100 books like My Name Is Resolute

By Nancy E. Turner,

Here are 100 books that My Name Is Resolute fans have personally recommended if you like My Name Is Resolute. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Emigrants

Rose Osterman Kleidon Author Of 1836: Year of Escape

From my list on immigration in the 1800s.

Why am I passionate about this?

By chance, I was entrusted with rare historical documents about the immigrant generations in our family, which inspired this novel and grounded it in reality. Who wouldn’t wonder why they came? Besides, I have always been fascinated by pre-modern times and how steam power changed everything and dragged us along, kicking and screaming. And, even though they arrived in America in 1836, I grew up on the farm where they lived, so I heard tales of their amazing journey. It may be 186 years on, but it’s time to tell their story, which, it turns out, is a story for us all.  

Rose's book list on immigration in the 1800s

Rose Osterman Kleidon Why did Rose love this book?

The first of Moberg’s 4-volume saga of Swedish immigrants, this book is so thoroughly researched that he invented a term, calling them “documentary novels.” The family in the story are farmers from a poor, remote parish in Sweden whose lives are constricted by both the church and the state. This reflects the painful realities of Europe in 1850, where almost everyone was poor, rural, oppressed, and completely unprepared for the journey ahead of them. Whether you read Moberg’s Emigrant Novels for the intense personal drama or for more understanding of why people leave their homelands, you will find these stories deeply emotional and insightful.

By Vilhelm Moberg,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Emigrants as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Considered one of Sweden's greatest 20th-century writers, Vilhelm Moberg created the characters Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson to portray the joys and tragedies of daily life for early Swedish immigrants in America. His consistently faithful depiction of these humble people's lives is a major strength of the Emigrant Novels.

Moberg's extensive research in the papers of Swedish emigrants in archival collections enabled him to incorporate many details of pioneer life. First published between 1949 and 1959 in Swedish, these four books were considered a single work by Moberg, who intended that they be read as documentary novels. These reprint editions…


Book cover of The Library of Legends

Rose Osterman Kleidon Author Of 1836: Year of Escape

From my list on immigration in the 1800s.

Why am I passionate about this?

By chance, I was entrusted with rare historical documents about the immigrant generations in our family, which inspired this novel and grounded it in reality. Who wouldn’t wonder why they came? Besides, I have always been fascinated by pre-modern times and how steam power changed everything and dragged us along, kicking and screaming. And, even though they arrived in America in 1836, I grew up on the farm where they lived, so I heard tales of their amazing journey. It may be 186 years on, but it’s time to tell their story, which, it turns out, is a story for us all.  

Rose's book list on immigration in the 1800s

Rose Osterman Kleidon Why did Rose love this book?

Janie Chang is a master writer who weaves the power of myth into her story of a 1937 escape of Chinese university students as Japanese bombs drop on their city. Charged with protecting an irreplaceable trove of ancient books, the students face air raids, a ragged life on the road, and a growing fear of traitors from within. The Library of Legends is an evocative tale of love, war, and survival, beautifully written.

By Janie Chang,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Library of Legends as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"The Library of Legends is a gorgeous, poetic journey threaded with mist and magic about a group from a Chinese university who take to the road to escape the Japanese invasion of 1937 - only to discover that danger stalks them from within. Janie Chang pens pure enchantment!" -Kate Quinn, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Huntress

From the author of Three Souls and Dragon Springs Road comes a captivating historical novel-the third in a loosely-connected trilogy-in which a young woman travels across China with a convoy of student refugees, fleeing the…


Book cover of Shaman

Rose Osterman Kleidon Author Of 1836: Year of Escape

From my list on immigration in the 1800s.

Why am I passionate about this?

By chance, I was entrusted with rare historical documents about the immigrant generations in our family, which inspired this novel and grounded it in reality. Who wouldn’t wonder why they came? Besides, I have always been fascinated by pre-modern times and how steam power changed everything and dragged us along, kicking and screaming. And, even though they arrived in America in 1836, I grew up on the farm where they lived, so I heard tales of their amazing journey. It may be 186 years on, but it’s time to tell their story, which, it turns out, is a story for us all.  

Rose's book list on immigration in the 1800s

Rose Osterman Kleidon Why did Rose love this book?

