Recommended Resources
The Road to Revolution
The books, articles, films, and websites in this section will enhance the materials included on our website for this era of American history. Many of the books are by the historians whose essays and lectures you have read and listened to here and offer in-depth studies of the topics that have caught your interest. The websites and other resources open new ways to explore American history and take advantage of new interpretations and new technologies to enhance classroom or at-home learning.
Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
Butler, Jon. Becoming America: The Revolution before 1776. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Mulhall, Jill K. Causes of the Revolution, Primary Source Readers. Huntington Beach, CA: Teacher Created Materials, 2008.
Waters, Kate. Mary Geddy's Day: A Colonial Girl in Williamsburg. New York: Scholastic Press, 1999.
Maier, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.
Freedman, Russell. Give Me Liberty: The Story of the Declaration of Independence. New York: Holiday House, 2000.
Wills, Garry. Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1978.
Berkin, Carol. Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist. New York: Columbia University Press, 1974.
Rakove, Jack N. Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2010.
Foner, Eric. Tom Paine and Revolutionary America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. First published 1975.
Recommended Resources from Other Sub-Eras
Raphael, Ray. A People’s History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence. New York: New Press, 2001.
McWilliams, James E. A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
Murphy, Jim. A Young Patriot: The American Revolution as Experienced by One Boy. New York: Clarion Books, 1996.
Freeman, Joanne B. Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Fritz, Jean. And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1973.
Dupont, Christian Y., and Peter S. Onuf, eds. Declaring Independence: The Origin and Influence of America’s Founding Document. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Library, 2008.
Berkin, Carol. First Generations: Women in Colonial America. New York: Hill and Wang, 1996.
Cannavale, Vincent C. Voices from Colonial America: Florida, 1513–1821. Washington DC: National Geographic Children’s Books, 2006.
Ellis, Joseph J. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
Alden, John R. George Washington: A Biography. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984.
Smith, Warren Thomas. John Wesley and Slavery. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986.
Cady, Edwin Harrison. John Woolman. New York: Washington Square Press, 1965.
Lepore, Jill. New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan. New York: Random House, 2005.
Wood, Gordon S. Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006.
Elkins, Stanley, and Eric McKitrick. The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
McWillliams, John P., Jr. The American Epic: Transforming a Genre, 1770–1860. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Wood, Gordon S. The American Revolution: A History. New York: Modern Library, 2002.
Greene, Jack P., and J.R. Pole, eds. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of the American Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Reference, 1991.
Bernstein, R.B. The Founding Fathers Reconsidered. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Bernard, Bailyn. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1967.
Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
Delbanco, Andrew. The Real American Dream: A Meditation on Hope. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Peterson, Merrill D. Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.
Brookhiser, Richard. What Would the Founders Do? Our Questions, Their Answers. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
Bly, Antonio. “Crossing the Lake of Fire: Slave Resistance in the Middle Passage, 1720–1842.” Journal of Negro History 83 (1998): 178–86.