After the Humiliating Defeat at Yorktown in 1781, George III Vowed to Keep Fighting the Rebels and Their Allies Around the World, Holding a New Nation in the Balance Although most people think the American Revolution ended with the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, on October 19, 1781, it did not. The war spread around the world, and exhausted men kept fighting--from the Arctic to Arkansas, from India and Ceylon to Schenectady and South America--while others labored to achieve a final diplomatic resolution. After Cornwallis's unexpected loss, George III vowed revenge, while Washington p... View More...
Nina Sankovitch's American Rebels explores, for the first time, the intertwined lives of the Hancock, Quincy, and Adams families, and the role each person played in sparking the American Revolution. Before they were central figures in American history, John Hancock, John Adams, Josiah Quincy Junior, Abigail Smith Adams, and Dorothy Quincy Hancock had forged intimate connections during their childhood in Braintree, Massachusetts. Raised as loyal British subjects who quickly saw the need to rebel, their collaborations against the Crown and Parliament were formed years before the revolution and b... View More...
Nina Sankovitch's American Rebels explores, for the first time, the intertwined lives of the Hancock, Quincy, and Adams families, and the role each person played in sparking the American Revolution. Before they were central figures in American history, John Hancock, John Adams, Josiah Quincy Junior, Abigail Smith Adams, and Dorothy Quincy Hancock had forged intimate connections during their childhood in Braintree, Massachusetts. Raised as loyal British subjects who quickly saw the need to rebel, their collaborations against the Crown and Parliament were formed years before the revolution and b... View More...
Before he became known as our country's most infamous traitor, Colonel Benedict Arnold was one of the most beloved, respected and charismatic leaders in colonial America. He could inspire normal soldiers to perform acts of uncommon boldness. It is said that General George Washington, overwhelmed with grieve, never fully recovered from the shock of Arnold's defection. Here is a story of bravery unequalled in our country's history. In September, 1775, Arnold led a force of 1,100 men through the Maine wilderness to Quebec, in a daring plan to capture that city while the main British force was eng... View More...
Band of Giants brings to life the founders who fought for our independence in the Revolutionary War. 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 only became real because fighting men were willing to take on the grim, risky, brutal work of war. We know Fort Knox, but what about Henry Knox, the burly Boston bookseller who took over the American artillery at the age of 25? Eighteen counties in the United States commemorate Richard Montgomery, but do we know that this revered martyr launched ... View More...
Hundreds of Men followed Colonel Benedict Arnold northward on his famous expedition to capture Quebec in late December 1775. They joined with General Richard Montgomery, but after Montgomery was killed by enemy fire, his men retreated. Arnold's troops, however, continued fighting after Arnold fell wounded and only surrendered when hopelessly outnumbered and trapped inside the city. Who were these men and what became of them? Arthur Lefkowitz answers these questions in his fresh and compelling Benedict Arnold in the Company of Heroes. An award-winning writer on the American Revolution, Lefkowit... View More...
Americans honor the flag with a fervor seen in few other countries: The Stars and Stripes decorate American homes and businesses; wave over sports events and funerals; and embellish everything from politicians' lapels to the surface of the moon.But what does the flag mean? In Capture the Flag, historian Woden Teachout reveals that it has held vastly different meanings over time. It has been claimed by both the right and left; by racists and revolutionaries; by immigrants and nativists. In tracing the political history of the flag from its origins in the American Revolution through the present ... View More...
An ideal companion to Armand Lucier's New England Chronicle, the Central Colonies Chronicle colorfully depicts colonial life in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware and Maryland as reported in the newspapers and journals of the region. "Feel the pulse of the people by reading the same items and advertisements presented in their weekly newspapers; the same words, the same spellings, the same compositions as they were written by Colonial compositors and publishers." These pages are "filled with newspaper abstracts concerning run-away slaves and indentured servants, the near frontier, pir... View More...
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Cokie Roberts comes New York Times bestseller Founding Mothers, an intimate and illuminating look at the fervently patriotic and passionate women whose tireless pursuits on behalf of their families--and their country--proved just as crucial to the forging of a new nation as the rebellion that established it.While much has been written about the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, battled the British, and framed the Constitution, the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters they left behind have been little noticed by history. #1 New York Time... View More...
