Revolution History

Many Americans reference the Bill of Rights, a document that represents many of the freedoms that define the United States. Who doesn’t know about the First Amendment’s freedom of religion or Second Amendment’s right to bear arms? In this succinct volume, Akhil Reed Amar and Les Adams offer a wealth of knowledge about the Bill of Rights that goes beyond a basic understanding.The Bill of Rights Primer is an authoritative guide to all American freedoms. Uncluttered and well-organized, this audiobook is perfect for those who want to study up on the Bill of Rights without needing a law degree to do so.

Thomas Jefferson praised Tom Paine as the greatest political writer of the age. The author of Common Sense and Rights of Man, Paine helped make revolutions in America and France. But beyond his inspiring calls to action, Paine harbored a deeper political vision for his adopted country. It was embodied in an architectural project that he spent decades planning: an iron bridge to span the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia.

How did the founding generation intend for us to interpret and apply the Constitution? Are liberals right when they cite its “elastic” clauses to justify big government, or are conservatives right when they cite its explicit limits on federal power? Professor Brion McClanahan, popular author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers, finds the answers by going directly to the source—the Founders themselves, who debated all the relevant issues in their state constitutional conventions.

President Thomas Jefferson wrote America's Declaration of Independence, but he also was an anthropologist, an architect, an astronomer, a botanist, a diplomat, a farmer, an inventor, a lawyer, a mathematician, and a musician. He spoke French, Greek, Italian, Latin, and Spanish. He founded the University of Virginia and today's Democratic Party. During his eight years in office, he doubled the country's size.

The Founding Fathers have been hailed for centuries as shining examples of men who put aside their own agendas to found a nation. But behind the scenes, there were more petty fights and fraught relationships than signatures on the Declaration of Independence. From the violent brawl between Roger Griswold and Matthew Lyon in the halls of Congress to George Washington's battle against his slave, Harry Washington, these less discussed clashes bring to light the unpredictable and volatile nature of a constantly changing nation.

George Washington’s military strategy has been called bumbling at worst and brilliant at best. So which is it? Was George Washington a strategic genius or just lucky? So asks Dave R. Palmer in George Washington’s Military Genius. An updated edition of Palmer’s earlier work, The Way of the Fox, George Washington’s Military Genius breaks down the American Revolution into four phases and analyzes Washington’s strategy during each.

From David Price, author of The Road to Assunpink Creek, follow along on the journey of Delaware's Revolutionary War hero, John Haslet, and the legendary regiment he commanded during the 1776 campaign of George Washington's army. This is the story of Colonel John Haslet, an Irish immigrant to the American colonies who made the ultimate sacrifice while fighting for his adopted country. During this pivotal moment in America's war for independence against Great Britain, a newborn nation struggled to survive against a militarily superior force deployed by a mighty empire.

George Washington may be the most famous American who ever lived and certainly is one of the most admired. But although he has been heavily mythologized, it is no myth that the man who led America's fight for independence and whose two terms in office largely defined the presidency was the most highly respected individual among a generation of formidable personalities. In First and Always, celebrated historian Peter Henriques illuminates Washington's life, more fully explicating his character and his achievements.

E Pluribus Unum highlights the political context in which the common law developed, and how it influenced the United States Constitution. In practice, the triumph of the common law over competing approaches gave lawyers more authority than governing officials. By the end of the 18th century, many colonial legal professionals began to espouse constitutional ideology that would mature into the doctrine of judicial review.

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.

Alexander Hamilton has become a global celebrity. Millions know his name and imagine knowing the man. But what did he really want for the country? What risks did he run in pursuing those vaulting ambitions? Who tried to stop him? How did they fight? It's ironic that the Hamilton revival has obscured the man's most dramatic battles and hardest-won achievements—as well as downplaying unsettling aspects of his legacy.

For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight. Historian Joseph J. Ellis sifts the facts shrewdly from the legends and the rumors, treading a path between vilification and hero worship in order to formulate a plausible portrait of the man who still today "hover[s] over the political scene like one of those dirigibles cruising above a crowded football stadium, flashing words of inspiration to both teams".

No member of America's founding generation had a greater impact on the Constitution and the Supreme Court than John Marshall, and no one did more to preserve the delicate unity of the fledgling United States. From the nation's founding in 1776 and for the next 40 years, Marshall was at the center of every political battle. As Chief Justice of the United States - the longest-serving in history—he established the independence of the judiciary and the supremacy of the federal Constitution and courts.

For most of human existence, people lived in a somewhat similar fashion. Everything that has been produced, from food and raw materials to clothing and other finished products, has been done either solely by hand or with some help of animal power. This was the same across the eras and throughout the world, no matter how advanced or backward the various civilizations were. Yet, our lives today couldn’t be more different.

This is the story of a young country testing its power on the global stage and a lost chapter in how the frontier spirit came to define American character. The first treatment of this little-known historical moment, The Rogue Republic shows how hardscrabble frontiersmen and gentleman farmers planted the seeds of civil war, marked the dawn of Manifest Destiny, and laid the groundwork for the American empire.

On September 17, 1787, at the State House in Philadelphia, 39 men from 12 states, after months of often bitter debate, signed America's Constitution. Yet very few of the delegates, at the start, had had any intention of creating a nation that would last. Most were driven more by pragmatic, regional interests than by idealistic vision. Lawrence Goldstone chronicles the forging of the Constitution through the prism of the crucial compromises made by men consumed with the needs of the slave economy.

Revolutionary Surgeons offers an integrated picture of surgeons as political and military leaders of the American Revolution.

Accomplishing the Impossible draws contemporary leadership lessons from the events and people that were central to the beginning of the American Revolution. Retired general, scholar, and educator William E. Rapp cuts through the popular mythology around the Boston Campaign and applies the historical lessons to challenges faced by today's business and public sector leaders. By doing so, he inspires today's leaders to view contemporary leadership and change management through a fresh lens.

Taking its title from The Face of Battle, John Keegan's canonical book on the nature of warfare, The Other Face of Battle illuminates the American experience of fighting in "irregular" and "intercultural" wars over the centuries. Sometimes known as "forgotten" wars, in part because they lacked triumphant clarity, they are the focus of the book. War is always hell. These wars, however, profoundly undermined any sense of purpose or proportion. Nightmarish and existentially bewildering, they nonetheless characterize how Americans have experienced combat.

The untold story of how America’s beloved first president, George Washington, borrowed, leveraged, and coerced his way into masterminding the key land purchase of the American era, which lead to the creation the nation’s capital city.