Category: American Revolution

Other historians, such as Arthur Schlesinger, have argued that the revolution had its impetus in the preservation of society, not its transformation, which is what usually defines “revolutions.” Wood claims that this assertion is misguided and limited. He concedes that the American Revolution was unique among national revolutions, but that doesn’t make it any less…

Many years back I endeavored to read a full-length biography on each of the Founding Fathers. For most, I had multiple options and several had undisputed “definitive” single volumes available, such as McCullough on Adams and Chernow on Hamilton. For Benjamin Franklin, Carl Van Doren’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winner was still considered the best, but I…

“A People Numerous & Armed” is a collection of twelve essays written by John Shy in the late 1960s and 1970s when he was an up-and-coming historian at the University of Michigan. In his own estimation, the themes that unite the varied pieces are “that war changes society, that strategy and military policy are aspects…

I suppose many prospective readers of “Washington’s Spies” will also be enthusiastic viewers of the AMC Original Series “Turn,” which is loosely based on the book. The key word, readers will find, is “loosely.” The core cast of characters in “Washington’s Spies” will be familiar to any faithful watcher of “Turn”: The Yale educated intelligence…

For far too long the African-American experience has not been fully or accurately captured in American history books. At the time of the American Revolution, 20% of the 2.5 million people in the colonies were black. In the plantation provinces, such as Virginia, that proportion could be as high as 40%. Of the roughly 500,000…

At the beginning of 1776, the British government was spoiling for a fight. Ira Gruber’s “The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution” tells the story of the opening chapter in the war when British success in smashing the rebellion seemed all but foreordained. “Why, indeed,” Gruber asks, “did [the Howe brothers] have no more success…

Nathaniel Philbrick is one of this country’s very best popular narrative historians. In “Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution” he delivers another fast-paced and insightful history of the “Glorious Cause.” Although Philbrick’s story focuses on the dramatic role played by Benedict Arnold (and to a lesser degree George…

The events leading up to the American Revolution have been endlessly debated. In “An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight for America,” journalist-turned-historian Nick Bunker lays out a crisp narrative that argues, it seems to me, that the conflict between mother country and colonies was more or less unavoidable by 1775. The…