As a Long Islander endlessly fascinated by eventsthat happened in a place I call home, I hope withthis book to give the secret six the credit they didn tget in life. The Culper spies represent all the patrioticAmericans who give so much for their country but, because of the nature of their work, will not or cannottake a bow or even talk about their missions. Brian Kilmeade When General George Washington beat a hastyretreat from New York City in August 1776, manythought the American Revolution might soon beover. Instead, Washington rallied thanks in largepart to a little-known, top-secret grou... View More...
"Lincoln at Cooper Union" explores Lincoln's most influential and widely reported pre-presidential address -- an extraordinary appeal by the western politician to the eastern elite that propelled him toward the Republican nomination for president. Delivered in New York in February 1860, the Cooper Union speech dispelled doubts about Lincoln's suitability for the presidency, and reassured conservatives of his moderation while reaffirming his opposition to slavery to Republican progressives.Award-winning Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer places Lincoln and his speech in the context of the times -- a... View More...
A riveting narrative of a New England slave boy caught up in the American Revolution A boy named Peter, born to a slave in Massachusetts in 1763, was sold nineteen months later to a childless white couple there. This book recounts the fascinating history of how the American Revolution came to Peter's small town, how he joined the revolutionary army at the age of twelve, and how he participated in the battles of Bunker Hill and Yorktown and witnessed the surrender at Saratoga.Joyce Lee Malcolm describes Peter's home life in rural New England, which became increasingly unhappy as he grew aware ... View More...
Mr. McClellan seeks "to establish the particular function which smuggling-and especially that in connection with the West Indies trade"-performed in relation to the political and economic elements of the Revolution. The first two chapters provide an over View More...
- The fascinating story surrounding the British effort to bring the American Revolution to a peaceful end - The fateful September 11, 1776, meeting on Staten Island between British Admiral Lord Richard Howe and Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge - A compelling glimpse into politics, military diplomacy, and American character at the dawn of independence - Early America from the eyewitness viewpoints of a feisty English traveler, a distressed Lutheran pastor, a precocious young lady, two sympathetic British officers, and an assortment of eccentric Founding Fathers View More...
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"An elegant synthesis done by the leading scholar in the field, which nicely integrates the work on the American Revolution over the last three decades but never loses contact with the older, classic questions that we have been arguing about for over two hundred years."--Joseph J. Ellis, author of Founding Brothers A magnificent account of the revolution in arms and consciousness that gave birth to the American republic. When Abraham Lincoln sought to define the significance of the United States, he naturally looked back to the American Revolution. He knew that the R... View More...
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"An elegant synthesis done by the leading scholar in the field, which nicely integrates the work on the American Revolution over the last three decades but never loses contact with the older, classic questions that we have been arguing about for over two hundred years."--Joseph J. Ellis, author of Founding Brothers A magnificent account of the revolution in arms and consciousness that gave birth to the American republic. When Abraham Lincoln sought to define the significance of the United States, he naturally looked back to the American Revolution. He knew that the R... View More...
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"An elegant synthesis done by the leading scholar in the field, which nicely integrates the work on the American Revolution over the last three decades but never loses contact with the older, classic questions that we have been arguing about for over two hundred years."--Joseph J. Ellis, author of Founding Brothers A magnificent account of the revolution in arms and consciousness that gave birth to the American republic. When Abraham Lincoln sought to define the significance of the United States, he naturally looked back to the American Revolution. He knew that the R... View More...
This book offers an important look at the American Revolution through British newspaper abstracts covering the last few years of the war. The abstracts, from January 1780 through September 1782, vary in content and include such things as extracts from let View More...
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, recovering a war more brutal than any in American history save the Civil War and... View More...
Here is a vividly written and compact overview of the brilliant, flawed, and quarrelsome group of lawyers, politicians, merchants, military men, and clergy known as the "Founding Fathers"--who got as close to the ideal of the Platonic "philosopher-kings" as American or world history has everseen. In The Founding Fathers Reconsidered, R. B. Bernstein reveals Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, and the other founders not as shining demigods but as imperfect human beings--people much like us--who nevertheless achieved political greatness. They emerge here as men who sought totransce... View More...