Winner of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for historical fiction, Shaman immerses readers in post-Revolution America of the 1830s, when Illinois was on a frontier defined by the Mississippi River. The characters include a doctor who fled from political turmoil in Scotland, members of the Sauk Indian tribe, runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad, and xenophobic Know-Nothings, a stew of intensifying forces that will lead to Civil War. The novel’s historical accuracy enhances it, and intertwined stories of two doctors, father and son, shine a light on a fascinating era.

By Noah Gordon,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Shaman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Robert Jeremy Cole, the legendary doctor and hero of THE PHYSICIAN, left an enduring legacy. From the eleventh century on, the eldest son in each generation of the Cole family has borne the same first name and middle initial and many of these men have followed the medical profession. A few have been blessed with their ancestor's diagnostic skill and the 'sixth sense' they call The Gift, the ability to know instinctively when death is impending.
The tragedy of Rob J.'s life is the deafness of his son, Robert Jefferson Cole, who is called Shaman by everyone who knows him.…


Book cover of Lincoln in New Orleans: The 1828-1831 Flatboat Voyages and Their Place in History

Rose Osterman Kleidon Author Of 1836: Year of Escape

From my list on immigration in the 1800s.

Why am I passionate about this?

By chance, I was entrusted with rare historical documents about the immigrant generations in our family, which inspired this novel and grounded it in reality. Who wouldn’t wonder why they came? Besides, I have always been fascinated by pre-modern times and how steam power changed everything and dragged us along, kicking and screaming. And, even though they arrived in America in 1836, I grew up on the farm where they lived, so I heard tales of their amazing journey. It may be 186 years on, but it’s time to tell their story, which, it turns out, is a story for us all.  

Rose's book list on immigration in the 1800s

Rose Osterman Kleidon Why did Rose love this book?

As a teenager, Abraham Lincoln built a flatboat and floated down the Mississippi to New Orleans to sell the produce his family and neighbors had grown. This and a similar trip three years later were his only exposure to the Deep South. They immersed him in a culture of riverboat men that was archetypical of the era and included events that became part of the mythology surrounding him, an attack by runaway slaves that could have killed him, and his rescue of fellow boatman from drowning. Campanella is a university professor, tireless researcher, and excellent writer.

By Richard Campanella,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Lincoln in New Orleans as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1828, a teenaged Abraham Lincoln guided a flatboat down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. The adventure marked his first visit to a major city and exposed him to the nation's largest slave marketplace. It also nearly cost him his life, in a nighttime attack in the Louisiana plantation country. That trip, and a second one in 1831, would form the two longest journeys of Lincoln's life, his only visits to the Deep South, and his foremost experience in a racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse urban environment.

Lincoln in New Orleans: The 1828-1831 Flatboat Voyages and Their Place in…


Book cover of Partisans and Redcoats: The Southern Conflict That Turned the Tide of the American Revolution

Andrew Waters Author Of To the End of the World: Nathanael Greene, Charles Cornwallis, and the Race to the Dan

From my list on the "Race to the Dan" and the American Revolution.

Why am I passionate about this?

Although I’ve been an avid reader of histories and biographies all my life, I didn’t become passionate about the American Revolution until moving to South Carolina in 2013. That’s when I began to learn about the South’s rich American Revolution history and become fascinated with Nathanael Greene’s role in it. So far, this fascination has inspired me to write two histories on Nathanael Greene, and I hope to keep going. Today, we tend to think about the American Revolution in terms of its northern battles, but if you want to understand the war’s end game, you need understand what happened in the South. These books are a great place to start.

Andrew's book list on the "Race to the Dan" and the American Revolution

Andrew Waters Why did Andrew love this book?

To understand the American Revolution in the South, you need to understand what happened in South Carolina in the summer and fall of 1780, after the British captured Charleston that May. And you also need to know about the bitter civil war that divided South Carolina in the years leading up to 1780.

Walter Edgar is a South Carolina treasure, now known primarily for his popular NPR radio show on South Carolina history and culture. But he’s also the state’s preeminent historian, and in Partisans and Redcoats, he expertly introduces readers to the unique conditions and culture in South Carolina that led to this prominent role in the American Revolution. 

By Walter Edgar,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Partisans and Redcoats as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From one of the South′s foremost historians, this is the dramatic story of the conflict in South Carolina that was one of the most pivotal contributions to the American Revolution.

