As a child and then as a secondary school history teacher, I wanted to help people understand each other. I always told my students that it was less important to memorize dates and facts than it was to explore history to help them understand what it is to be a human being. They should know that humans have always faced challenges and found good or bad ways of dealing with them–it is not just in their time. The books I have listed here on the Revolutionary history of the New York area created an even greater passion for understanding the human condition.
This book helped me understand an element in my family history, as well as promoting my understanding of the American Revolution in New York and other states. Aside from my personal interest in my family, this book provided many stories of the diverse experiences of women who followed the American Army and their valuable contributions to it.
As Mayer so eloquently reveals, the Continental Army, like other armies of the time, was a traveling community that included soldiers’ families, merchants, and various other people who helped the soldiers. Mayer’s work clearly shows that one cannot understand the experience of the American Revolution without understanding the varied people who traveled with the army.
Belonging to the Army reveals the identity and importance of the civilians now referred to as camp followers, whom Holly A. Mayer calls the forgotten revolutionaries of the War of American Independence. These merchants, contractors, family members, servants, government officers, and military employees, provided necessary supplies, services and emotional support to the troops of the Continental army. Mayer describes their activities and demonstrates how they made encampments livable communities and played a fundamental role in the survival and ultimate success of the Continental Army. She also considers how the army wanted to be rid of the followers but were unsuccessful,…
I love stories that exist within stories. I like to delve into what we think our world is about and discover the layering underneath that reveals complex relationships and real motives behind what characters do and why. One of the most fun things about a book involving conspiracies, like any good mystery, is going back through and reading a second time to see what clues I missed. Did I see this coming in advance? Did my initial perceptions of the characters hold up, or did the twist upend them completely? Should it have been obvious to me, or was it so subtle that only a master detective could’ve picked up on it?
Alternate history has always fascinated me, and the speculation about what the world would’ve been like without the American Revolution is one of the most intriguing concepts out there. Two hundred years ago, the coming together of the two Georges—George III, King of England, and George Washington, Commander of the Continental Army—inspired the creation of a painting showing how the British Empire and the American Colonies worked out their differences.
Now, that painting has gone missing just before the visit of King Charles III, and the thief has plans of his own to reignite the fight. What was most intriguing to me was that the fight wasn’t for the liberty I imagined but rather looked to trade one master for another.
While I grew up in New Jersey, the “Crossroads of the Revolution,” with a passion for history, I was ignorant to the amount of fighting that happened in my home state. My decision to write coincided with a renewed interest in the American Revolution: when I realized how many stories of the Revolution remained untold, the die was cast. My passion for history, love for soldiering, wartime experiences, and understanding of tactics and terrain came together to produce something special. Now I can often be found, map, compass, and notebook in hand, prowling a Revolutionary battlefield so I can better tell the story of those who were there.
If you want to know what motivated ordinary British colonists to pick up a musket, spear, or sword and take on the most powerful military in the world, read Thomas Paine’s essays Common Sense and The Crisis. Common Sense was the ideological underpinning of the movement toward independence. Paine’s experiences with the Continental Army during the dark days of late 1776 inspired The Crisis, and Washington ordered it read to the troops to encourage them to stay by the Colors for one last great gamble at Trenton. In my research, I found that the average American soldier truly believed in the cause of Independence; that belief has much to do with the writings of Thomas Paine.
A special gift edition of one of the most important and influential documents in our nation's history-featured in Lin-Manuel Miranda's Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Hamilton: An American Musical-stylishly packaged for twenty-first-century readers. According to John Adams, "Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain." With Common Sense, Thomas Paine energized colonial support for the armed rebellion that would make the American experiment a reality, using common sense to argue for colonial independence. Today, this cornerstone of the American Revolution has once again been rediscovered by ardent fans of…
I am a historian of early America who previously practiced law for 20 years. I have both my PhD and JD from the University of Virginia. I have taught at the University of Virginia, George Washington University, Hamilton, Oberlin, and Randolph Colleges. I have also worked at Jefferson’s Monticello for many years. While American history is often misused for narrow political ends, I am convinced that good history is not only fascinating but can assist us in understanding our world and current challenges.
Some things seem so embedded in our understanding of the nation that they must have existed forever. I was fascinated by Chervinsky’s story about how the president’s Cabinet came about: It’s not really called for in the Constitution, and, as with so many other things, George Washington had to make it up as he went along.
