Revolution & Founding

The epic of the American West became a tale of progress, redemption, and glorious conquest that came to shape the identity of a new nation. Over time a darker story emerged—one of ghastly violence and environmental spoliation that stained this identity.

Benjamin Franklin is the founding father who winks at us - an ambitious urban entrepreneur who rose up the social ladder, from leather-aproned shopkeeper to dining with kings....

Killing England chronicles the path to independence in gripping detail, taking the listener from the battlefields of America to the royal courts of Europe....

Heroes are hard to come by - but there's one man whose legend has stood the test of two centuries, and whose name sits on Australia's highest peak. Tadeusz Kosciuszko: freedom fighter, friend of Thomas Jefferson and champion of liberty on two continents.

From the massively popular podcaster and New York Times best-selling author comes the story of the Marquis de Lafayette's lifelong quest to protect the principles of democracy, told through the lens of the three revolutions he participated in....

Fans fell in love with Eliza Hamilton - Alexander Hamilton’s devoted wife - in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s phenomenal musical Hamilton. But they don’t know her full story....

The first book to appear in the illustrious Oxford History of the United States, this critically-acclaimed volume - a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize - offers an unsurpassed history of the Revolutionary War and the birth of the American republic....

This captivating history audiobook presents a general outline of the American Revolution, focusing largely on the period between the outbreak of rebellion in 1765 until the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789....

On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel—the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before....

Here is a brisk, accessible, and vivid introduction to arguably the most important event in the history of the United States: the American Revolution....

In the second volume of the landmark American Revolution trilogy by the Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The British Are Coming, George Washington’s army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat.

This classic work explains the evolution of American political thought from the Declaration of Independence to the ratification of the Constitution. In so doing, it greatly illuminates the origins of the present American political system....

Proud and talented, history now remembers this conflicted man solely through the lens of his last desperate act of treason. Yet the fall of Benedict Arnold remains one of the Revolutionary period's great puzzles....

The battles that form the backbone of the story put forth of American independence—at Lexington and Concord, Brandywine, Germantown, Saratoga, and Monmouth, while crucial, did not lead to the surrender at Yorktown. It was in the three-plus years between Monmouth and Yorktown that the war was won....

Rick Atkinson recounts the first 21 months of America’s violent war for independence, from the battles at Lexington and Concord in spring 1775 to those at Trenton and Princeton in winter 1777....

Poor Richard's Almanack contained the calendar, astronomical and astrological information, poems, and sayings....

In these 24 compelling lectures, Professor Winterer takes you on a journey into the thought and actions of the American revolutionaries, showing how classical antiquity shaped every aspect of the revolutionary and founding era.

The number one New York Times best seller by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that's "as resonant today as ever" (The Wall Street Journal) - the settling of the Northwest Territory....

General Benedict Arnold's failed attempt to betray the fortress of West Point to the British in 1780 stands as one of the most infamous episodes in American history....

Hailed by Thomas Jefferson as "the best commentary on the principles of government which was ever written," The Federalist Papers is a collection of 85 essays published by Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay from 1787 to 1788....

A sweeping new history, The Cherokees reveals how the Cherokees became a nation as they navigated a century and a half of intertribal conflicts and colonial expansion that threatened their way of life.

Discover the remarkable life of Martha Washington....

In 1775 the American colonies were a hotbed of political discord. Many of the British policies, specifically taxes, had caused American colonial leaders to consider the unthinkable....

Relive one of the most iconic moments in American history with Paul Revere's Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

A comprehensive look at the brutal wilderness war that secured America's independence....

As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, George Washington developed the strategy that won the Revolutionary War, but while Washington directed some battles, his strategy for the most part was carried out by his subordinates. In the spirit of the best military history and biography, Washington's Lieutenants tells the story of the generals who served under Washington from 1775 to 1781.

The Undiscovered Country strips away the layers of myth to reveal the true story of the American West. From the forests of Pennsylvania and Kentucky to the snow-crested California Sierras, and from the harsh deserts of the Southwest to the buffalo range of the Great Plains, Paul Andrew Hutton masterfully chronicles a story that defined America and its people. From Braddock’s 1755 defeat to the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre, he unfolds a grand narrative steeped in romantic impulses and tragic consequences.

Arguably the most intellectual, creative, cosmopolitan, and curious of the Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin is the only top-tier Founder not to have served as president. Despite not becoming the Chief Executive, Franklin played an active role in American politics and served the aspiring and young United States in the key European capitals. His prodigious reading and appetite for learning are epic. As he did in works about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, Kevin J. Hayes interprets the life and mind of Franklin through what he read.

The Revolutionary War is often celebrated as marking the birth of American republicanism, liberty, and representative democracy. Yet for the tens of thousands of British and Hessian troops sent 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to wage war under alien skies, such a progressive picture, as Vaughn Scribner reveals, could not have been further from the truth. In Under Alien Skies, Scribner illustrates how foreign soldiers' negative perceptions of the American environment merged with harsh wartime realities to elicit considerable physical, mental, and emotional anguish.

The Framers created a form of government they labelled a “republic.” This author calls it a “republic monarchy” because the people who own the nation were given zero power to change anything in government. All they can do is vote for or against the elite monarchs who run it. This book reviews how we got there, the turmoil that has resulted, and what is recommended be done to achieve government excellence. Self-government by The People is advocated, with the strategy of achieving government decision-making excellence under their control.