It is just a few days before July 4 as I write this column and it seemed an opportune time to celebrate Independence Day with a few book recommendations about the American Revolution. While they agreed to the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, it was over a month later before they actually signed the document, including John Hancock’s now famous signature. I try to read the Declaration of Independence every year on the 4th and remember how radical and transformative (for all its flaws and compromises) this document was in 1776. It’s truly a remarkable era that has never been repeated by other nations seeking independence. The four books that I’m going to recommend to you are all by eminent historians of that era in United States history. Because I'm a bit of a history snob and an historian myself (before I became a librarian), specializing in the Early National Period just a couple of decades later, I've chosen some excellent books, by excellent historians, who can also write interestingly and engagingly.
The first is Alan Taylor’s
American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1754-1804. Taylor is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner from the University of Virginia and in this latest book (which is a sequel to his earlier
American Colonies) he writes of the development of nationalism in the colonies, and soon to be young nation, in the late 18
th century, from the Eastern colonies to the Western frontier. Though the era was filled with divisions and uncertainties, it became clear to most colonists/Americans that a patriot victory was the course to stability and less uncertainty. Taylor’s book is both engaging and well documented, giving the reader a slightly different look at this era then they may have seen before.
The next book is
Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence by Joseph Ellis. Pulitzer and National Book Award winner Ellis gives readers what might be described as the definitive book of the summer of 1776 in this thought-provoking, well-documented historical narrative that is filled with insightful analysis. It is during this summer that it becomes clear that this is a war that the British cannot win and that the Americans will not lose.
If you are looking for an excellent, well-written, thoroughly researched single-volume on the history of the Revolutionary period, and who isn't, then historian Robert Middlekauff’s
The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 may be the book for you. In this major revision/expansion of his 1982 classic, Middlekauff has written a work of historical narrative at its best that is made even more understandable through its engaging and conversational style.
Finally, no list of eminent historians of the Revolutionary era would be complete without at least one book by Gordon Wood. I present to you his Pulitzer Prize winning book
The Radicalism of the American Revolution. This book is truly a classic of historical research, analysis, and a, if you’ll excuse my choice of words here, radical look at not only why the American Revolution happened at all, but why it looks so very different from other revolutions, such as the French Revolution occurring just a few years later. He explains the transformation of a seemingly content, monarchical-leaning group of colonies into the liberal, democratic republicans as a revolution of the minds of the colonists themselves. So, spend your 4
th of July reading any of these titles, or any of the many others that we have at your Longview Library.