From the bestselling author of Washington's Immortals and The Unknowns, an important new chronicle of the American Revolution heralding the heroism of the men from Marblehead, Massachusetts On the stormy night of August 29, 1776, the Continental Army faced capture or annihilation after losing the Battle of Brooklyn. The British had trapped George Washington's forces against the East River, and the fate of the Revolution rested upon the shoulders of the soldier-mariners from Marblehead, Massachusetts. Serving side by side in one of the country's first diverse units, they pulled off an "American... View More...
A classic oral history of the American Revolution, "The Revolution Remembered" uses 79 first-hand accounts from veterans of the war to provide the reader with the feel of what it must have been like to fight and live through America's bloody battle for independence. "In a book fairly bursting with feats of daring, perhaps the most spectacular accomplishment of them all is this volume's transformation of its readers into the grandchildren of Revolutionary War soldiers. . . . An amazing gathering of 79 surrogate Yankee grandparents who tell us in their own words what they saw with their own eyes... View More...
George Robert Twelves Hewes, a Boston shoemaker who participated in such key events of the American Revolution as the Boston Massacre and teh Tea Party, might have been lost to history if not for his longevity and the historical mood of the 1830's. When the Tea Party became a leading symbol of the Revolutionary ear fifty years after the actual event, this "common man" in his nineties was "discovered" and celebrated in Boston as a national hero. Young pieces together this extraordinary tale, adding new insights about the role that individual and collective memory play in shaping our understandi... View More...
Treese's book provides a popular history of Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary period from the vantage point of the heirs of William Penn.Most Pennsylvanians are familiar with the story of William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania in 1681 as a haven for religious dissenters. But few may know what became of Penn's enterprise (the "proprietorship") in the years after his death in 1718. And fewer still may realize that Penn's descendants played an important, and increasingly unpopular, role in the coming of the American Revolution to Pennsylvania. The Storm Gathering, based on Penn family ... View More...
The myth and the reality of Ethan Allen and the much-loved Green Mountain Boys of Vermont--a "surprising and interesting new account...useful, informative reexamination of an often-misunderstood aspect of the American Revolution" (Booklist). In the "highly recommended" (Library Journal) Those Turbulent Sons of Freedom, Wren overturns the myth of Ethan Allen as a legendary hero of the American Revolution and a patriotic son of Vermont and offers a different portrait of Allen and his Green Mountain Boys. They were ruffians who joined the rush for cheap land on the northern frontier of the coloni... View More...
The Remarkable History and Reconstruction of the First Operational Submarine At the onset of the American Revolution, the British expected to quell the rebellion quickly with a show of overwhelming force. In an experiment in asymmetric warfare, David Bushnell created the first submarine vessel designed specifically "for the destruction of vessels of war." On a quiet September night in 1776, sergeant Ezra Lee maneuvered Bushnell's strange little craft out from Manhattan and into the midst of the greatest naval fleet ever assembled in the Americas. Lee's goal was to sink the British flagship HM... View More...
Look out for Joel Paul's new book, Without Precedent: Chief Justice John Marshall and His Times Silas Deane, a Connecticut merchant and member of the Continental Congress, went to France to persuade the king to support the colonists in their struggle with Britain. Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a playwright who had access to the arms and ammunition that Deane needed. And the Chevalier d' on was a diplomat and sometime spy for the French king who ignited a crisis that persuaded the French to arm the Americans. This is the true story of how three remarkable people lied, cheated, stole... View More...
In August 1776, little over a month after the Continental Congress had formally declared independence from Great Britain, General George Washington's young army faced off against over 20,000 British and Hessian soldiers at the Battle of Brooklyn. This was the largest battle of the Revolution, and with the Americans outmanned and outmaneuvered, it was almost the end of the war, as well. But thanks to a series of desperate bayonet charges by a single heroic regiment from Maryland, known as the "Immortal 400," Washington was able to retreat and regroup. He evacuated his men to Manhattan, and the ... View More...
In August 1776, little over a month after the Continental Congress had formally declared independence from Great Britain, General George Washington's young army faced off against over 20,000 British and Hessian soldiers at the Battle of Brooklyn. This was the largest battle of the Revolution, and with the Americans outmanned and outmaneuvered, it was almost the end of the war, as well. But thanks to a series of desperate bayonet charges by a single heroic regiment from Maryland, known as the "Immortal 400," Washington was able to retreat and regroup. He evacuated his men to Manhattan, and the ... View More...
