birth to the Unites States of America. Should the members of the government be elected by direct vote of the people? Should the government be headed by a single executive, and how powerful should that executive be? Should immigrants be allowed into the United States? How should judges be appointed? What human rights should be safe from government infringement? In 1787, these important questions and others were raised as the states debated the merits of the proposed Constitution.

The early settlement of the region around Pittsburgh was characterized by a messy collision of personal, provincial, national, and imperial interests. Driven by the efforts of Europeans, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and Indians, almost everyone attempted to manipulate the clouded political jurisdiction of the region. A Colony Sprung from Hell traces this complex struggle. The events and episodes that make up the story highlight the difficulties of creating and consolidating authority along the frontier.

In this stirring audiobook, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence, when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.

Is there anything new to say about Thomas Jefferson and slavery? The answer is a resounding yes. Henry Wiencek's eloquent, persuasive book - based on new information coming from archaeological work at Monticello and on hitherto overlooked or disregarded evidence in Jefferson's papers - opens up a huge, poorly understood dimension of Jefferson's world. We must, Wiencek suggests, follow the money.