One difficulty in writing a balanced history of the American Revolution arises in part from its success as a creator of our nation and our nationalistic sentiment. Unlike the Civil War, unlike the French Revolution, the American Revolution produced no lingering social trauma in the United States—it is a historic event widely applauded by Americans today as both necessary and desirable. But one consequence of this happy unanimity is that the chief losers of the War of Independence—the American Loyalists—have fared badly at the hands of historians. This explains, in part, why the account of the Revolution recorded by self-professed Loyalist and Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, Peter Oliver, has heretofore been so routinely overlooked. Oliver's manuscript, entitled "The Origins & Progress of the American Rebellion," written in 1781, challenges the motives of the founding fathers, and depicts the revolution as passion, plotting, and violence. His descriptions of the leaders of the patriot party, of their program and motives, are unforgiving, bitter, and inevitably partisan. But it records the impressions of one who had experienced these events, knew most of the combatants intimately, and saw the collapse of the society he had lived in. His history is a very important contemporary account of the origins of the revolution in Massachusetts, and is now presented here in it entirety for the first time.

Between 1760 and 1800, the people of the United States created a new nation, based on the idea that all people have the right to govern themselves. This Very Short Introduction recreates the experiences that led to the Revolution; the experience of war; and the post-war creation of a new political society.

Mercy Otis Warren has been described as perhaps the most formidable female intellectual in eighteenth-century America. This work (in the first new edition since 1805) is an exciting and comprehensive study of the events of the American Revolution, from the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765 through the ratification of the Constitution in 1788-1789. Steeped in the classical, republican tradition, Warren was a strong proponent of the American Revolution. She was also suspicious of the newly emerging commercial republic of the 1780s and hostile to the Constitution from an Anti-Federalist perspective, a position that gave her history some notoriety.

A “deeply researched and bracing retelling” (Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize–winning historian) of the American Revolution, showing how the Founders were influenced by overlooked Americans—women, Native Americans, African Americans, and religious dissenters. Using more than a thousand eyewitness records, Liberty Is Sweet is a “spirited account” (Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution) that explores countless connections between the Patriots of 1776 and other Americans whose passion for freedom often brought them into conflict with the Founding Fathers. “It is all one story,” prizewinning historian Woody Holton writes. Holton describes the origins and crucial battles of the Revolution from Lexington and Concord to the British surrender at Yorktown, always focusing on marginalized Americans—enslaved Africans and African Americans, Native Americans, women, and dissenters—and on overlooked factors such as weather, North America’s unique geography, chance, misperception, attempts to manipulate public opinion, and (most of all) disease. Thousands of enslaved Americans exploited the chaos of war to obtain their own freedom, while others were given away as enlistment bounties to whites. Women provided material support for the troops, sewing clothes for soldiers and in some cases taking part in the fighting. Both sides courted native people and mimicked their tactics. Liberty Is Sweet is a “must-read book for understanding the founding of our nation” (Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin), from its origins on the frontiers and in the Atlantic ports to the creation of the Constitution. Offering surprises at every turn—for example, Holton makes a convincing case that Britain never had a chance of winning the war—this majestic history revivifies a story we thought we already knew.

Looks at the effect of the American Revolution on European relations, relates American diplomatic efforts to others of the time, and explains why England could not find allies against the colonists

Origin of the American Revolution is the first of Bernhard Knollenberg's two-part history concerning the basis of the conflict between England and its North American colonies from 1759 to 1766. This compact narrative history, written more than a generation ago, has been widely unavailable, until now. In this first volume, Origin of the American Revolution, Knollenberg knits together the most important and coincident prerequisite conditions that made the colonial break with England inevitable. The book is in great measure a work of imperial history, in that it views the advent of the American Revolution within the context of the first British Empire. In this context, Knollenberg views the movement toward independence as the failure of the British to solve the problem of empire. Origin of the American Revolution provides a concise treatment of a time period crucial to the making of the American nation. Knollenberg is one of the first historians to move the Anglo-American dispute back in time, and his work throughout is deeply researched and clearly and engagingly written.

"For those who like their history rich in vivid details, Derek Beck has served up a delicious brew in this book....This may soon become everyone's favorite." —Thomas Fleming, author of Liberty! The American Revolution A sweeping, provocative new look at the pivotal years leading up to the American Revolution The Revolutionary War did not begin with the Declaration of Independence, but several years earlier in 1773. In this gripping history, Derek W. Beck reveals the full story of the war before American independence—from both sides. Spanning the years 1773-1775 and drawing on new material from meticulous research and previously unpublished documents, letters, and diaries, Igniting the American Revolution sweeps readers from the rumblings that led to the Boston Tea Party to the halls of Parliament—where Ben Franklin was almost run out of England for pleading on behalf of the colonies—to that fateful Expedition to Concord which resulted in the shot heard round the world. With exquisite detail and keen insight, Beck brings revolutionary America to life in all its enthusiastic and fiery patriotic fervor, painting a nuanced portrait of the perspectives, ambitions, people, and events on both the British and the American sides that eventually would lead to the convention in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776. Captivating, provocative and inspiring, Igniting the American Revolution is the definitive history of these landmark years in our nation's history, whose events irrevocably altered the future not only of the United States and England, but the whole world. " Integrating compelling personalities with grand strategies, political maneuverings on both sides of the Atlantic, and vividly related incidents, Igniting the American Revolution pulls the reader into a world rending the British Empire asunder." – Samuel A. Forman, author of the biography Dr. Joseph Warren

In his two volumes on the Revolution, Bernhard Knollenberg provides a basic narrative of events with extensive citations to the sources and a thorough discussion of the historiography. He concentrates on the political and constitutional clash between Parliament and the colonies that led to the Revolution. Social, economic, and intellectual history enter the story where needed, but Knollenberg was essentially a political historian. Although steeped in the sources and scrupulous about the facts, he wrote Whig history. His sympathies lay with the Americans. He believed that the British ministries were responsible for the crumbling of the empire and that the Americans represented the cause of liberty. Bernhard Knollenberg practiced law for twenty-two years in New York City before leaving to direct the Yale University Library in 1938. He was the senior deputy administrator of the United States Lend-Lease Administration in Washington, D.C., and later a Division Deputy in the O.S.S., during World War II. Thereafter, he dedicated his time to historical research and writing about the American Revolution. He is also the author of Washington and the Revolution; Pioneering Sketches of the Upper Whitewater Valley: Quaker Stronghold of the West; and Franklin, Jonathan Williams, and William Pitt. Bernhard Knollenberg died in 1973. Bernard W. Sheehan is Professor emeritus of history at Indiana University and past editor of the Indiana Magazine of History.