Recommended Resources
The War for Independence
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.
Raphael, Ray. A People’s History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence. New York: New Press, 2001.
Murphy, Jim. A Young Patriot: The American Revolution as Experienced by One Boy. New York: Clarion Books, 1996.
McLeese, Don. Alexander Hamilton. Vero Beach, FL: Rourke Publishing, 2004.
Fritz, Jean. And Then What Happened, Paul Revere? New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1973.
Hoffman, Ronald. Diplomacy and Revolution: The Franco-American Alliance of 1778. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981.
Ellis, Joseph J. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000.
Hoffman, Robert, and Peter J. Albert, eds. Peace and the Peacemakers: The Treaty of 1783. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986.
Parker, Christi E. The American Revolution, Primary Source Readers. Huntington Beach, CA: Teacher Created Materials, 2008.
Countryman, Edward. The American Revolution. Rev. ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003.
Stinchcombe, William C. The American Revolution and the French Alliance. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1969.
Calloway, Colin G. The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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.
Wood, Gordon S. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
Recommended Resources from Other Sub-Eras
Freeman, Joanne B. Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Basker, James G., ed. Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems about Slavery, 1660–1810. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
Waters, Kate. Mary Geddy's Day: A Colonial Girl in Williamsburg. New York: Scholastic Press, 1999.
Chorao, Kay. D is for Drums: A Colonial Williamsburg ABC. New York: Henry N. Abrams, 2004.
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.
Maier, Pauline. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972.
Marrin, Albert. George Washington and the Founding of a Nation. New York: Dutton’s Children’s Books, 2001.
Alden, John R. George Washington: A Biography. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984.
Freedman, Russell. Give Me Liberty: The Story of the Declaration of Independence. New York: Holiday House, 2000.
Mintz, Steven. Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Appleby, Joyce. Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000.
Wills, Garry. Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, 1978.
Smith, Richard Norton. Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.
Rakove, Jack N. Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2010.
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 Creation of the American Republic. 1776–1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998; orig. 1969.
Bernard, Bailyn. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1967.
Onuf, Peter S. The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775–1787. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001; orig. 1983.
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.
Stuart, Reginald C. United States Expansionism and British North America, 1775–1871. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
Bly, Antonio. “Crossing the Lake of Fire: Slave Resistance in the Middle Passage, 1720–1842.” Journal of Negro History 83 (1998): 178–86.
White, Richard. “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.