I am always interested in stories that show so much of what we think of as our nation was not a given but a matter of careful (and changeable) choices.
Winner of the Daughters of the American Revolution's Excellence in American History Book Award Winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize
"Cogent, lucid, and concise, Lindsay Chervinsky's book gives us an indispensable guide to the creation of the cabinet. With her groundbreaking study, we can now have a much greater appreciation of this essential American institution, one of the major legacies of George Washington's enlightened statecraft."-Ron Chernow, author of Washington: A Life
The US Constitution never established a presidential cabinet-the delegates to the Constitutional Convention explicitly rejected the idea. So how did George Washington create one of the most…
Amy Harmon is an accomplished storyteller who uses diary entries to highlight conflicts between presenting oneself as a man in a man’s brutal world while also feeling the emotions and desires of a woman. After marching in Deborah’s boots, it’s thrilling to know there’s much more to learn. An online search will link to Smithsonian displays, statues, parks, plaques, reference materials, and multiple media portrayals.
From New York Times bestselling author Amy Harmon comes the saga of a young woman who dares to chart her own destiny in life and love during the American Revolutionary War.
In 1760, Deborah Samson is born to Puritan parents in Plympton, Massachusetts. When her father abandons the family and her mother is unable to support them, Deborah is bound out as an indentured servant. From that moment on, she yearns for a life of liberation and adventure.
Twenty years later, as the American colonies begin to buckle in their battle for independence, Deborah, impassioned by the cause, disguises herself…
I am a journalist who has written books on American history for the general reader but not an academic historian or specialist, though I have the utmost respect for both. I like to think I have an independent mind and that I look for ideas that challenge conventional wisdom but are rooted in good sense and critical intelligence. The books I have recommended here reflect this temperament and, I believe, an innate sense of the comic and absurd. These are desperately needed at a time when people take themselves much too seriously—as in a presidential election year.
I recommend this book because it uses Washington’s own expense accounts submitted to Congress—$400,000 worth of reimbursements he expects—to cast a comic light on the sober and solemn business of war. We tend to take figures like Washington so seriously that we do not see the human—and humorous—side of their lives and works. Kitman did a superb job of showing the lighter side of commanding the Continental Army without diminishing Washington’s greatness.
I love this book because it is consistently amusing when so many books on George Washington are so serious in tone. Kitman manages to humanize Washington, which too few authors do, and in the process, helps the reader keep his or her perspective on the momentous events of the American past. Also, the book is just a lot of fun. We take ourselves much too seriously these days, especially in a presidential campaign year.
In George Washington's Expense Account -- the best-selling expense account in history -- Kitman shows how Washington brilliantly turned his noble gesture of refusing payment for his services as commander in chief of the Continental Army into an opportunity to indulge his insatiable lust for fine food and drink, extravagant clothing, and lavish accommodations. In a close analysis of the document that financed our Revolution, Kitman uncovers more scandals than you can shake a Nixon Cabinet member at -- and serves each up with verve and wit.
I found my first arrowhead at age seven and have been hooked on history ever since. My Bone Rattler series—Freedom’s Ghost is the seventh installment—builds on many years of research and field trips, supplemented by intense investigation of specific aspects leading up to and during the writing of each novel. The volatile 18th century was one of the most important periods in all of history, and I immerse myself in it when writing these books—by, among other things, reading newspapers of the day, which are often stacked on my desk.
Marblehead, Massachusetts, played a remarkably disproportionate role in the fight for independence, and O’Donnell explains why.
The seaport produced a cadre of extraordinary patriots who figured prominently in the struggles before and during the Revolution. O’Donnell’s deeply researched book provides another perspective on the rugged, self-reliant, daring men and women who laid the groundwork for independence, and then played a critical role in winning the war.
This motley, very diverse cast joined to provide the origin of the American navy, smuggle in vital goods for the rebel cause, roam the sea as privateers, and ultimately become both Washington’s elite personal Guard and his special operations force.
This highly readable, often entertaining, book is a great way to visit the underbelly of revolutionary New England.