In 1779, Britain strategised a war to finally subdue the rebellious American colonies with a minimum of additional time, effort, and blood. Setting sail from New York harbour with 8,500 ground troops, a powerful British fleet swung south towards South Carolina. One year later, Charleston fell. And as King George′s forces pushed inland and upward, it appeared the six-year-old colonial rebellion was doomed to defeat. In a stunning work on…


Book cover of The War of the Revolution

Andrew Waters Author Of To the End of the World: Nathanael Greene, Charles Cornwallis, and the Race to the Dan

From my list on the "Race to the Dan" and the American Revolution.

Why am I passionate about this?

Although I’ve been an avid reader of histories and biographies all my life, I didn’t become passionate about the American Revolution until moving to South Carolina in 2013. That’s when I began to learn about the South’s rich American Revolution history and become fascinated with Nathanael Greene’s role in it. So far, this fascination has inspired me to write two histories on Nathanael Greene, and I hope to keep going. Today, we tend to think about the American Revolution in terms of its northern battles, but if you want to understand the war’s end game, you need understand what happened in the South. These books are a great place to start.

Andrew's book list on the "Race to the Dan" and the American Revolution

Andrew Waters Why did Andrew love this book?

There have been a lot of comprehensive histories of the American Revolution published since, but Christopher Ward’s The War of the Revolution is still the gold standard.

Want me to prove it? Pick up a Ferling or Philbrick or any other historian writing about the American Revolution today and see how many times they use it in their work.

Expertly documented, with clean, concise writing that can be read end-to-end or used as a reference for specific campaigns and battles, this is my go-to source for everything American Revolution.  

By Christopher Ward,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The War of the Revolution as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the first crack of musket fire at Lexington and Concord to the downing of the British colors at Yorktown, Christopher Ward does not tell the whole history of the American Revolution, but rather, illuminates the history of the war caused by that revolution-the military operations on land in the War for Independence. When The War for the Revolution was first published almost sixty years ago, it was instantly recognized as a modern classic of American historical scholarship, as well as a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction Revolutionary War history. Today it is probably the most cited single work on the…


Book cover of The Minutemen and Their World

Kathleen DuVal Author Of Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution

From my list on the American Revolution beyond the Founding Fathers.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a professional historian and life-long lover of early American history. My fascination with the American Revolution began during the bicentennial in 1976, when my family traveled across the country for celebrations in Williamsburg and Philadelphia. That history, though, seemed disconnected to the place I grew up—Arkansas—so when I went to graduate school in history, I researched in French and Spanish archives to learn about their eighteenth-century interactions with Arkansas’s Native nations, the Osages and Quapaws. Now I teach early American history and Native American history at UNC-Chapel Hill and have written several books on how Native American, European, and African people interacted across North America.

Kathleen's book list on the American Revolution beyond the Founding Fathers

Kathleen DuVal Why did Kathleen love this book?

I first read Minutemen and Their World in graduate school, and it shaped how I see the Revolution and history more generally—history is made by the decisions of ordinary people.

First published in 1976 and recently reissued, it focuses on the battles of Lexington and Concord, where the first shots of the Revolution were fired. Like Zabin’s Boston Massacre, it starts before the well-known events. The people of Concord were ordinary men and women with no intention to revolt against their empire. They were busy arguing about local matters such as whether to fire their preacher.

What I love about this book is how we see them gradually become revolutionaries, really against their will, humanizing the Revolution and helping us understand that it was not inevitable.

By Robert A. Gross,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Minutemen and Their World as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Bancroft Prize! The Minutemen and Their World, first published in 1976, is reissued now in a revised and expanded edition with a new preface and afterword by the author.

On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began at the Old North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. The "shot heard round the world" catapulted this sleepy New England town into the midst of revolutionary fervor, and Concord went on to become the intellectual capital of the new republic. The town--future home to Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne--soon came to symbolize devotion to liberty, intellectual freedom, and the stubborn integrity of…


Book cover of Valley Forge

Sherrie DeMorrow Author Of The Elder Rose

From my list on fiction connected to the American Revolution.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have had an interest in history for over 30 years. My main interest was the American Revolutionary and the Federalist/War of 1812 eras. I like these periods because they were intriguing, fun, and informative as to what happened before and how a nation grew and developed. I found this more engaging when I visited the various locations of battlefields, houses, and legal buildings (all of Washington DC is an example). It helped me to understand the mammoth task of the individuals trying to make something out of a fledging former British colony, into one of the more formidable powerhouses in modern society. It's a wonder that I now live in the mother country!

Sherrie's book list on fiction connected to the American Revolution

Sherrie DeMorrow Why did Sherrie love this book?

