The American Revolution Books

The American Revolution Books

David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere's Ride (1995)

An extremely readable, entertaining account of the war's beginning.

Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (1999)

A highly acclaimed work of history that studies a specific part of the world (Virginia) during the Revolution but offers some very intriguing re-interpretations of how seemingly powerless groups like poor white farmers, slaves, and Native Americans all had pivotal influence on the gentry's decision to lead the charge for independence.

Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (1997)

An examination of the Revolution through women's perspectives as Kerber thoroughly researched them in diaries, letters, and legal records.

David McCullough, 1776 (2005)

Another Pulitzer Prize winner, and a very accessible and engaging account of the pivotal year of independence, from multiple perspectives.

Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789 (2007)

A fantastic narrative history of the conflict from a preeminent historian.

Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991)

A Pulitzer-Prize winning book from one of the Revolution's biggest fans. Wood argues that America's was indeed a radical Revolution, within its context. The book seeks to couch the events of the 1760s and '70s (and thereafter) in a much broader political, social, and cultural context so that you can understand what the Western world was like before, during, and after the American war for independence.