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 Dunkirk” and saved the army by transporting it…
As an educator, I’ve experienced the power of true stories to engage readers, widen their world, spur thinking, and support content areas. I’ve learned plenty from these books, too! As an author, I’m fascinated with many aspects of the American Revolutionthat I never learned about as a student. Researching this time period has revealed much more than men at war. The revolution affected every aspect of life—a “world turned upside-down.” Today, we’re fortunate to have a range of stories that help kids understand that history is about people much like them facing the challenges of their time and place.
A gingerbread baker had a role in the American Revolution? I had to know more!
I love stories of people behind the scenes, everyday people like us, so often overlooked. These stories let us know that we’re all a part of history. In this book, a German immigrant uses his baking talents to support George Washington’s troops.
Recently, I’ve learned with my research for an upcoming book about how difficult it was to supply the Continental Army with food. Starving soldiers had to go out and forage for food—one of the many everyday struggles of the time that brings history home. I also love that it’s a story of generosity. Rockliff’s lively books never fail to engage me as a reader.
Christopher Ludwick was a German-born American patriot with a big heart and a talent for baking. When cries of “Revolution!” began, Christopher was determined to help General George Washington and his hungry troops. Not with muskets or cannons, but with gingerbread! Cheerfully told by Mara Rockliff and brought to life by Vincent Kirsch’s inventive cut-paper illustrations, Gingerbread for Liberty is the story of an unsung hero of the Revolutionary War who changed the course of history one loaf at a time.
I am an archaeologist and ethnohistorian who has carried out major projects in American Indian and Revolutionary War archaeology and history. I have taught at three universities over the course of more than five decades and have authored or edited 17 books.
The new national Congress of the United States had to invent both a government and a military to defend it on the fly in 1776. Militias had been around for decades, encouraged and supported to varying degrees by colonial, later state, governments. Before and after the creation of a regular “Continental” army, militia units were chartered by the thirteen states. The soon-to-be self-declared fourteenth state of Vermont also had militia regiments, and these also played important roles at Saratoga.
Some members of Congress thought that the creation of a regular army was dangerous and unnecessary, but Washington and his supporters prevailed, and the Continental Army was founded. Chadwick’s book is important not just for the story of the first American army, but for the individual stories of the soldiers who served in it.
This is the first book that offers a you-are-there look at the American Revolution through the eyes of the enlisted men. Through searing portraits of individual soldiers, Bruce Chadwick, author of George Washington's War, brings alive what it was like to serve then in the American army.
With interlocking stories of ordinary Americans, he evokes what it meant to face brutal winters, starvation, terrible homesickness and to go into battle against the much-vaunted British regulars and their deadly Hessian mercenaries.
The reader lives through the experiences of those terrible and heroic times when a fifteen-year-old fifer survived the Battle of…
When writing my first of my ten books on the Founding Era, A People’s History of the American Revolution, I came across an amazing uprising not celebrated in the traditional saga of our nation’s birth: the people of Massachusetts, everywhere outside of Boston, actually cast off British authority in 1774, the year beforeLexington and Concord. How could this critical episode have been so neglected? Who’s the gatekeeper here, anyway? That’s when I began to explore how events of those times morphed into stories, and how those stories mask what actually happened—the theme of Founding Myths.
What about wives left behind when their husbands marched off to war? This neglected gem showcases the letters between Joseph Hodgkins, a Minuteman who answered the Lexington Alarm, and his wife Sarah, at home with three small children. Joseph reenlists, not once but twice: “If we Due not Exarte our selves in this gloris. Cause our all is gon and we made slaves of for Ever.” But with each succeeding term, Sarah’s letters become more heart-wrenching: “You may think I am too free in expressing my mind. I look for you almost every day but I dont alow myself to depend on anything for I find there is nothing to be depended upon but troble and disapointments. I hope you will Let Some body else take your Place.” Can such a marriage survive?
"As I am ingaged in this glories Cause I am will to go whare I am Called"-so Joseph Hodgkins, a shoemaker of Ipswich, Massachusetts, declared to his wife the purpose that sustained him through four crucial years of the American Revolution. Hodgkins and his fellow townsman Nathaniel Wade, a carpenter, turned out for the Lexington alarm, fought at Bunker Hill, retreated from Long Island past White Plains, attacked at Trenton and Princeton, and enjoyed triumph at Saratoga. One of them wintered at Valley Forge, and the other was promoted to command at West Point on the night that Benedict Arnold…