It is a gripping story set in the winter of 1777, when the American Army, under General George Washington, had camped in the cold plateau of Valley Forge. No supplies and stuck 'out there,' the Army had to battle the freezing temperatures and themselves to survive. Told plainly in the first person narrative, it flows well with prose and bits of poetry. A likable book, set in a sinister time.

By Mackinlay Kantor,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Valley Forge as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

MACKINLAY KANTOR
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Andersonville

VALLEY FORGE

Poignant, tender, and powerful, VALLEY FORGE brings into sharp new focus one of the most tensely dramatic episodes of the American Revolution.

With warmth and wit, compassion and sensitivity, MacKinlay Kantor evokes the flavor, pulse and texture of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, transporting the reader into the houses and workshops, kitchens and stables, parlors and bedrooms of ordinary citizens. Here are not only the soldiers of Valley Forge, but the panorama of the Revolution itself. George Washington, lamenting the remoteness and lack of valor in the Congress, anticipating…


Book cover of Alex & Eliza

Katherine Rothschild Author Of Wider Than the Sky

From my list on righting the wrongs of history.

Why am I passionate about this?

History is full of injustice—and my work is centered around how characters deal with the injustice in their world. As a Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University, I’m in a constant conversation about how language reflects social injustice—and social change. In my fiction, I like to struggle more creatively with how we revise history—and how we give some small measure of justice to our characters. In my first novel, Wider than the Sky, that injustice is how people who are bisexual have been treated historically, even within the gay community. In my second book, I’m looking at how teen girls are sexualized unfairly. 

Katherine's book list on righting the wrongs of history

Katherine Rothschild Why did Katherine love this book?

Everyone ships Alex and Eliza. Everyone. Okay, maybe not Angelica. But everyone else. And with the fabulous Hamilton musical, we move a little too quickly to Alex’s affair(s) and his life’s tragedy. Let us linger on the love story, will you? This book hones in on Alex and Eliza’s love story and lets us live through their courtship and loveship, and leaves out all those parts that are a bunch of big downers. While it doesn’t quite right a wrong of history—it does tell the part of the story we all want to linger in. 

By Melissa de la Cruz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Alex & Eliza as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 12, 13, 14, and 15.

What is this book about?

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Witches of East End and the Descendants series comes the love story of young Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler.

1777. Albany, New York.

As battle cries of the American Revolution echo in the distance, servants flutter about preparing for one of New York society's biggest events: the Schuylers' grand ball. Descended from two of the oldest and most distinguished bloodlines in New York, the Schuylers are proud to be one of their fledgling country's founding families, and even prouder still of their three daughters-Angelica, with her razor-sharp wit; Peggy, with…


Book cover of My Brother Sam Is Dead

Jeffery McKenna Author Of Saving Dr. Warren... "A True Patriot"

From my list on for young adults on the American Revolution.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have loved American history all my life. I thought I knew the events and key figures in the American Revolution. Then, in 2001, I learned about Dr. Joseph Warren. The more I learned, the more I wanted to tell his story. I travelled to Boston. I walked the Freedom Trail. I followed the red bricks that wind through historic Boston until they end at Bunker Hill. I saw the marble statue of Dr. Warren at Bunker Hill honoring his death. His influence and footprints are on every location along the Freedom Trail. My passion is to tell his story; my hope is that all Americans can remember his sacrifice.

Jeffery's book list on for young adults on the American Revolution

Jeffery McKenna Why did Jeffery love this book?

I’ve included the Colliers’ classic because it was one of the first historical fiction novels that I ever read.  Over forty years later, I can still remember the magic. Upon reading the first page, I was transported instantly from my desert home in Las Vegas to a Tory tavern in Redding, Connecticut. The enchantment in the pages worked a magic over me that I never forgot  In some ways, this led me to write my own historical fiction novel. The title is simple – My Brother Sam is Dead. The meaning, the message, and the Meeker Family’s pain profound. You will not soon forget the Meeker family’s terrible misfortunes and the unimaginable unfairness of war. In the end, you will question all wars... even our very war for independence.  

By James Lincoln Collier, Christopher Collier,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked My Brother Sam Is Dead as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 10, 11, 12, and 13.

What is this book about?

When Sam Meeker leaves his home in Redding, Connecticut, a town loyal to the king, to fight with the rebel army, he places his family in a very difficult position.


Book cover of The Emigrants
Book cover of The Library of Legends
Book cover of Shaman

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